Yippie-Ki-Oy-Vey
Written: Mar 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some fun moments in the action/adventure mode and sharp-shooting mode.
Cons: Mediocre graphics; poor enemy A.I.; no multiplayer
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| jiffy's Full Review: Die Hard Trilogy for Windows |
I guess you can't blame Fox Interactive for milking its celebrated TV and movie licenses. In fact, almost every one has made its way into a video game franchise in some form or another, including The X-Files, Aliens, Predator, The Simpsons, Independence Day and one most recently announced, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But far too often these movie-to-game ports often rely to heavily on the popularity and brand name recognition than on making a great game. Such is the case with its latest release, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas, a lukewarm game sequel based on John McClane (Bruce Willis) and his nail-biting adventures against terrorists.
This time around, McClane is invited to a black tie soiree in Las Vegas from Kenny Sinclair, an old partner on the NYC police force who is now the warden of a maximum penitentiary prison. Over a few cocktails, Sinclair boasts to McClane the notorious terrorist Klaus Von Haug is one of the inmates here, just as a riot breaks out, and of course, McClane is asked to help out for old times sake. OK, so the story isn't terribly imaginative, but it'll do as a premise to an action game.
Actually, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (DHT2) is really three games in one. Much like its predecessor also released on the PlayStation in 1996 (yes, it's been that long already), DHT2 features a third-person action/adventure game (not unlike this developers' Duke Nukem: Time to Kill), a first-person perspective "sharp-shooting" game and an "extreme" driving game, as well. The difference with this sequel is the gamer can choose to play these three kinds of games independent of one another or all thrown into the mix in the more story-driven Movie Mode. There's also a no-brainer Practice Mode to sharpen skills as a sharp-shooter. Let's take a quick look at each of the three types of games:
The "over-the-shoulder" action/adventure game is moderately fun, but the suspense of entering a room full of well-hidden baddies is ruined as the walls become transparent when McLane walks up against them, exposing the characters inside. The weapons are standard, but fun (pistols, shotguns, flame throwers and grenades, etc.) but the A.I. of the enemies (or lack thereof) makes the gameplay stale after a while. This is especially irritating since I can forgive the sub-par graphics, but it was the artificial intelligence Fox was pushing in its press release for the game. If I must quote the document: "[the A.I.] keeps the enemies smart and the player constantly guessing as McClane's adversaries survey their surroundings, listen, watch and react based on the player's actions". Uh, ya. The level design is also amateurish: there are areas of a map with little or no activity, items too hidden and out of sight of the character, and exits are often too hard to find, to name a few architectural shortcomings.
The second type of game in DHT2 is the reasonably enjoyable sharp-shooting mode, although it's just another one of these Virtua Cop-esque "rail shooters" where the player is moved around the environment automatically while enemies and innocent pedestrians pop up. Gamers must shoot the bad guys, leave the civilians unharmed, and must re-load often as well. The DualShock analog controller works well with this but a PSX light gun or mouse is recommended. This mode at least gets more challenging and I found myself playing this for a long while. Plus, gamers can also aim at windows, exploding oil drums and crates containing weapon upgrades.
The racing sequences in the Nevada desert are by far the most boring, lackluster mode out of them all. It seems the least amount of time on this game was spent on this "extreme driving" portion of the game. All the gamer has to do is race against the clock by ramming into bad guys to make them explode while driving over bombs in order to diffuse them. On top of this the handling of the cars is horrible with the analog controller (note: a wheel is allegedly supported, but was not used for this review).
Unfortunately, there's very little to praise with DHT2, though there were a few fun moments in an otherwise uninspiring game. Perhaps if the developers spend more time making one great game instead of three average games, or pouring a little more creativity into the mix, Die Hard Trilogy 3 may be worth playing.and you know it's surely planned already, right?
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
jiffy
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Member: Bob Hope
Location: Greenbush Wisconsin
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 2 members
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