Wow. Half-Life has been sitting pretty at the top of the gaming heap for a good two years, and it's taken this long for a worthy successor to appear on the scene. There have been some great games in those two years -- Deus Ex comes to mind -- but at root Half-Life was very simple: no RPG elements, no branching paths, just a linear tear through the Black Mesa Research Facility. What made it such a compelling experience was that for the first time, the game felt like it was really happening. Scripted events broke up the action with unexpected and terrifying results, and great level design finally escaped the endless repetition of "kill, kill, find key, kill, find door."

Monolith's No One Lives Forever is very much the same kind of game. At heart it too is a straight-up shooter with some puzzle-solving and exploration thrown in, and innovative design and scripted events bring the game world to life. Two years later, there's finally a game worthy of being compared to Half-Life; both take basic shooter action and transform it into actual drama. But can the student defeat the master? Read on, grasshopper.

Next page: Story telling and level design

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