Die Hard Review II - Part 1

The game starts out promising. Like Probe's original Die Hard Trilogy, DHT2 is really three games in one. There are third-person action levels, driving levels, and Virtua Cop-style shooting gallery levels. But where the first DHT paralleled the movie trilogy--the third person game was based on the original film, the sharp-shooting game was based on Die Harder, and the driving levels based on Die Hard with a Vengeance--DHT2 gives gamers a whole new story line.

Apparently, an old friend of McClane's has become the new warden of a prison near Las Vegas. At the gala celebration welcoming the new boss of the penitentiary (apparently nothing happens in Vegas without a big party), there's a prison uprising. Stuff hits the fan. Bullets fly. Hostages are taken. And McClane has to save the day. The story is decent enough, and it does sort of justify the segues between the different gaming styles.

You drive around to a place that you have to investigate third-person and then you find yourself shooting at dozens of bad guys that pop out at you jack-in-the-box-style. Nicely done cut scenes move the action along by introducing all sorts of plot twists and turns. For those who don't really care about the story, an arcade mode lets you plow through whichever type of level you want.

There's also a practice mode that lets you pick your favorite game type and then throws random levels at you. The problem with DHT2 is that none of the three games are very impressive. It sort of reminds me of that old joke about the two guys at a buffet. One guy says, "The food here is awful," and the other guy--all excited--goes, "Yeah, but there's so much of it." There's a lot to do in DHT2. It's just that it's not all that wonderful to be doing it. Each game seems to be a "lite" version of what it's supposed to be.

The third-person game doesn't really give you much flexibility in terms of movement. It's basically just running, opening doors, and blowing away everything that moves. A few challenging jumps or maybe some puzzle solving might have been a nice way to break up the action. Not being able to roll, crouch, or leap is kind of a drag. I mean, geez, why do you think God put so many buttons on the Dual Shock controller? The third-person game also suffers from a horrendous clipping problem.

Die Hard Review II - Part 2

Any time you walk near a wall, you can see what power-ups, weapons, and--more importantly--enemies are on the other side. It's almost like you've entered some cheat code that gives you x-ray vision. This was especially ridiculous in a level where you had to locate hostages.

Instead of entering the different rooms and possibly getting ambushed, all you had to do was stand next to the wall and you'd see if there were any hostages hanging around. Ugh. The driving game isn't as cool as Driver or any of the Interstate Insert-Year-Here games. The controls are flaky and can be real unresponsive at times.

The levels do capture the race-against-the-clock feel of a lot of the films' chase scenes, but the cranky physics don't do it complete justice. The objectives for each level aren't spelled out particularly well, so you spend most of your time trying to follow the arrows on a heads-up compass display. And with crisp turning almost impossible, it's a real demolition derby at times.

The arcade-style sharp-shooting game is probably the best of the three…if you have a light gun. Without one, it can be kind of lackluster, bordering on the frustrating. Why they let you reconfigure the Y-axis in the "look/aim mode" of the third-person game and not in the shooting game is beyond me. Moving the analog stick up to move the targeting cursor up may seem natural, but after playing a million other adventure/flight/first-person shooters where you pitch up to aim down, this is like typing with your feet.