A difficult job, someone had to it (The Italian Job (PS))

Member Name: robster113

Product:	The Italian Job (PS)
Date:	01/08/04 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun at first, You get to play as a mini

Disadvantages: Sudden difficulty change, Painful, Not like the movie

nope, this is not the one with Michael Caine in it. That 1969 crime caper - rolled out whenever there was a hole to fill the TV schedules. No this new film is set in and around hollywood, and despite involving a bullion heist and lots of minis, ears little relationship to the original.

Anyway about the actual game now. Developer Climax has fashioned out one of the toughest yet strangely compulsive driving games yet. When you play a film based game you at least expect a bit of incorporated footage, maybe a few actors from the film leading themselves to the voice-overs. You get none of this here.

As a result the game pans out in an unspectacular fashion. A typical mission goes much like this: an opening CG cut-scene (no film footage here, mate) plays out as a Mark Wahlberg voice impersonator explains a bit of the plot. After his second sentence , you can't be arsed with the plot so you hit X at an amazing speed and your objectives are displayed. 95% of these missions involve pelting from one place to another in a time limit. Imagine the weaker driving missions from GTA that didn't involove getting out of the car and shooting people - that's The Italian Job

So you keep playing thinking "i'm not hating this, and i'm progressing through it quite quickly so i'll see if i can complete in it one sitting (and then give it back to GAME within 10 days). Suddenly in level 10 out of 15 something in the game goes spaz and the difficuty level goes from easy to painfully, intolerably solid.

The Italian Job: LA Heist's redeeming feature is that it's just about playable and likeable enough to make you want another go - despite the fact that your simultaneously hating it and wished you's never bought it. Actually a great idea would be to change the name to "mini madness" and change the price to a tenner and then maybe it would get a four star rating.

Summary: