Contract J.A.C.K.

Contract J.A.C.K. has been labelled a prequel to No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way, and the action therefore takes place between the two NOLF games. This time around, you won’t be playing as Cate Archer, though, but as the seriously noisy contract killer, John Jack.

Let’s be honest about this

You can say THAT again...

To begin with, I have to tell you that I really don’t like Contract J.A.C.K. There, I said it straight out, and now I’ll concentrate on telling you why.

For starters, it’s rare to see a really good franchise getting as badly watered-down as this one. Personally, I had great fun playing through No One Lives Forever. Its innovative mix of FPS gameplay and James Bond-style spy gadgets, with a healthy dose of genuinely funny 60s spy movie spoofs, was a winning formula.

Contract J.A.C.K., however has none of these qualities. Instead, it has you racing through its levels, constantly pulling the trigger. Enemies will launch themselves at you when you cross invisible boundaries and you mow them all down. That’s the game in a nutshell.

Yeah, that's real subtle, Jack.

There is only one path through the game and no real tasks to complete, other than getting from point A to point B in one piece. I’m not kidding here, the levels have been constructed in a way that only gives you one route through them, as if you were on rails. This reduces the gameplay to a simple case of guiding the very noisy Jack forward, while dispatching everything in sight.

This might have been acceptable if the basic shooter element was competent, like in Serious Sam, for instance, but even here, that game fails to deliver the goods. Throughout most of the game, you’ll be using four different automatic weapons and a shotgun. They all need to be reloaded constantly and many of them are very unrealistic. As an example, you can use your shotgun as a long-distance weapon, which does not make much sense.

If the ‘contract killer’ theme had been taken seriously, would it have been too much to ask for some silent weapons, such as knives, tasers and the like? Obviously so, seeing that all we get is a muffled machine gun (!).

‘Look, there’s my partner – I’ll go stand on him!’

This was the third guy in the same place.

The enemies in the game sometimes offer good resistance and use grenades and the like sensibly, but for the most part, they’re nothing but cannon fodder. All too often, I shot an enemy on a balcony, for instance, only to see another soldier running out to the same spot so he could suffer the very same fate on top of his dead buddy. This would continue until there was a pile of up to five soldiers, after which they would stop repeating their mistake. Until I moved forward a bit.

It’s odd that the enemies don’t fare better, when they seem to have the power of ESP. They always seem to know where you are, because they shout things like “he’s coming” when they could not possibly have seen you. And then they pour out from behind the conspicuous door that was locked just a moment before, only to end up as piles of dead bodies. The game also manages to remove the surprise element by pausing for a split second when the enemies are being loaded.

And finally, you only meet about five different enemies during the course of the game anyway. Variation is not the name of this game.

The space missions are the best part of the game. They last an entire... thirty minutes.

Technobabble

Would you like one of these? You won't if you try it.

Graphically, Contract J.A.C.K. resembles the other games in the series. It’s adequate, if unimpressive, and apart from some space missions, the game sports dull level designs. Everything is very blocky-looking, although the animation of your enemies is okay.

On the sonic side of things, we find a fitting musical score that is sadly somewhat too repetitive. Weapon sound effects are top notch though.

Controlling Jack feels like playing just about any other FPS. The inclusion of some different vehicles, such as a snowmobile and a moped armed with guns, spice up the experience somewhat, but they are difficult to control. Luckily, you are not forced to use them more than once. The rest of the time you can just let them be. Which is sad, since they’re obviously supposed to be fun.

Disappointing

Bang bang, he shot me down...

It is hard not to be disappointed with Contract J.A.C.K. and I don’t think many people will enjoy it. Fans of No One Lives Forever will miss the humour, spirit and sneak ‘em up elements of the other games (as well as Cate Archer – ed.), while FPS fans in general will be put off by the repetitive gameplay, the limited weapons and the short length of the single-player game. Personally, I finished it in a mere four hours. That is simply not acceptable, when there isn’t even a good plot worth following

The only thing that redeems this game a little bit is that it does have a few hectic battles. But sadly, there are not enough of them.

Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)