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

Moving past adaptations of the first film in the 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. franchise, we come to the one and only game adaptation of just the second film, Die Hard 2: Die Harder. We saw a lot of variety in games for the first film, from a 3D action game to a side-scrolling version, a top down shooter and a stair climbing simulator. Most tried to stick to the basics of the film’s story, with a lone hero trapped in a building trying to make the day bad for a bunch of terrorists, but each had its own quirks that, at the very least, made them interesting. So with the story of the sequel, which is more expansive, covers more territory, and has more action set pieces than the first film, that would provide a lot of material for a game to work with, yes?

You would think so, but Die Hard 2: Die Harder for various personal computers of 1992 (Commodore 64, PC, Atari ST, and Amiga) lacks any kind of imagination or variety. It is, in fact, a very generic shooting gallery game. Developed by Tiertex Ltd. and published by Grandslam Video Ltd., this game feels as simple and basic as it gets. There’s no plot, no characterization, and no cut-scenes of any kind. Just five stages of point-and-click shooting across a few zones that vaguely look like moments from the movie.

The game stretches across five stages: the baggage handling area, the annex skywalk, the runway, across a snow stretch of Northern Virginia, and a final fight on the wing of a plane. Each stage consists of the same kind of action: two-to-three screens of shooting, with bad guys running out or popping up from specific areas, turning, and shooting at the player. Once enough enemies have been killed, the screen moves down the stage to the next zone and more enemies show up to be killed. Once enough of this has been done, a boss enemy (or enemies) will arrive. These take more damage (than the simple single shot for other enemies), and once they’re killed the stage is over and you move on.

The first issue with this is that the game lacks any kind of variety. The first three stages stick hard to this formula. Guys run out, you shoot them, the stage eventually moves on. The shooting action isn’t bad, per se, as it is mouse based and easy to perform. But the game doesn’t have much going on beyond that. Every stage is populated by the same enemies, performing the same actions, doing the same basic things. This isn’t a game where by the time you’ve gotten through three or four stages you feel like you’ve seen it all. This is one where by the time you’ve finished the first screen of the first stage you’d done everything the game has to offer.

Obviously some variety would be good. There are technically things to shoot at other than enemies, as bad guys will sometimes throw grenades and you have to blast them before they hurt you. Fair enough there, that’s a basic shooting mechanic. This starts up in the first stage, though, so it can hardly be considered a true bit of variety. There are also power-ups to shoot at, from ammo to health to new guns, so you do want to balance killing guys and trying to grab needed upgrades. Again, basic stuff for a gallery shooter, but it does help.

And there are civilians you need to avoid. Cops will often walk across the early stages and shooting them is bad. You’re a hero, you don’t shoot civilians. Having to keep an eye out for guys that you can’t shoot makes you a little hesitant, maybe leads to you taking some damage when you’re thinking about if the target you’re aiming at is a good one. It’s not a bad inclusion. Issue here is that the civilians stop showing up in the later stages, and that actually makes the back half of the game easier, not harder, which is just weird for game balance.

The game is also criminally short. It is, in essence, an auto-scroller since you have to shoot everything on a screen before the game moves on, and it’s all pretty well timed. If you perform well, and don’t die, you’ll get through the whole game in about 15 minutes. That’s about three minutes per stage, give or take, and the whole experience could be done in less time than it takes to bake a pot pie. You don’t get a lot of material for the game, start to finish, leaving a player feeling pretty empty when it’s all done.

Technically there is bonus content, a sixth zone you can play in. It’s a practice zone, a back alley shooting gallery where you can hone your skills and play for points. Having anything extra is nice, sure, but putting this in the game only calls out the fact that this is little more than a glorified shooting gallery game with the Die Hard brand slapped on top. Sure, the graphics reflect specific scenes from the film, but the actual essence of the game fails to live up to the even (mediocre) plot of the film it’s loosely adapting.

I get that this game had to work on multiple PC platforms back in the day, and that not all of them were very powerful (even by 1992’s standards). But there had to be some way to better adapt the movie’s material into something interesting than this game. A side-scrolling beat-em-up / shooter could and would work on all those platforms and would certainly allow for more variety, more action, and more interest. I don’t know if it would have been much better than what we got her but it’s doubtful it would have been as repetitive or tedious as this shooting gallery game.

Or even just throwing in some static cut-scenes and some text to really highlight the story, that could have helped. Make it feel like we’re actually shooting our way through the story of the film, that we’re somehow engaged with the plot. This game barely says anything about anything, and clearly the developers didn’t have the license to use any characters’ likenesses within the game. But there had to be something more that could be done than what we got here. It’s so lifeless and empty, it barely feels like it adapts the core of the film at all.

And really, that proves to be the game’s biggest downfall for me. Yes, it’s boring and basic but even worse it’s barely a Die Hard 2: Die Harder game. If all it takes to remove the license is to swap basic background graphics on a game then it hardly feels like an adaptation at all. The best thing this game has going for it is its an easy to pick up gallery shooter. What any of that has to say about Die Hard 2, though, is beyond me.