Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza

The Good
Okay, if you don't already know Nakatomi Plaza turns the first Die Hard movie into a first person shooter. That right there belongs in the Good category.

The controls are your typical FPS controls. You can run, duck, strafe and jump. They've also included Garret's ability to lean and fire around corners. This is really helpful as (like in the movie) Mc Clane is a relatively fragile character.

In addition to watching your Health meter, you also have to worry about Stamina and Morale. If you choose 'Always Run' or leap from desk top to desk top, Mc Clane will start wheezing like a smoker. Stamina was a great addition, as it encourages a little stealth and keeps you more grounded in the real world. No always running and jumping everywhere, but you aren't stuck with the frustration of dying from one shot.

The developers have done a good job of bringing Nakatomi to life. The cut scenes are recreations of famous bits of the movie done with the game's LithTech engine. The building might be a bit gray over-all, but it is an eighties office building after all. There is a nice bit of variety in the levels though. There are stylish Japanese-inspired executive floors and more mundane cubicle rooms and elevator shafts, the roof and (of course) sewers. The levels are very detailed, down to spare change lying on desks and food safety warnings posted in the cafeteria.

They brought back Reginald VelJohnson to play Sgt. Powell and the guy that does john Mc Clane does a pretty decent job. The sounds of bare feet on concrete, weapons firing and the rest are good if not great.

They didn't use much of the original movie's music, but since that music was almost all altered Christmas carols, I think it was a wise choice. The music they do use is good if not outstanding. I did like the way the music would change depending on your current situation.

The movie runs two hours and has a dozen or so bad guys. This wouldn't work for the game, so now there's hundreds of villains and there are extra tasks to accomplish.

Some of the extra tasks are great. You'll find Nakatomi's architect and have to escort him to safety while fighting a fire started by a dropped cigarette. Later, you'll find yourself entangled in a firefight between bad guys and a SWAT team in the sub-basement. You'll also get to go lend a hand to Argyle, the limo driver that brought you to the party.

Of course, there's also levels lifted straight out of the movie and that I think is Nakatomi Plaza's strongest selling point. Climbing around the ventilation shafts with your Zippo or jumping off the roof with a firehose are fun, fun, fun!

The Bad
Sadly all is not well.

The cutscenes are remakes of scenes from the movie, but except for Mc Clane and Powell, everybody else tends to be wooden and emotionless. Since the best bit about Nakatomi Plaza is that you are playing your way through the classic movie, there should have been more care taken with the quality of the performances. That may not seem like much, but subtracts A LOT from this particular gameplay experience.

While the Health and Stamina meters are cool, the Morale meter doesn't really seem to serve any purpose. At least none that I've noted.

Also, there's too many locked doors, which sometimes makes you feel you're being funneled to the end of the level. Since by their office-building nature, the floors aren't very big, I think they should have let you do a bit more exploring. Maybe throw a few health-packs or something in the 'extra' rooms. There are a couple of times where they do just that and those tend to be the best, most exciting levels, since you don't know for sure where the villains are hiding.

Lastly, this game is very much set in the real world, but you can't shoot bad guys hiding behind cardboard boxes. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but it also seemed like it would have been more successful if they'd made it a bit more of a single player Counter-Strike.

The Bottom Line
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza has it's share of problems, but I feel that it's much better than the ratings here suggest.

The cut scenes may not be as good as they could have been, but the game is great fun. In the end, it's great to step into Mc Clane's "shoes" (so to speak).

The Good
As a fan of the great "Die Hard" movies, I always wanted to play through the first movies suspenseful plot - but unfortunately, the games which were released were absolute crap. So I was very happy to see that they didn't repeat the mistakes they made in the past.

Okay, basically, it's just another Half-Life clone. You slaughter your way through 30 levels, shooting bad guy after bad guy, solving childish "puzzles" like "get key for that door" - and then, it's something else. It's like an interactive movie, but other than the rubbish which I played when the "interactive movie" hype was in full effect, the plot is simply great and the conversion from movie to game is breathtaking. Instead of using lame video sequences, they just took scenes from the movie and modelled them in 3D engine graphics, complete with every single detail! They took the movie script and used it for the dialogue and the speech is pretty similar to the original actors. Everything is very detailed, the character faces are very lifelike.

Ok, the story is already known by anyone who knows the movie, but it's a good plot with many funny and even more really suspenseful parts. It's more like being in the movie yourself, having to remember "what the hell, how did John McClane do this or do that". It's fun to recognize the different enemies (there are more enemies than in the movie, tons of them to be exact, but the "master villains" are the few dudes from the flick, and you WILL recognize those faces!).

The controls are the usual Quake type - there is no alternate fire, and only two weapon slots, but well, after all, even in the movie, John is no Ubermensch but a very brave cop with a headache.

The Bad
Well, it's pretty hard - you don't "die hard", but "die quick", even at medium difficulty. The bad guys - even at the first levels - seem to take much more bullets from the same gun than youself.

There is no multi player - which didn't hurt me since there are plenty of other games to choose from, but it's not very state of the art to omit that.

The Bottom Line
One of the best ego shooter games I ever saw - Max Payne was great for his setting of a gruesome, dark world where your only choices are desperation or death, but it was ways too short. This one is different as the story is already known, but this game lives from that point - because the player wants to be part of the movie. A must-buy for any serious action gamer!