Die Hard: Vendetta

"More fun than you can shake an over-charged hamster at......."

.......and believe us, that's hard to pull off. Now, onto the game:

Die Hard : Vendetta is based some years after the Die hard films. In a time when John McClane (yes, it's spelt right according to the back of the box) has grey hair, his daughter Lucy is a police officer, and the ''baddie'' is Hans Gruber's son, given the surprisingly un-German name of Piet.

Controls:

The controls of this game are complained about by a vast number of people. We must admit, that our ways were very similar, until we found a nice little option, aptly named ''Controller Configuration''. Upon the discovery of this feature, we switched over to ''Control Style C'', which gave the controls an ''Agent Under Fire'' type feel. Like AUF, once you get used to it, it's fine. So, for Controls, we'll give the lovely score of 8/10

Graphics:

In our opinion, graphics are quite overrated and considered far more important than they actually are. We say this because of classic games like the original Civilization game, the Sonic Megadrive/Genesis games and the not so famous Skifree, which had graphics that by today's standards would be burned at the stake as a witch, but they were none-the-less great games and very hard to stop playing. For this reason graphics are rated out of 5 and not 10.
The graphics for this game have received quite a lot of bad reviews, but are far better than people say. The lighting effects are actually quite good and the guns look very pretty, or as FOX would call them, visually pleasing. There are, however just a few things that are badly done; like cars, padlocks and a certain room in a subway, yet they are just minor things. They shouldn’t be so overly criticised that the entire game is based on exactly how much rust there is on each corner of a padlock, if the nearest Alpha Romeo or Rover 75 has been perfectly waxed, and has passed it’s MOT, or whether a subway room is designed well. Other than that however the graphics get quite a nice 4/5.

Sound:

We consider sound as important as we consider the graphics. Quite nice to have, but not vital.
The sound in this game is very, very good. Every piece of dialogue is hear able noise and not just text on a screen (although the text is there as well.) All the characters that were in the movies sound like they did in the movies. Piet Gruber sounds uncannily like Hans Gruber and Jack Frontier speaks as you would expect a muscle bound, testosterone fueled fitness freak (we’re not mentioning any names at this time) to speak like.
The levels don't always have music, but when there is it is relevant and when there isn't then there is either a looping background noise or you'll be making too much noise to notice. Also, when entering Hero Time (see Gameplay) the music is incredibly good, and if you have seen the Die Hard films quite hilarious.
In fact the only problem we could find with the sound was when a bad guy was hit by a train and screamed for about 5 seconds after being sliced in two. But this is very rare and was actually quite amusing. So for sound we give a wonderfully perfect 5/5

Gameplay:

The gameplay of this game is incredibly good. Firstly we must admit the AI for the bad guys could have been better but in all fairness, they do show more intelligence than people give them credit for. They sometimes hide behind objects and jump out at the most inconvenient moments, and we're quite sure the bastards keep trying to surround us (perhaps we're just paranoid).
The best things about the gameplay are the special features that are very rare in an FPS. The first is a bullet cam that means occasionally when you shoot at a bad guy it will go all slow motion and Matrixy (its not a proper word but we think we'll get away with it), and the beating heart noise and the slow motion scream that goes with it makes it all very fun, however, we do wish for a pretty black suit mode, which would complete the matrixy set-up of bullet-cam. The second is the ability to grab your opponents, and hold a gun to their heads. You can then shoot them ritualistically, hold him hostage, arrest him, use him as a human shield and laugh evilly as his friends kill him for you, or you can walk around the entire level with him, just for the hell of it, which we find to be rather hilarious when you finally decide to get rid of him, usually on a railway line. The final one is Hero Mode. This slows down everything except you and is lots of fun, as well as side-splittingly hilarious if you’ve never seen the film (as mentioned above) especially the music (But we've decided to be mean and not tell you what song it is that plays).
Another great thing about the gameplay are the references to the film. Gruber calls John 'cowboy' and one of the levels takes place in Nakitomi Plaza, the setting of the first Diehard film. It contains many phrases from the Diehard films like “Whoa, go easy there John.” “I'm getting too old for this ****.” and “Yippee-ki-yay mother ****er” You may also take note of the excessive swearing, like in the films.
Basically the gameplay is amazing and fully deserves a marvelous 10/10.

Replayability:

The one-player mode is quite fun with all of the grabbing, hero timing and 'bullet cam'ing for quite a long time. One of the problems about the replayability is the lack of a multiplayer mode, which really brings the replayability down to a mediocre 6/10.

Overall:

In our overall analysis Die Hard : Vendetta scores a solid 8/10, yes it does, oh yes indeed.........

Rent or Buy?:

Its probably best if you rent this first as the opinions of this game are varied, but if you were us (heaven forbid) you would buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/03, Updated 01/01/03