Yippee Ki-Yay, it's time to talk about everyone's favorite Christmas movie.
Look, I don't actually have any specific thoughts on whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, I guess I could see it either way. At the end of the day, it's just a matter of opinion. What's not a matter of opinion is just how big a deal Die Hard was when it came out in 1988. We all know the story; John McClain attempts to reconnect with his estranged wife by attending her company Christmas party at Nakatomi Inc. All is going according to plan when the building is attacked by a band of terrorists led by Hans Gruber. The villains are trying to get access to the vault on the 30th floor and will stop a nothing to get it. Based on the 1979 Novel "Nothing Lasts Forever" by Roderick Thorpe, expectations were low for the film. Studio execs were unsure what to think of Bruce Willis, who was more known as a television actor at the time, as a leading man in an action movie. Several big-name action stars, including the two guys we spent the last few weeks discussing, turned down the role of John McClain and much of the early marketing for the movie didn't even include Willis. Initial reviews were mixed, but now Die Hard is widely considered one of the greatest action movies of all time. It established Bruce Willis as a marquee movie star, helped make Alan Rickman a household name and launched a whole series of movies, video games and other media.
For the purposes of this review, we will be discussing the NES version released in early 1992. It was developed by Pack-In Games and published by Actvision, which is a sentence I feel like I've been typing a lot over the past few weeks. While it may share a developer with almost all of the games I have been covering, it feels quite different in terms of gameplay. Rather than a 2D side scroller, Die Hard is a top-down shooter in the vein of Ikari Warriors or Total Carnage. At least it is in terms of core gameplay. It's layout, however, is quite different. You take control of John McClain (obviously) and are tasked with eliminating terrorists between the 31st and 35th floors of the Nakatomi building. The game offers a choice of beginner and advanced mode, with advanced adding more floors. There are 40 terrorists in all, and they must be defeated before Hans and his band of merry men open the six vault locks. Once the locks are open, the player must make their way to the 30th floor for the final battle with Hans Gruber and any remaining terrorists. It might seem like it's in your best interest to just wait it out but believe me, if you have even a few enemies remaining this fight will be an absolute beast. In addition to your health, you must also manage your foot power, which will go down if you run too much or step on broken glass. Let it get too low and John will have his movement slowed substantially.
The game offers something akin to branching paths, with different cutscenes appearing and different enemies attacking based on your actions. Dare I say, it's almost like an early example of an open world game? It's not all that big, but you can move around the building at your own discretion and alter the environment by destroying objects, breaking glass and finding hidden areas. Want to move quickly? You can blast away a glass wall and walk across the remnants, but it's going to cost you ammo and damage your feet. You can even break the outside windows, though doing this will open up instant death pits on the edge of the building. You can find a variety of items and weapons, including pistols, axes, machine guns, rocket launchers, explosives and flashbangs. You can also find restorative items, medkits to heal your feet and soda to restore your health. You can even shoot the soda machines to get additional health pickups. There was a lot of stuff here that was somewhat ahead of its time, though it is worth noting this was a very, very late NES release.
But just because something is innovative doesn't mean it's good. Die Hard has quite a few flaws and the biggest of them comes from the controls. They are very stiff and kind of weird and everything feels slow unless you are running. That's a problem, because running will drain your foot power and drain it fast. But the biggest issue comes from the overhead camera, some 2D games were able to pull this off but it's kind of difficult to do without a joystick. You can only move and fire at exact angles, meaning it's almost impossible to hit or access certain portions of the screen. This isn't game breaking, but it does make it feel harder to get around than it should be and sometimes causes you to move in a suboptimal manner. When there aren't any enemies around it's not a big deal, but it makes combat a bit of a chore.
There may be a relatively small number of enemies in the game, but each one feels like a major challenge, for both good and bad reasons. For the bad, the enemies don't seem like they are bound to the same rigid movement that you are. Their shooting is definitely not as restricted, as they will spray bullets around like it's going out of style, especially the guys with the machine guns. They are almost impossible to approach without getting a hit and even more difficult to take down before they start arbitrarily spread firing again. You are going to have to take at least one of these guys down with the pistol or your fists and it's almost guaranteed to result in you taking a lot of damage. Fortunately, once you get the machine gun the playing field is a little bit more level. Which brings us to some of the good stuff. The game really rewards you for exploring, finding and using new weapons and items. Once you find flashbangs, which stun enemies, battling the more challenging foes becomes much easier. Die Hard also creates some unique combat scenarios and uses its non-linear nature to great effect. Enemies will ambush you in doors or the elevator or appear when you least expect them. Since it's never the same game twice, you have to be on your toes at all times, which I think is pretty cool and leads to a tense atmosphere.
Die Hard isn't a particularly long game, but it's non-linear layout makes it fairly repayable. That was kind of rare for games of this era, so I have to give it credit for that. I also like that hard mode adds more content to the game rather than just make the enemies more difficult or force you to work with fewer resources. I do wish the game were bigger, but the floors you can access are fairly large and there is a lot of stuff to explore. More importantly, it's actually worth exploring to find valuable healing items or alternate paths. The breakable glass throughout is pretty cool, again an early example of a destructible environment. This wasn't represented super well because the graphics were just okay, but it was still a valiant attempt.
Overall, Die Hard wasn't great. However, it was leagues better than any of the other action movie games I have played over the past month. Even though John McClain is an iconic action movie character, it still always kind of felt off to me seeing Bruce Willis in a movie like this. I can totally understand why Stallone, Arnold and a bevy of others were offered this role. And yet, I'm not sure Die Hard would have worked as well as it did without Willis. In the same fashion, the game seemed like an inferior idea on paper. A top-down action game, released at the very end of the 3rd generation on a dying console, based on what was at that point a four-year-old movie shouldn't have worked. And yet it kind of did. I'm not going to call Die Hard a hidden NES gem or anything, it has entirely too many problems, but it's substantially better than any of the other games we have looked at in this space. It's not the best game I've ever played, but Die Hard was a surprisingly innovative, interesting title that might be worth a look.
Comments
Post a Comment