Occasionally, you’ll have to chase a bomb car. Fail, and you lose a life, make it, and you need to go for the next bomb. You have to drive from point to point in a set time, and hit the checkpoints (bombs). 60% Die Hard with a Vengeanceĭie Hard 3 is basically a checkpoint racer. Overall though, as a Light Gun Games go Die Hard 2 is fun enough, if a little broken. So they either needed more levels to break up the game more, or shorter levels. 10 minutes for a level is too long, and you get serious cramp aiming a gun for that long. Normally I complain that light gun games are short, and average about 30 minutes, well I can see why now. Holy fuck these are long for a light gun game! Some are 10 minutes long, and since there are 8 levels, the game is about an hour long. My biggest issue with Die Hard 2 though, is the length of the levels. No, I don’t know what is going on here either. It isn’t wank and broken like Lethal Enforcers, but the shooting isn’t as good as I would like. This was common for the Predator Light Gun era on PS1, but a better game like Area 51 got around this. The shots have a slight delay that you’ll notice fairly quickly, and the shooting feels slightly inaccurate.
The games events take place in and around Dulles Airport, you go around On-Rails and shoot things following the storyline of the film relatively closely.Īs a shooter it is a little lacking though. Overall if I compare this to other Run and Guns of the era, it is actually fairly solid, the shooting is rudimentary and the AI is thick as fuck, but Die Hard 1 is enjoyable enough and you’ll understand what is going on very quickly. There is a decent level of detail with regards to Nakatomi Towers, and while there are only 20 levels instead of 35, you don’t feel cheated… The Executive Floors look like the area that Mr Takagi is killed, the Vault looks like the vault, and so does the Ballroom/party floor.
As a soundtrack for a Bruce Willis picture, however, it doesn't get any better.You’ll have to trust me on this, but these guys are normally purple on the minimap!
As a piece of pure music, the score for Live Free Or Die Hard is pretty negligible. The Hollywood Studio Symphony plays with extravagant passion and extraordinary power, Beltrami conducts with immense gusto and enormous panache, and, as far as it's possible to tell, Beltrami produces with all the levels set deep in the red. They're meant to enhance the effect of what's on the screen, like an aural production designer or a musical foley operator, and they are a perfect example of form following function at the service of popular entertainment. Beltrami's scores aren't meant to stand by themselves. Imagine Bernard Herrmann meets Dmitry Shostakovich with Hans Zimmer supplying the percussion and you'll have some idea what to expect. As this soundtrack to Live Free Or Die Hard shows, the key is Beltrami's supremely effective combination of minimal but memorable themes, simple but striking harmonies, orchestrations emphasizing screeching strings, keening winds, and blasting brass along with a percussion section roughly the size of Texas.