This Week In Retro: Die Hard Trilogy (Patreon)

August 31, 1996: I don't like to lose!

by Diamond Feit

Ahh, Die Hard. The Metroidvania of movies. The 1988 film rewrote the rules for action movies and spawned dozens of imitators that are still coming over three decades later, most of which can succinctly be described as "Die Hard in a [blank]." Remember when every video game with a first-person perspective and a gun was called a "DOOM-clone"? That's what happened to Die Hard except the legacy stuck.

Die Hard was no one's idea of a sure-fire hit. Based on a 1970s crime thriller that was written in the hopes that Frank Sinatra would star in the film adaptation, it bounced around Hollywood for years before landing in the lap of TV actor and wine-cooler pitchman Bruce Willis. Yet the movie raked in hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and Willis' performance as the underdog hero John McClane made him an instant star.

Despite its R-rated violence and nudity, Die Hard quickly became fodder for video games because few films could match its ideal fusion of shootouts and narrow spaces. Most films gain unwanted bloat when adapted for games as developers wedge in superfluous encounters to pad the action. However, Die Hard really was a movie about a guy who has to kill dozens of terrorists, the best possible enemy for a video game in the 1980s next to the Nazis.

25 years ago this week, Die Hard got its best video game adaptation which was really three games held together with duct tape. By 1996 the original film had two hit sequels, "Die Hard in an airport" and "Die Hard in Manhattan," so publisher Fox Interactive wanted a game that combined the experience of all three films. Fox tasked Probe Entertainment with the job and they in turn created Die Hard Trilogy for the Sony PlayStation.

Even though the Die Hard film series (and its knock-offs) stuck closely to the audience-proven formula of "put hero in an enclosed space and stack the odds against him," the three components of Die Hard Trilogy play completely differently. The original film turned into a third-person shooter, one where McClane starts in the basement of the Nakatomi Tower and makes his way up to the top floor by floor. Die Hard 2 gets the first-person scrolling shooter treatment, challenging players to gun their way through Dulles International Airport before eventually taking down an entire jumbo jet mid-flight. Die Hard with a Vengeance contains no shooting at all, instead focusing on the act of driving around the city of New York and "defusing" bombs by ramming them with your car.

Die Hard Trilogy plays fast and loose with the source material, with each third of the game straying further and further from the original premise. "Part One" more or less nails the setting of the office tower, but the number of armed assailants is substantially increased. Every floor has at least fifteen enemies who all must die before moving up to the next stage, and killing the last foe triggers a bomb in an elevator that McClane must reach within 30 seconds in order to proceed. True to the film, there are hostages to rescue, but once freed they run slowly to an exit before they can escape. Fleeing hostages are vulnerable to weapons fire, both McClane's and the enemy's, and dead civilians impact the player's final score.

What's lost in translation is the sense that the Nakatomi Tower is a real place where human beings live their lives. While the layouts and graphics do change, the floors lack any memorable qualities. The movie Die Hard spends enough time in multiple locations to establish where McClane is and what he must do; in Die Hard Trilogy, each level is just a small maze, an obstacle between the player and the exit.

As an on-rails shooter, the Die Hard 2 chapter of Trilogy fares even worse by comparison. The player never has control of where to go as they are locked into a fixed path and must kill the enemies as they appear. I realize that an airport would have substantially more innocent bystanders than an office building, but the number of friendlies that must be avoided is truly absurd. At one point McClane boards a military aircraft which should be fully-loaded with danger, yet there are still civilians who will run onto the screen and beg for their lives.

It's not all bad news though, as the 3D environments of Die Hard Trilogy are almost fully destructible in this segment. Players cannot alter the speed or direction in which McClaine moves, but they are free to pump ammo into almost everything they see. Airport monitors, windows, light fixtures, even the ceiling tiles are fair targets, and falling debris is just as fatal to the terrorists as McClane's bullets.

The third game mode of Die Hard Trilogy takes the greatest liberties in its adaptation, completely removing John McClane's ability to fire any weapons by locking his hands to a steering wheel. Each mission is a timed chase to find bombs hidden around New York with automotive collision the only method of disabling them. The bombs explode anyway when struck, which leaves me wondering what benefit McClane is bringing to this situation. Apparently an unattended bomb can completely level the city, whereas a good smack from a fender triggers a much smaller blast ("small" being a relative term).

1995's Die Hard with a Vengeance certainly features plenty of vehicular action, but Bruce Willis still shoots his share of vaguely European men on screen. It was the most recent film at the time of the game's launch, yet it was also the least Die Hard of the then-existent Die Hard films. Boiling down the essence of the original adventure into an urban version of Destruction Derby was a radical choice, and allegedly this was the first idea conjured by Probe before the project turned into an amalgamation of all three movies. I can almost picture the Fox executives nudging the developers with faint praise while asking if there isn't some way for a Die Hard game to include more gunplay.

The ironic twist is that back in 1996, it was the all-driving portion of Die Hard Trilogy that won me over. First and third-person shooters were already plentiful, and neither of those genres especially encapsulated the fun of the Die Hard films. In reimagining Die Hard with a Vengeance as a series of car chases, Probe Entertainment created the only part of Die Hard Trilogy that felt unlike other games, which pleased teenage-me immensely. The PlayStation was barely a year old in the US at that time, and I considered its lineup of new experiences to be a huge selling point in its favor.

Die Hard Trilogy isn't a great game. It's not even a "good" game, it's more like a collection of disparate ideas sewn together in the guise of a popular license. The graphics were subpar even in 1996, the voice acting is bizarre, and no part of it evokes any sense of what I enjoyed about the films. Yet it remains one of my fonder PlayStation memories largely on the strength of its frantic energy.

The Die Hard films famously took their time to build up their characters and environments, giving audiences a reason to care about who and what was on screen. Die Hard Trilogy could never have replicated that, but it does overwhelm players with its aesthetic excesses. There's never a dull moment as people scream to be heard over the game's constant explosions, all while a surprisingly groovy soundtrack pulses in the background.

Few great movies make for great video games, and Die Hard's legacy is consistent with that maxim. Those first three movies all did so well, the studio kept churning out new ones with diminishing returns, and the threat of a *shudder* Die Hard reboot still looms over us all in the creative desert that is modern cinema. Die Hard Trilogy sold well enough to garner multiple re-releases and even a sequel, but as licensed games go, it falls far from the tree. However, if I had a choice between more Die Hard or more Die Hard Trilogy, I'd pick the latter anytime. Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon!

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.