On the Fifth Day of Die Hard, My True Love Gave To Me...

Whatever qualms I had about the individual games included in the Die Hard Trilogy package, I do appreciate what Probe Entertainment was going for. It’s a fun, interesting experiment that at least did provide three full fledged games in one overall title. It was a fun way to bring three Die HardThe 1980s were famous for the bombastic action films released during the decade. Featuring big burly men fighting other big burly men, often with more guns, bombs, and explosions than appear in Michael Bay's wildest dreams, the action films of the decade were heavy on spectacle, short on realism. And then came a little film called Die Hard that flipped the entire action genre on its head. movies together in a single game, and it let the team get creative about how each film could be represented in game format. Sure, not all the games were equally good – I rather hated the on-rails shooting of Die Hard 2: Die Harder – but on the whole I think it was a successful experiment.

Fox Interactive certainly thought so since, after the successful launch of that game, they decided to commission a sequel. There were only two issues to resolve. The first was that the original Die Hard Trilogy used up all the available films at that time. It would be years before the fourth film, Live Free or Die Hard, was even a glimmer of an idea, and Die Hard as a franchise didn’t have a ton of ancillary materials that could be cobbled together and adapted. On top of that Probe Entertainment had been bought by Acclaim and was already off working on other Acclaim projects instead, making the studio unavailable to work on the sequel.

As such, Fox tapped (eventually) n-Space, creators of a bunch of Rugrats games and one decently received Duke Nukem title, to head up development on a Die Hard Trilogy sequel. This time they were given a freer hand to make their own story and setting, one that didn’t have to tie in to any of the existing Die Hard films or related works. It could be its own thing, free to do as it liked, so long as it preserved the core mechanics that proved popular in the first game: third person shooting, on-rails shooting, and driving combat. The resulting game, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas, was then released in 2000 and then promptly ignored by almost everyone.

The thing about Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (which, due to the length of all that, I’m just going to call DHT2 from now on) is that while it does preserve the mechanics of the original title I wouldn’t say it actually does anything fun or interesting with them. I wouldn’t call it a completely soulless affair, as there are some sections that are kind of fun to play, but on the whole I think it does miss the point of what the original title was going for. Plus, considering when it came out, it would soon be eclipsed by a game that could do everything this title did, but better, and once that happened no one really cared about this game at all. And that other title would, of course, be Grand Theft Auto III.

In DHT2, John McClane heads to Las Vegas to see Kenny Sinclair, an old friend from the NYPD. Kenny had just been named the new head of the Mesa Grande Prison in Nevada and he wanted John to come down and be part of the celebrations. However, during the party at the prison to celebrate the new warden, a particularly dangerous terrorist, Klaus Von Haug, escapes. In the resulting carnage John is forced to gear up and go to work taking out the various escaped prisoners and turncoat officers that helped Haug break free.

Once the action takes to Vegas, John soon learns that Haug has a deal with the owner of the Roaring 20s casino, Reese Hoffman, and the two plan to use the terrorist’s know-how to lay siege to Vegas and seize control of the city. Of course, John is the only person with the skill and abilities to take on terrorists so, naturally, he puts himself in charge of killing the bad guys and freeing the city. Unfortunately he also learns that his own friend, Kenny, was in on the plan with the terrorists, forcing John to confront (and kill) his former colleague. This all results in a guns blazing finale for the fate of the city that never sleeps (no, not that city, the other one).

If I’m being totally honest, DHT2 is a weird game. It takes all the mechanics of the first title – the third person shooting stages, the on-rails shooting stages, the driving stages – and mixes them up together to try and create one, cohesive storyline. In some ways I respect that and I can appreciate the ambition that n-Space had in trying to make a new Die Hard story with the bones of the previous game and no other new material to work from. A sequel to the first game was either going to be three more mini-games or one long melange of the three concepts, and n-Space went with the second option. Functionally it works, but the game play never really comes together.

Part of why the original game functioned was because it was three games in one. If you liked one of the games more than the others you could focus on that and get all your arcade action thrills there while giving only a passing interest to the other two. I really hated the on-rails shooting so after playing through that game’s recreation of Die Hard 2: Die Harder, I chose to avoid it where I could. That’s not an option here, and it does hold this game back a lot. The shooting isn’t any better this time around – honestly, I’d say it’s less responsive and not as well executed, making it even worse – only now you can’t avoid it as it’s a required part of the whole gameplay loop.

Really, all three parts of this experience are worse than in the first title. The third person action is hampered by stiff tank controls and slow movement speeds. The AI is just as brainless as before, only now you feel pretty brainless as well as you play. The on-rails shooting is sluggish and the hitboxes are poorly programmed, leading to many instances of missed shots or accidentally killed hostages. And the driving sections are absolute chores. They’re so awful to play, with even stiffer controls for the vehicles that are also, somehow, incredibly slippy, that I dreaded any time I was put in a car. In short, my experience actually playing DHT2 was not good.

And speaking of hostages, this time you aren’t allowed to kill them with reckless abandon. This game isn’t an arcade style experience, even if it does carry over all the gameplay from the previous title, so there’s no high score box that acts as your primary focus and motivator. If you killed hostages in the first game it resulted in a point penalty. If you kill them here, though, killing hostages will eventually result in the loss of a stage, forcing you back to play through a whole section of the game again. It’s far more punishing, especially when hostages are idiots that just love getting in the way of your crossfire. It’s so aggravating.

Then there’s the 800 lb gorilla in the room: Grand Theft Auto III. When DHT2 came out, no one could have really suspected what DMA Designs and Rockstar Games were cooking up. But a year after DHT2 along came GTA3 and it destroyed everything this game was doing. When you compare the two you have driving sections, on foot sections, and a whole lot of shooting. If DHT2 had come out the same year as GTA3 the comparisons would be so stark as to make it laughable. Sure, this game came out a year before, but when you go back and play it you can’t help but think, “man, this would be so much better if the various design and gameplay concepts were integrated even more seamlessly. You know… like a Grand Theft Auto game.”

As it is, this game feels like a precursor to what would come, something grasping for something but not really nailing the mark. It’s too jumbled, too simple, too held back to be able to reach greatness. And once we had GTA3 there was no need for another of these kinds of games. The industry shifted and the third person shooting genre would never be the same. Not that I would have hated seeing a Die Hard Trilogy game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto, we just never got that.

Instead Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas put an end to this narrative path for the series. After this Fox would take the series in a different direction, going back to the events of the first film for Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. Clearly this kind of mixed up gameplay concept could work, in short bursts, but wasn’t the way the series could go if it wanted any kind of further life.