The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a story-driven video game, set in the 1960s, and stars spy Cate Archer as the eponymous Operative, who works for UNITY – a secret international organization "dedicated to protecting humanity from megalomaniacs bent upon world domination." During the story of the game, Archer is sent on missions to a number of locales, including Morocco, East and West Germany, the Caribbean, and the Alps, where she gets into intense situations, such as scuba diving a shipwreck, free-falling from an airplane without a parachute, and exploring a space station in outer space, all the while fighting armed villains.
The game is a mixture of a first-person shooter and a stealth game. Most, but not all, missions can be solved in multiple ways: using sneaking to avoid danger or by going in with guns blazing. A stealthy approach can be taken to evade security cameras, guard dogs and other obstacles. Enemies are aware of noise made by the player, including footsteps and weapon fire, and they also react to footprints in the snow, and dead bodies left lying around. The game features a wide variety of firearms, including a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver, a submachine gun, a sniper rifle, and an assault rifle. Some of the weapons can be loaded with different types of ammunition, including standard full metal jacket bullets, dum dum rounds that expand on impact and cause bleeding damage, and phosphorus-coated tracer bullets that continue to burn upon impact. Silencers and scopes can also be fitted on some weapons.
A novel feature of the game is its array of gadgets, often disguised as ordinary female fashion objects. For example, lipsticks double as various explosives, perfume bottles hold materials such as sleeping gas, a barrette also functions as a lockpick and poison dagger, sunglasses can be used for photographing evidence and detecting land mines, and a stylish belt buckle hides a zipcord inside it. Other over-the-top gadgets include a body-removing powder for disposing of incriminating corpses, a robotic poodle to distract guard dogs, and a rocket launcher disguised as a briefcase. An ordinary coin can be thrown to confuse enemies, giving the player the opportunity to sneak by without a guard noticing. A cigarette lighter can also be used as a miniature welding torch. These ingenious gadgets come from UNITY's gadget lab, led by its main inventor and scientist, Santa. "Santa's Workshop" continuously works on these covert gadgets, and provides Cate with them as the game progresses.
In various sections of the game, the player can ride a Triumph motorcycle, or a snowmobile. Other segments of the game involve boss fights. If the player chooses to be sneaky, they can overhear humorous conversations between non-player characters, such as guards, scientists and civilians. Occasionally, the player can engage in conversations with such characters. In certain cutscenes, the game uses a dialog tree, in which the player can choose between different questions and responses when talking to another character.
The missions in the game are littered with "intelligence items": briefcases, envelopes, and manila folders containing textual notes which often provide humorous side-notes and helpful hints to the game. The collection of intelligence items is optional. Special power-ups, called "gear" items are also available for collection during the game, such as "fuzzy slippers" that reduce noise made by movement, earplugs that reduce damage from explosions, and a fire extinguisher that protects the player from burn damage. These gear items are sometimes located in hard-to-reach areas. At the start of each mission, the player can choose which weapons, gadgets and gear to take with them. Some intelligence and gear items cannot be collected on the first playthrough of the game, as the necessary gadgets to reach them are not unlocked until later in the game. If the player wants to collect these items, they have to revisit the mission with the appropriate equipment.i
At the end of each mission, the game displays various statistics, as well as any awards and bonuses earned during the mission. Awards are humorous textual notes given for the player's performance during a mission; these include awards for using a very low or a very high number of bullets, or a "Thanks For Not Getting Hurt Award" for avoiding damage. The player also receives a rank, such as "Trainee" or "Super Spy", which is based on the number of intelligence items obtained during the mission. Achieving a high mission rank increases the player's maximum health, armor and ammo capacity, as well as stealth, the amount of inflicted damage, and the accuracy of their shots.
No One Lives Forever also includes multiplayer gameplay online or over a local area network. There are two multiplayer modes available: standard deathmatch, and "H.A.R.M. vs. UNITY". The latter is a team deathmatch mode, where the goal is to capture as much intelligence for a player's team as possible, by sneaking in to the enemy team's base, finding the item, and photographing it.
