Yippee-ki-yay or Yippee-ki-nay? (Die Hard - Nakatomi Plaza (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Die Hard - Nakatomi Plaza (PC)
Date:	08/09/03 (121 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Die Hard story, Good graphics

Disadvantages: Poor level design, Poor graphics variety, Too easy

Take the story of the original Die Hard movie, add on a few bits and pieces, combine it with a good programming team and a proven graphics engine, and you should have the complete recipe for a smash hit game, right?

Well... maybe!

Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza (DHNP), as if you can't guess, is a game based on the Bruce Willis action flick. You are John McClane, and while visiting your wife, some nasty terrorists take over the building, cut off contact with the outside world and get up to no good. It's up to good old John (i.e. you) to save the day. Yippee-ki-yay!

DHNP is a first person shooter for the PC and makes use of the LithTech graphics engine which provides the levels you will explore throughout the game. As the entire game is set in a few floors of a huge office block, it will be unsurprising to learn that there isn't much variety in the scenery. Sometimes in games, this isn't a bad thing, but in DHNP, I felt that the game needed as much help as possible to be interesting, and a variety of scenery might have helped. The level of detail in the graphics themselves though is quite good, and the game looks excellent while not being particularly varied from level to level.

The levels are quite straightforward in their design and are distinctly uninspired, although this may be a problem with setting a game within a prefab office block where everything looks similar anyway. If there were even a few secrets to try and find, then it might be a bit more interesting, but to try door after door and not be able to enter the offices was frustrating. One of the saving graces is that every now and again, you get some sort of task to accomplish that makes the game interesting. Near the start, for example, you are asked to de-fuse bombs with wire cutters which you must find. Later in the game, you must lead a civilian to safety through a burning office storey.

The game is partly rescued by the novelty of being inside the
Die Hard story. Unlike my last dabble with film tie-ins (Aliens vs Predator 2), Die Hard sticks with the plot of the film for the most part, and you'll even get to hear Reginald Vel Johnson who was Officer Powell in the original movie.

The weapons selection is good for a game of this type, although with it being set in the Die Hard story (i.e. the "real world") you're not going to find things like ray guns or research weapons to fight off the evil baddies. But you still get a varied selection of real world weapons such as the M-16, H&K MP5, 9mm pistol etc. all of which make satisfying noises when used.

The other audio aspects of the game are also good, and while none of the other actors from the film make an appearance apart from the aforementioned Officer Powell, their replacements do a good job.

One of the most obvious negative aspects of the game, I thought, was the level of difficulty. I found the game to be quite easy, and while I did end up getting my money's worth out of it, there wasn't any real challenge in it for me. Unlike some other games I've played I didn't even find the game interesting enough to consider any sort of replay value.

Overall, DHNP is a distinctly average game that doesn't live up to the potential of the licence attached to it, although you can hardly quibble with the price tag which should be less than £15 if you look around a bit. While I thought I got my money's worth from the game, I can't really say any more than that, and so I'd be hard pushed to rate this any higher than 3 stars.

Summary: