Die Hard Trilogy

aka: Jungla de Cristal: La Trilogía
Moby ID: 672
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Die Hard Trilogy lets players guide New York cop John McClane through three arcade-style games based on each of the three Die Hard movies. Each movie is represented through a totally different style, making this a "3 games in 1" style package.

Die Hard is a third person action/adventure through thirty floors of the Nakatomi Tower high-rise. Terrorists have interrupted the company's Christmas party and taken hostages. As McClane, the player must search for hostages through computer, construction, maintenance, and executive levels. McClane's default pistol holds infinite ammo, and the player can collect limited-ammo machine guns and grenades inside the levels. Walls turn transparent when they intersect the camera, allowing players to follow McClane through hallways and rooms with ease. After all the hostages on a level have been rescued, the player has 30 seconds to locate a bomb sent down by elevator, then use that elevator to move to the next level.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder is a first-person arcade gun game, nearly identical to Virtua Cop. Terrorists have attacked Washington/Dulles Airport. The player automatically moves through the airport and surrounding areas "on rails," shooting bad guys that appear from behind the scenery. Weapon upgrade icons can be shot to be collected, and either use limited ammo, or are retained until the player is hit (identical to Lethal Enforcers). Players can also destroy parts of the environment by shooting it, which can be used to take out nearby terrorists (with explosions, or by shooting overhead items to drop on them). This game supports pad controls, or any of the PlayStation's gun controllers.

Die Hard With A Vengeance has players racing through New York City streets in a variety of vehicles, trying to locate bombs before they explode. A strict timer ticks off the next explosion, and the player is guided only by a direction arrow and the vocal suggestions of their co-driver. Bombs are hidden inside everyday objects (like phone booths and benches) and are defused by ramming them, which activates the timer on the next bomb. Occasional "bomb cars" must be chased and rammed until their life bar is depleted. Powerups can be collected by running over icons in the streets, and include extra time, turbo boosts, and jumps to rocket over obstacles.

All three games are exaggeratedly bloody (players can run over pedestrians in Die Hard 3 and wipe the blood away with windshield wipers). Each of the three games also uses a combination of textured polygons and sprites to generate their worlds, resulting in warping textures and some quirky "paper doll" effects.

Spellings

  • ダイハード・トリロジー - Japanese spelling
  • 纽约大劫案三部曲 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

56 People (53 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 36 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 77 ratings with 6 reviews)

"Three maximum adventures, one explosive package!"

The Good
DIE HARD
The Good:
+ Addictive gameplay
+ Great soundtrack
+ Great controls

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER
The Good:
+ Great soundtrack
+ A sheer of action on-screen, complete with excellent explosions

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE
The Good:
+ Quick handbrake turns work well
+ Decent soundtrack


The Bad
DIE HARD
The Bad:
- Can get repetitive
- Minor oddities

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER
The Bad:
- Aiming with the D-Pad is unfriendly and adds fake challenge
- Some items are hard to shoot with the D-Pad

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE
The Bad:
- The time given on some bombs can be too strict
- Normal steering is ineffective and rather slow

The Bottom Line
DIE HARD
Graphics: 80/100
The graphics would look crude and simplistic by today's standards, but they do look nice. The environments are 3-dimensional, with plenty of lighting and lots of transparencies. In order to prevent the camera from zooming in, the walls near the edges of the screen will turn transparent. It may seem weird looking at first, considering that you can see what's in the rooms on the sides, but it makes the gameplay smoother. The character models are okay, they somewhat resemble 2D sprites illusioned to look 3D, which does work, but it can look quirky at times. The framerate is decent, but later on, the game can slow down when there are a sheer amount of enemies onscreen.

Audio: 93/100
The soundtrack is well done and the enemies sound decent. John McClane is voiced by an imitator which sounds surprisingly almost like Bruce Willis.

Controls: 90/100
The controls are smooth and are slightly slippery. L1 and R1 strafes, L2 and R2 does evasive rolls, X fires your gun, Circle switches grenades, Square throws a grenade and Triangle jumps. Moving in this game works well and doesn't have the "invisible walls" issue. The only issue with the controls is that McClane cannot move forward or backward and strafe simultaneously, and he move and turns in a slightly slippery speed, but these two problems are very minor nitpicks.

Difficulty: Challenging but manageable
Die Hard has a decent challenge, even when the AI has its faults. The terrorists will fire upon you just fine, but they won't bat an eye when they see a hostage escaping. The amount of damage you take depends on the gun the terrorist is using.

Gameplay: 90/100
Die Hard is an early example of a third-person shooter. Third-person shooters weren't common back then, but Die Hard pulls it off quite well. You can move anywhere, shoot at the bad guys, rescue hostages and even save hostages from being executed, which grants you an extra life. Getting extra lives are important as they extend your health. Unlike most games, the lives combine your health, therefore making it one long life. Die Hard is an arcade-type of game, which means that it keeps score. You can gain millions of points in this game, but it doesn't penalise you so much for killing a hostage; all you get is a small drop of points. Die Hard is pretty violent with lots of blood sprays, throw a grenade into a group of bad guys and they'll literally dissolve into a rain of blood.

Score: 90/100

<hr />

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER
Graphics: 80/100
The graphics are the same as Die Hard, but now the characters are seen even closer, because the perspective is through McClane's eyes, as this is an on-rails shooter. Like in Die Hard, the environment is in 3D, with 2D-looking sprites illusioned. Unfortunately, the closer perspective reveals the quirky animations of the terrorists and hostages.

Audio: 92/100
Die Hard 2 uses the same sound bytes as Die Hard, with only a little more lines to add. The soundtrack is still great, with each level having their own tracks.

Controls: 70/100
Die Hard 2 is meant for a lightgun and a PlayStation mouse. I own none of those, so I have to deal with using a controller. The button controls are fine, but moving the cursor with the D-Pad is a pain. There are instances where I'm trying to shoot a box that's far away, but I can't because one tap on the D-Pad seems to only move it so far. Also the framerate will occasionally drop, screwing up your aim even further. The sensitivity can be controlled, but the digital D-Pad doesn't seem to make the changes very effective. However there is a manual button that speeds up the cursor, which is ideal if the sensitivity is low.

Difficulty: Somewhat tough
While shooting the bad guys are simple, aiming them is simply more of a challenge. Also there are lots of hostages running around, which sometimes doesn't make sense; for example, why are there so many hostages in an airport runway? A hostage would sometimes end up being in your line of sight, which leads to shooting them by accident. Whenever you get shot, a "SAFE" indicator appears, which serves as temporary invincibility, like in Super Mario Brothers whenever you get touched. There are also powerups, such as shields, health, weapon pick-ups and more.

Gameplay: 85/100
Die Hard 2 is an on-rails shooter, meaning your movement is predetermined and you can aim your crosshair anywhere on screen. The idea is like in Die Hard; you shoot terrorists and try not to shoot hostages. This game also keeps score and it works the same way. This game is incredibly violent, as shooting terrorists will cause lots of blood sprays, and using rockets can turn a terrorist into a skeleton.

Score: 80/100

<hr />

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE
Graphics: 80/100
The graphics are well done with large sizes of New York being on each level and the pedestrians are decently animated. Since this is a driving game, you'll be seeing lots of cars on screen. The cars look decent, but the physics can be a bit quirky.

Audio: 90/100
The soundtrack is great with music matching well for each district, such as Harlem with rap music. John McClane still sounds great, but what I'm disappointed is that Zeus doesn't sound like Samuel L. Jackson.

Controls: 78/100
Die Hard With a Vengeance is the typical driving controls, but what I like about the controls are the quick handbrake turns, L2 and R2, which allows you to instantly make 90° turns; if you let go of the gas and press one of the handbrake buttons, you'll make a 180° turn instead, which can come in handy. The flaws with the controls is that the steering is rather slow and ineffective for sharp turns and crashing into objects can bounce you back, which can get annoying, especially when you have little time left, getting you killed.

Difficulty: Very challenging but gets frustrating much later
Die Hard With A Vengeance is a tough game. While it gives you a reasonable difficulty at the start, some bombs are given too little time, either due to the car or the lack of time pick-ups.

Gameplay: 87/100
As obvious, this is a driving game, like in the movie, there's a whole lot of driving. The idea is that you are suppose to disable bombs, which can be found on your radar as a red arrow; the blue arrows lead you to switch cars, such as switching from a taxi cab to a police car. There's also a time limit on each bomb, and if you don't get to the bomb on time, New York will go up in flames and you lose a life. How do you disable the bombs? Have you ever tried crashing into them, having them explode and counting it as disabling them? Illogical, but still fun. While not as violent as Die Hard 1 and 2, Die Hard With a Vengeance has its fair share of extreme violence, such as how you can run over a pedestrian at will; if you run over them in first-person view, you'll end seeing a red sea of blood on the windshield, complete with McClane automatically using the windshield wipers to wipe out the blood stains. But no matter how many times you run them over, they can't permanently die.

Score: 80/100

<hr />

Die Hard Trilogy:
Overall: 92/100
Movie-based games are notorious for being lukewarm to bad, but Die Hard Trilogy isn't one of them. Die Hard Trilogy is like what it says, "Three maximum adventures, one explosive package!" While they probably won't go as well as stand-alone titles, but combining them somehow makes it greater than the sum of its parts. This trilogy-in-one pack is one of the most memorable games for the PlayStation, also considering that the game was released back in 1996, when the PlayStation was still a new console. This game is a definite must-have, especially as a Christmas gift.

"Yippee-ki-yay motherf_ _ _er!"

Score: 92/100

PlayStation · by SamXNE_997 (167) · 2017

Awesome!

The Good
Well, this game is really great. Actually it's more like 3 games, one for each movie. Each one plays differently as well. Die Hard is a chase-view shooter through Nakatomi plaza. The graphics here are fairly nice, although the characters a pretty blocky. Die Hard II plays like the Time Crisis games and is very entertaining. You get lots of weapons, tons of explosions and very good action with this mode, although it's pretty darn hard. Lastly, Die Hard with a Vengeance takes you to the streets of L.A. which look and sound great- you can see for miles down the street as you tear through a distressed city. It's funny when you hit people while in 1st person view in this mode!

The Bad
Some bad AI by the enemies, blocky graphics in some parts. Some of the voice-quotes are annoying.

The Bottom Line
Cool! Definitely worth your money. You can't beat the value of 3 games in one. If you liked the movie you'll probably like the game too, but not as much.

PlayStation · by Ben Fahy (92) · 2001

Mediocre 3-in-1 Game

The Good
I was going to start off by saying that I love the Die Hard films, but honestly if you've played Die Hard Trilogy for the PS1 then you're most likely already a fan and know about the films, so I'll just get into the game.

Die Hard Trilogy lets you play as John McClane as he navigates his way through pint-sized version of the first three films. The first game mode, a.k.a. Die Hard, is a top-view 3D shooter (much like Loaded) where you navigate through the Nakatomi Tower, blowing away enemies, finding hostages, and busting through crates to find health and weapon pick-ups. This is a pretty fast paced game mode, and is pretty entertaining for the most part. The graphics in this mode are pretty decent, however character models are very chunky and not very detailed, though the environments look nice and are relatively well designed.

The second mode, a.k.a. Die Harder, is a rail shooter (much like House of the Dead) where you shoot your way through an airport filled with a bunch of bad guys. I think this is my probably my favorite game mode in the trilogy. The shooting is pretty addicting and I enjoy how it has a heavy arcade feel to it. In my opinion, Die Harder has the best graphics out of the three games. Seeing as it's a rail shooter, the environments have a lot more detail to them, character models look a bit smoother here than in Die Hard, and the action feels a lot more lively as well.

The third and last game mode, a.k.a. Die Hard With a Vengeance, has the player driving around New York City racing to diffuse bombs set to blow all around the neighborhood. Honestly I don't have many good things to say about this mode. Driving around and exploring the mini New York City that is presented here is pretty interesting but that's about it.

The Bad
Here are some of the problems that I had with this game.

Firstly, I've encountered lots of glitches in Die Hard. I've gone through many walls, got stuck inside the ceiling (probably a rare occurrence, but is game breaking nonetheless), and trying to race towards the exit at the end of each stage can be a real headache as the environments are nice, but are often repetitious and it's hard to tell which room is which. What really made me mad was getting stuck inside walls and the ceiling. There's no way out of it; I couldn't escape by killing myself or moving around, I was simply stuck and my only option was to restart the entire level. It sounds simple enough, but these levels are pretty lengthy as you have to find several hostages, clear out all enemies, and sometimes find keycards. It's quite frustrating being finished with a level and then getting caught on a wall and having to restart an entire level. This is what really bothered me with this game mode.

Die Harder is pretty good for the most part. As I said earlier, gunning down enemies in an airport and essentially recreating the movie was lots of fun, but the shooting can become a bit monotonous and mindless at times. It gets a little boring after some time, but is a total blast at first.

Die Hard With a Vengeance is the worst game in the trilogy, I feel. The gameplay isn't as great as it sounds. The car is a bit annoying to steer, the graphics in this game look the worst as a lot of cars are just big blocks with chunky wheels, and the environments are unsightly. On top of all this, the gameplay itself is also a bit difficult as I can never seem to keep up with the time. There aren't any checkpoints, saves, nothing. Once you run out of time, you have to start all over. It's very frustrating.

The Bottom Line
Being a die hard fan of Die Hard (ha!) I really wanted to enjoy this game a lot more than I do. It's just not that great of a game. While the first two games are fun at the start, they both become repetitious because they lack a lot of differentiation within themselves. The third game is atrocious any way you slice it.

Though this isn't a compilation of great games, it's as close to movie-games as we'll probably ever get, and that alone is what I appreciate about Die Hard Trilogy. You can tell that this game was crafted with appreciation for the films in mind as the menus, which feature signature landmarks from each film, are neatly designed (and even somewhat campy) and includes lots of lines from the films. Check this game out if you like any of the first three Die Hard films, otherwise you may just want to pass and play a better shoot em' up like Doom, Loaded, or even Smash TV.

PlayStation · by blancmange (52) · 2015

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Controls

The PlayStation version of this game has an undocumented feature: plug a Namco NeGcon controller into the system while the game is running. It will detect the controller and automatically select Die Hard With A Vengeance, allowing the player to use the controller for this game. The driving sequences are much easier as the pad's twist control feature is used to steer the car.

German index

On June 28, 1997, Die Hard Trilogy was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. More information about this topic can be found in the game group.

Toilets

The game manual credits Guy Mills for drawing the toilets in the game.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Action Game of the Year (PlayStation version)

Information also contributed by Foxhack and Xoleras.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Benjamin Tucker.

SEGA Saturn added by skl. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Alaka, ケヴィン, CaesarZX, DreinIX, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Karsa Orlong, Victor Vance.

Game added January 5, 2000. Last modified January 19, 2024.