Die Hard for the NES had a lot more thought put into it than I’d have expected. You make your way through 7 floors looking for 7 locks to break before you can access the 30th floor where (if you’ve killed all the terrorists) you can face Hans Gruber who until that point spends his time siccing tougher henchmen on you as you mow through lower level bullet-spraying baddies. If you collect radio items, you can eavesdrop on his orders and get a heads up on who’s coming (Fritz! Franz! etc). There’s a timer as well (time speeds up when you enter stairwells which act as safe spots to take a breather and plan your next move). Speaking of movement, while navigating Nakatomi tower, you can only see what McClane (who you control top down Hotline Miami-like) has in his line of sight so if you hide behind a wall for cover, tiles of the map (and enemies) are blacked out, the level constantly masking itself based on this pixel dude’s POV. By using air vents however, you can peer down and get the layout of the floor below. Oh and the Feet Meter. You have a normal health bar and another just for your bare feet because there’s a lot of broken windows and glass produced by all the mayhem. Walking on glass or running too long will slow John down. You can only check your Feet Meter via the pause menu for some reason. Out of all the Die Hard games I played with friends last night (a few) this one sticks closest to any of the movies. INTERESTING.
Die Hard Arcade, the game most loosely associated with the franchise was also the best crafted and all around most fun game of the night. I guess this is what Fighting Force was trying to be huh. Bright colours, crunchily textured polygons, ridiculous cartoon foes (alien linebacker, a firetruck unloading firefighters/youfighters while also trying to pound you with a high pressure hose). We co-opped all the way to the end BUT only after racking up 30 credits to do so. How? By grinding through SEGA’s 1979 arcade title Deep Scan via the title screen. A hilarious idea to make players do this, going from the maximalist cacophony of Die Hard (hit-in-the-nuts “BOING” SFX with comically keeled over animation and all) to the minimalist hush of dropping depth charges onto passing submarines. But the icing on the cake? The master stroke? Once you save the little girl that’s been held hostage by Virtua Fighter reject White Fang, she announces to both her saviours: “Thanks! Now I want one of you to be my new bodyguard!” and you have to turn on your partner and kill them for this child’s amusement! I ended up losing to my friend, legit upset about it, sweaty of hand, but I played it cool B) Played the Saturn version which is apparently a very faithful port. GOOD TIME GAME.
Die Hard Trilogy is dirty and ugly and transcendently so at times. Even the UI has big swinging balls, loud and aggressive, BOLD fonts. I mean, the name entry screen consists of a ring of NPCs and John McClane playing duck-duck-goose with a Glock. This is some sublime garbage made with gusto, I admire it! They were onto something here. Or else they were just ON something. The music, especially the EDM track of the first stage (there are three stages, one for each of the first films (1 is a clunky ass third person murder fest, 2 is a first person semi-on rails shooter and 3 is an abysmal driving goose chase) goes SO HARD
A legit trance was achieved, level 2 is
GTA nastiness with even less wit to water things down. I mean, the game plays like shit but it insists on making you feel its fast food teenage slumber party Blockbuster rental bravado. WILD RIDE, WORTH THE BRAIN DAMAGE.
Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas is unfortunately not as ludicrous as its title, in fact it takes a slight step back from the tasteless tour de force of its predecessor. There are still 3 separate stages with different gameplay styles but this one wants to be its own cinematic experience strung together for a brand new John McClane adventure in misanthropy and machismo. What happens? Well, your old NYPD buddy Kenny wakes you up from your beer can bed of pizza box pillows and invites you to Las Vegas where he’s just been made the new warden of Mesa Grande Prison. They’re throwing a party. A prison party! But wouldn’t ya know it, the prisoners riot and it’s up to John to mow down not only them but countless guards and (eventually, we didn’t get this far though) your pal Kenny because it was all a set up. This one wore its welcome out rather fast, the neutered UI being a sign of how serious this game decided it had to take itself (they probably “got some notes”) ultimately diluting the unhinged vibe of the first one. Ah, and I just remembered, both Die Hard Trilogy games have this effect where geometry (walls mostly) that is close enough to the camera fades out but like in these weird shapes that make the environment look like it’s constantly suffering from dynamically manifested cigarette burns. Really adds to the trash vibe nicely. TOO MUCH PISS, NOT ENOUGH VINEGAR.
Apocalypse puts us in prison yet again, which is probably where I belong at this point. All these games with their flood of Brucey one-liners (this one actually has his voice and likeness though) are starting to bleed together. My brain might also have started bleeding at this point but Apocalypse is maybe only second to Arcade in terms of being an action video game. Just a no nonsense (OK, there’s plenty of nonsense) run and gun game that does some nice things with shifting perspective, foreground and background targets but also some not so nice things like when you’re asked to use the strict directional movement for platforming at diagonal angles. It’s got some juice though, 100% Bruce juice, like a dirty rag soaked in The Fifth Element + Twelve Monkeys wrung into room temperature can of Tecate. Good flames, gotta mention the flamethrower. Aslo love the video textures applied throughout. In the prison level, it’s the warden (I think) screaming at you Big Brother style, here it’s a music video courtesy of POE:
The thing that will really stay with me however is that we, and these games, and their fetishization of fireballs manifested chaos and destruction in the sleepy suburbs of Phinney Ridge. While playing Apocalypse, an eruption of light flashed through the window. We rushed outside. The neighbours were burning their christmas tree (idk why they still had their christmas tree (or why they immolated it on the grass on their front lawn*)). A video to commemorate the event:
TOO HOT TO BE CONTAINED BY TV
The Fifth Element is SHIT. God awful platforming and shooting and you have to do plenty of it. We persisted until we got to the point where you could play as Leeloo, couldn’t hold out for Chris Tucker but they give you a bit him at the title screen which is nice of them. TRASH YOU WON’T EVEN ENJOY THROWING AWAY
Hudson Hawk is an NES game we’d never played for a movie we’d never seen** so we watched the trailer and fell to pieces jumping right into the game after it ended, confronted with the character’s cartoonishly large forehead. Obviously, we were losing our minds at this point in the night. You kill dogs and cops and birds with baseballs. We didn’t remember seeing any baseballs in the trailer… Anyway, we completed the first mission which was to steal (?, idk if Hudson’s a thief or what and I will NOT bother looking that up) DaVinci’s painting of a horse. Which we got to marvel at in all its glory upon completion:
WE LOVE THAT HORSE
Finally, our minds were truly lost. Our mental capacity misused and misplaced so that all we could do was retire and go to bed.
*The aftermath of our psychic influence over a suburban family
**OK, if you’ve made it this far, WHY did we play a bunch of Bruce Willis games? Well, our movie night (most of the same people) decided to revisit a pair of his films (Unbreakable and Die Hard With a Vengeance) when it was announced he’d be retiring. For some reason this turned into a mini-marathon (The Fifth Element, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, The Sixth Sense, The Last Boy Scout) and bled into our game night - WE ARE NOT BRUCE WILLIS FANS WE DON’T KNOW WHY WE SPENT THE BETTER PART OF A MONTH GIVING HIM THIS SPOTLIGHT but idk it was fun, dumpster loads of reactionary uncle beer gut fun and now it’s time to put an end to this inexplicable chapter of our lives (after we watch Hudson Hawk this week).