Sometimes you'll need to rely on knowledge of the film to progress: unless you remember that at one point McClane used a fire hose to jump off a roof, you'll spend a frustrating period running around trying to work out what the hell you're meant to be doing while dying over and over again. Assuming you've seen the film (and surely everyone has) you'll know all the plot twists and all the set-pieces, which neatly excludes one reason to play all the way through. Story and Missionĭie Hard: Nakatomi Plaza bases itself on the film with near-fanaticism. None of the film's tension is carried over to the cutscenes, which, instead of advancing the plot, suck away any glimmerings of tension as effectively as the very voids of space itself. It's often difficult to work out what's actually going on in them, and who's meant to be who. All are displayed using the game's uninspired graphics, in which ridiculously polygonal characters open and close their mouths in bland mid-distance shots while dialogue is played. However, not since the otherwise spiffy No-One Lives Forever has a game suffered from such dull, turgid, drawn-out interruptions to game play.
The context-driven music is okay, but nothing exceptionally notable or unworthy.
Guns go budda-budda, bad guys shout things from a rather limited selection in German-ish accents and fire crackles. It looks stupid, and rather fails to inspire the terror that a blazing inferno in a confined space ought. When fire, destroyer of cities and bane of civilisation, is called upon to play a role, it is here acted by disastrously animated wibbly-wobbly orange stuff. To make entirely sure the copyright on Bruce's face is sacrosanct, the mirrors in the bathrooms don't reflect, which is a bit of a surprise in this day and age. Sierra apparently don't have the rights to use the likenesses of Bruce Willis or Alan Rickman, and to prevent glimpses of Mr Willis, the game is careful to exclude him from cutscenes and restrict itself to first-person view when he would be present in a shot. Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza doesn't.Ĭharacters are poor, too, with jerky animation and low polygon counts. Half-Life, one of the best shooters ever, is set entirely in a very functional research base and yet works brilliantly. There must be action to keep up the pace and tight plotting to keep you guessing. If a game is going to be based around a restricted environment, something else needs to take up the slack. What's more, the Nakatomi interior designers favour the ever-so-interesting colours of white, grey and beige, making these environments both boring and repetitive, and the trick the game pulls later on, of making you blunder around levels in the dark doesn't spice things up any. It doesn't help that the entire game is set in an office block, which means the environments are limited to plush offices, not-so-plush offices, offices-that-aren't-finished-yet, sewers (because it's not an FPS without them), a laboratory, a roof and a parking lot. Detail is low, animation poor, characters blocky - in the wake of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Medal of Honor, Die Hard looks crude. Looks and Soundsĭie Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is a first-person shooter using the versatile Lithtech engine, backbone of such fine offerings as No-One Lives Forever and Alien vs. Sadly, all these points are missing from the game. It's a great action flick noted for a stonking villain, displays of ingenuity on both sides, pulse-pounding set pieces and an all-too human hero who gets hurt and tired and frustrated rather than simply displaying the traditional action-hero square chin and invulnerability. All that follows is exposition thereon.įor those still interested, the game is based on the first film of the Die Hard series, in which cunning Alan Rickman takes over the state-of-the-art Nakatomi Plaza building as part of a deeply devious robbery, and only Bruce Willis, there to meet his separated executive wife, can stop the faux terrorists.
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