Cate Archer walks in with dark glasses and a deadpan grin, like a 1960s spy film someone made playable.

When the community picks on gut instinct, with no criterion, the game lands right in the middle, neither rejected nor celebrated. The criterion by criterion detail tells a stranger story. It holds up on the desert island, ahead of two thirds of all games, and it does fine on the wish to rediscover it. But the feel with a controller in hand collapses to the very bottom of the rankings, on few votes admittedly, so treat that as unconfirmed. Immediate fun and the soundtrack drift the same way, low. There is the tension: a game you would happily take with you, yet whose shooting feel has taken two decades on the chin.

Against modern shooters, the comparison is brutal on feel and unfair on everything else. What No One Lives Forever brings is tone, a heroine, writing, things these questions measure poorly. The art style, mid pack, still carries some of that pop charm.

So who is it for? For you if you love talkative stealth, absurd gadgets and an atmosphere that commits fully to the parody. Much less so if you want your shooter to snap under your fingers from the first minute.