The World’s Unluckiest Cop
John McClane has earned the reputation as the World’s Unluckiest Cop, constantly being in the wrong place at the right time. Now, John is an old man, a retired cop, but his daughter Lucy has joined up with the LAPD. Unfortunately his daughter is being held hostage at the art museum by terrorists. Coincidentally, the art museum was hosting an unveiling of a new painting which had been found by Hans Gruber’s son. Is Gruber trying to draw McClane out to get revenge for the deaths of his father and uncle, or is he just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Die Hard Vendetta is one of those first person shooters that go by the book – it barely offers anything new, and banks its hopes on mimicking a genre which has seen significant success. There is really only one significant addition to the first person shooter formula, but it doesn’t save the rest of the game from being an uninspired mess. The developers claim (in the documentary provided on the disc) that they wanted to capture the spirit of the Die Hard films. Some of that spirit is here, but they’ve failed on the whole. John McClane was always a cop in the wrong place at the right time – a situation would develop around him, and he’d solve it, but in this game, John actively seeks the trouble, and makes things worse by being involved. We also have to take into consideration that this is 20 years after the original Die Hard, which would mean John is in his late forties to early fifties, and I don’t see many people that age running around, jumping through glass and waging mass skirmishes.
Die Hard Vendetta does have one neat feature though. Terrorists are scattered around the levels, and John doesn’t (usually) stand much chance against a bunch of bad guys. However, you can sneak up on terrorists, and take them hostage. Pick the right guy, and the other terrorists will drop their guns. Pick the wrong guy, and you’ll need to use him as a human shield.
Everything else featured in Die Hard Vendetta has been done before and much better at that. The main combat model relies on auto-aiming which is a complete nuisance to any first person shooter veteran (which should be about one in every two gamers by now). Combat also feels flat, jerky, and all too easy. Next up is the “Hero Mode” which is a glorified bullet time clone, with classical music layered over the top. Your Hero meter is filled up by doing good deeds, such as saving hostages or arresting terrorists. Given the game’s ease of disposing of terrorists (thanks to auto-aim), the Hero mode feels almost useless.
The Xbox version brings a few extra features to the table that weren’t in the Gamecube release. The main addition is a multiplayer mode with a bunch of stock standard multiplayer game types, which isn’t terribly exciting, not to mention the fact that there are first person shooters on the Xbox with much better multiplayer. Secondly, there is a set of interviews with the game’s developers, who seem to be about as excited as a kid on a holiday at Blackpool, as they constantly speak in monotone and drone on about how such and such hasn’t been done before, and how they wanted to stay true to the Die Hard license (which indicates that the developer is full of tosh). The single player campaign is only 11 missions long, so there’s not much game here.
Chug! Chug! Chug!
Die Hard Vendetta really suffers in the graphics department thanks to an inconsistent frame rate. The game seems jerky enough when it’s running at full speed, but the constant slowdown is bound to cause heartache. Character models have a few nice textures on the face, but the overall look is rather displeasing, especially when you take the crap factor of the animation into account. John McClane looks like a generic middle aged man, an obvious sign that Bruce Willis wouldn’t lend his likeness to the game (probably knew it was crap). However, some characters do bear likeness to their on screen counterparts. The Xbox version of the game also features a 60 Hz mode, a notable omission from the Gamecube version.
Sound is probably the strongest area of the game (which isn’t saying much). The soundtrack isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but it serves as a good compliment to the action. Sound effects are largely accurate and are of a reasonable quality. Voice acting is on par on the whole, with Reginald VelJohnson joining the cast to reprise his role as Al Powell. Unfortunately for the actors, the dialog and script are atrocious – use of cuss words is fine in a videogame, don’t get me wrong, but Die Hard Vendetta gives us a lesson in what happens when you go over the top.
Yippy ki-yay, mother****er!
Bits Studios have failed in their objective to do justice to the Die Hard license. In fact, we think it’s fair to say that Die Hard Vendetta is a great injustice to the license, just like many of the other Die Hard games before it. So much more could be done with the license, but they had to go and combine it with one of the most overused genres, and not give us anything new. Die Hard Vendetta is an uninspired mess, so only rent it if you’re one of the biggest Die Hard freaks there is, but prepare for disappointment.
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