The game is a first-person shooter that follows the plot of the first Die Hard film. Players take the role of John McClane, and try to stop the terrorist attack on the Nakatomi Plaza. The game's levels are based on the sets from the film. The various action scenes from the film have also been recreated. The game expands on the film's plot, and adds a few missions not found in the film, such as escorting a SWAT team around the building or saving various hostages stranded on various floors of the building.
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Ever feel like you wanted to experience Die Hard again, but as a really shitty budget FPS? No? Well, good for you. I played like three hours of this and i am really happy i am at a point where i no longer force myself to finish these really shitty games for the sake of it.
The shooting is crap, enemies are dumb as bricks, it looks bland and cheap. There is some amusement to be had in how they adapt some of the set-pieces to fit a 2002 FPS, but honestly there is the risk this might just make you like Die Hard less by association. Features some of the worst voice actors of 2002, with exception of Reginald VelJohnson where all the voice acting budget presumably went.
Now to get to the point in my life where i learn not to even bother with these obviously crap games.
The shooting is crap, enemies are dumb as bricks, it looks bland and cheap. There is some amusement to be had in how they adapt some of the set-pieces to fit a 2002 FPS, but honestly there is the risk this might just make you like Die Hard less by association. Features some of the worst voice actors of 2002, with exception of Reginald VelJohnson where all the voice acting budget presumably went.
Now to get to the point in my life where i learn not to even bother with these obviously crap games.
This review contains spoilers
Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/12/03/die-hard-nakatomi-plaza-2002-review/
Warning: Spoilers for both Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002). If you haven’t watched the film, go watch it, it’s highly recommended.
It’s that time of the year again! Snow, Christmas Trees, A Festive Dinner, Gift Giving! What a wonderful time of the year! And what other way could you celebrate Christmas other than gunning down terrorists that have your wife hostage? OK, sure, Die Hard just barely scrapes by as a Christmas movie, but I have trouble counting good Christmas films on one hand, let alone Christmas themed video games in general, so a video game based on a film where the only qualification to make it a Christmas film is that it’s set at Christmas will have to do.
You probably already know what the plot of Die Hard is, but let my just sum up for the sake of this review. On Christmas Eve, NYPD detective John McClane arrives in Los Angeles, intending to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly, at the Christmas party of her employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. Unfortunately, at the same time, a group of terrorists lead by Hans Gruber, take over the tower at the time, intent on stealing $640 million in bearer bonds. Caught in the middle, John McClane does everything to try and save his wife.
Surprisingly, Nakatomi Plaza has a mildly interesting development history, starting out on the Build Engine (Duke Nukem 3D/Shadow Warrior/Blood), before moving onto the GoldSRC engine (Half-Life/Gunman Chronicles), until it landed onto the Lithtech 2.0 engine (No One Lives Forever/Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact/Legends of Might and Magic). I’m surprised it actually got released with that many leaps in game engines. Usually games don’t make that make that many game engine jumps and survive.
The best way to describe Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is that it’s like the movie, but everything is slightly off. Everything is there, but it’s just not quite the same, which is a shame, because the developers actually seemed to try their best to make it as accurate to the movie as possible. For example, the developers made John McClane left handed, exactly like the actor Bruce Willis. Even John McClane’s footsteps sound like he’s running around barefoot, just like the movie. It’s also pretty neat seeing just how the game tries to connect all of the scenes of the film together by introducing areas inbetween the ones you seen in the film to make it feel more like a real location rather than just mimic everything from the film.
But the whole thing is brought down by a lack of either budget, time, or probably both. It just feels more like an interactive guided tour of the movie than an actual game. You actually have to keep close to the plot points of the film when playing with absolutely no deviation. One instance has you not only collecting items off one of the terrorists like the movie, but checking to see if his shoes fit too, again, just like the movie. I got stuck for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do, trying to interact with everything in the environment before I noticed that the one body was the one body I had to interact with because it was the only one to not disappear due to engine limitations.
Why wasn’t this a quick cutscene instead of having me do it? I know it what happens in the movie, but it just comes across as confusing in the game, especially when you have to check his body twice instead of the once. Later in the game, one of the scenes in the movie is played out in a cutscene. Either have all of it be cutscenes, or have all of it be in game. At least if all of it is in game, it feels more like a game than a low budget version of Die Hard. Or you could have at least had a prompt come up telling me what to do, even if I was familiar with the film.
Something similar happen not too long after that where you have to defuse bombs that the terrorists planted, but first you have to find some wirecutters. Good like trying to find a small item located on some random terrorists body, all while having to deal with a time limit and shooting at terrorists. Sometimes, you have to either find a small item or interact with something, and it’s not always easy to find or see. You would have to click on anything that even remotely look like something that looks like it can be interacted with.
Probably the best part of the game are the way the levels look. All of the locations look accurate to the film counterparts, and it’s pretty neat that that you can see locations from the film up close and personal. And the menus are a slight problem too. When I load a game and then pause to save it, it immediately brings up the load menu because that was the last menu the game was on, and as a result, I have accidentally loaded a game more than once, losing progress.
There are a few entertaining moments. One of these moments has you avoiding getting sucked into a fan while trying to cut a wire to turn it off, all while one of the terrorists gets sucked into it, but these moments are far and few. Every now and again, you can listen into a terrorists conversation and it is mildly amusing, and is yet another detail that the team behind this game did put in some time and effort.
The whole game plays up the fact that it’s from John McClane’s persepctive The game tries to hide Hans Gruber’s face throughout the game, and that’s because of a scene later the movie and game where John McClane meets Hans Gruber, but doesn’t know it’s him because he’s never seen Hans’s face. It would be a neat twist if not for the fact that you would have to be a fan of the film to even consider buying this game. And I don’t see a lot of people picking up this game if they don’t know what Die Hard is.
Almost none of the actors have returned for this game have, probably because they were both too expensive to hire and they probably had a ton of other stuff to do, except for Reginald VelJohnson, who played LAPD Sgt. Al Powell from Die Hard 1 and 2. He didn’t seem to have much going on around that time and was probably happy to reprise his role for the game.
The other voice actors a mixed bunch, and that’s putting it incredibly nicely. Probably the best ones are John McClane and Hans Gruber, but just barely. If I didn’t know who the voice actors were trying to imitate, I would probably not be able to guess who 90% of the actors were supposed to be playing. One of the terrorists sounded like an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to me. They’re all over the place, most of which are just putting on bad accents.
Weirdly enough, the best strategy when playing this game isn’t running and gunning, but often crouching and peering around corners with one of the lean keys. I assume that this is to make the game feel like you are an average guy caught up in a dangerous situation much like John McClane is, and it adds some minor depth to the gameplay.
Surprisingly, this game tries to expand and diversify it’s arsenal. I never really needed to use these extra guns since I had plenty of MP5 ammo. I get that looking at the same gun could get incredibly boring, but it’s not like there’s much wiggle room here for an expanded arsenal. Also, the MP5 and Beretta share from the same ammunition pool, so I have no idea why you would want to use the Beretta over the MP5.
But the biggest problem with the concept of basing a game on the first Die Hard film is that the film is 2 hours long, and has doesn’t have much wiggle room going on to add new things to the whole experience. In the film, there is 13 terrorists total. To compensate, the game has several times that. One level has as many terrorists as the movie does during it’s entire run time. Which is extra amusing, or annoying depending on your point of view, because they keep the dialogue accurate to the film, which mentions that there are only 13 terrorists at most.
As far as video games based on films go, you could do a hell of a lot worse. But the time you could take to play through this game, you could just have had a double feature of both Die Hard and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the two best (and only IMO) Die Hard films in the whole franchise. Nakatomi Plaza also had the unfortunate timing to come out the same year as some amazing first person shooters such as No One Lives Forever 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Metroid Prime, and TimeSplitters 2 just to name a few.
Even the other Die Hard games are a step up from this, most notably “Die Hard Trilogy”, “Die Hard Arcade”, and “Die Hard: Vendetta”. Not a lot of people would have payed attention to this game when it was released, and there was a very good reason for that.
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is a mixed bag at the best of times. I don’t see too many people outside of the die hard Die Hard fans, hardcore first person shooter fans that want to play everything in the genre, and people who like to play and/or collect older games playing this game.
Warning: Spoilers for both Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza (2002). If you haven’t watched the film, go watch it, it’s highly recommended.
It’s that time of the year again! Snow, Christmas Trees, A Festive Dinner, Gift Giving! What a wonderful time of the year! And what other way could you celebrate Christmas other than gunning down terrorists that have your wife hostage? OK, sure, Die Hard just barely scrapes by as a Christmas movie, but I have trouble counting good Christmas films on one hand, let alone Christmas themed video games in general, so a video game based on a film where the only qualification to make it a Christmas film is that it’s set at Christmas will have to do.
You probably already know what the plot of Die Hard is, but let my just sum up for the sake of this review. On Christmas Eve, NYPD detective John McClane arrives in Los Angeles, intending to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly, at the Christmas party of her employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. Unfortunately, at the same time, a group of terrorists lead by Hans Gruber, take over the tower at the time, intent on stealing $640 million in bearer bonds. Caught in the middle, John McClane does everything to try and save his wife.
Surprisingly, Nakatomi Plaza has a mildly interesting development history, starting out on the Build Engine (Duke Nukem 3D/Shadow Warrior/Blood), before moving onto the GoldSRC engine (Half-Life/Gunman Chronicles), until it landed onto the Lithtech 2.0 engine (No One Lives Forever/Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact/Legends of Might and Magic). I’m surprised it actually got released with that many leaps in game engines. Usually games don’t make that make that many game engine jumps and survive.
The best way to describe Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is that it’s like the movie, but everything is slightly off. Everything is there, but it’s just not quite the same, which is a shame, because the developers actually seemed to try their best to make it as accurate to the movie as possible. For example, the developers made John McClane left handed, exactly like the actor Bruce Willis. Even John McClane’s footsteps sound like he’s running around barefoot, just like the movie. It’s also pretty neat seeing just how the game tries to connect all of the scenes of the film together by introducing areas inbetween the ones you seen in the film to make it feel more like a real location rather than just mimic everything from the film.
But the whole thing is brought down by a lack of either budget, time, or probably both. It just feels more like an interactive guided tour of the movie than an actual game. You actually have to keep close to the plot points of the film when playing with absolutely no deviation. One instance has you not only collecting items off one of the terrorists like the movie, but checking to see if his shoes fit too, again, just like the movie. I got stuck for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do, trying to interact with everything in the environment before I noticed that the one body was the one body I had to interact with because it was the only one to not disappear due to engine limitations.
Why wasn’t this a quick cutscene instead of having me do it? I know it what happens in the movie, but it just comes across as confusing in the game, especially when you have to check his body twice instead of the once. Later in the game, one of the scenes in the movie is played out in a cutscene. Either have all of it be cutscenes, or have all of it be in game. At least if all of it is in game, it feels more like a game than a low budget version of Die Hard. Or you could have at least had a prompt come up telling me what to do, even if I was familiar with the film.
Something similar happen not too long after that where you have to defuse bombs that the terrorists planted, but first you have to find some wirecutters. Good like trying to find a small item located on some random terrorists body, all while having to deal with a time limit and shooting at terrorists. Sometimes, you have to either find a small item or interact with something, and it’s not always easy to find or see. You would have to click on anything that even remotely look like something that looks like it can be interacted with.
Probably the best part of the game are the way the levels look. All of the locations look accurate to the film counterparts, and it’s pretty neat that that you can see locations from the film up close and personal. And the menus are a slight problem too. When I load a game and then pause to save it, it immediately brings up the load menu because that was the last menu the game was on, and as a result, I have accidentally loaded a game more than once, losing progress.
There are a few entertaining moments. One of these moments has you avoiding getting sucked into a fan while trying to cut a wire to turn it off, all while one of the terrorists gets sucked into it, but these moments are far and few. Every now and again, you can listen into a terrorists conversation and it is mildly amusing, and is yet another detail that the team behind this game did put in some time and effort.
The whole game plays up the fact that it’s from John McClane’s persepctive The game tries to hide Hans Gruber’s face throughout the game, and that’s because of a scene later the movie and game where John McClane meets Hans Gruber, but doesn’t know it’s him because he’s never seen Hans’s face. It would be a neat twist if not for the fact that you would have to be a fan of the film to even consider buying this game. And I don’t see a lot of people picking up this game if they don’t know what Die Hard is.
Almost none of the actors have returned for this game have, probably because they were both too expensive to hire and they probably had a ton of other stuff to do, except for Reginald VelJohnson, who played LAPD Sgt. Al Powell from Die Hard 1 and 2. He didn’t seem to have much going on around that time and was probably happy to reprise his role for the game.
The other voice actors a mixed bunch, and that’s putting it incredibly nicely. Probably the best ones are John McClane and Hans Gruber, but just barely. If I didn’t know who the voice actors were trying to imitate, I would probably not be able to guess who 90% of the actors were supposed to be playing. One of the terrorists sounded like an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to me. They’re all over the place, most of which are just putting on bad accents.
Weirdly enough, the best strategy when playing this game isn’t running and gunning, but often crouching and peering around corners with one of the lean keys. I assume that this is to make the game feel like you are an average guy caught up in a dangerous situation much like John McClane is, and it adds some minor depth to the gameplay.
Surprisingly, this game tries to expand and diversify it’s arsenal. I never really needed to use these extra guns since I had plenty of MP5 ammo. I get that looking at the same gun could get incredibly boring, but it’s not like there’s much wiggle room here for an expanded arsenal. Also, the MP5 and Beretta share from the same ammunition pool, so I have no idea why you would want to use the Beretta over the MP5.
But the biggest problem with the concept of basing a game on the first Die Hard film is that the film is 2 hours long, and has doesn’t have much wiggle room going on to add new things to the whole experience. In the film, there is 13 terrorists total. To compensate, the game has several times that. One level has as many terrorists as the movie does during it’s entire run time. Which is extra amusing, or annoying depending on your point of view, because they keep the dialogue accurate to the film, which mentions that there are only 13 terrorists at most.
As far as video games based on films go, you could do a hell of a lot worse. But the time you could take to play through this game, you could just have had a double feature of both Die Hard and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the two best (and only IMO) Die Hard films in the whole franchise. Nakatomi Plaza also had the unfortunate timing to come out the same year as some amazing first person shooters such as No One Lives Forever 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Metroid Prime, and TimeSplitters 2 just to name a few.
Even the other Die Hard games are a step up from this, most notably “Die Hard Trilogy”, “Die Hard Arcade”, and “Die Hard: Vendetta”. Not a lot of people would have payed attention to this game when it was released, and there was a very good reason for that.
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza is a mixed bag at the best of times. I don’t see too many people outside of the die hard Die Hard fans, hardcore first person shooter fans that want to play everything in the genre, and people who like to play and/or collect older games playing this game.