Die Hard Vendetta

Price: £39.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes 60Hz: No Die Hard - excellent films, but the games are a mixed bag. The Playstation's Die Hard Trilogy was a triumph and pushed the envelope of what Sony's older console could do, while the more recent Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza was such a piss-poor first-person shooter, that this latest offering, a Nintendo Gamecube exclusive, has some ground to make up. After the training section (during which it's fun to shoot paintballs around the instruction room before you go on the course), the game begins at the Townshend Museum where Piet Gruber, son of Hans Gruber - the main baddie from the first film, is attempting to tell the public that he's helped the museum bring back a valuable painting. Gunfire erupts and all of a sudden you, as John McClane, have to wade in and save the day, ensure hostages are unharmed and rescue your daughter Lucy, now a police recruit herself. Good to see the storyline having moved on, now with McClane having grey hair, but sadly there's no vocal talent from the real actor behind the character, Bruce Willis, since the developers stated it would've cost too much to bring him in. Fair point, but it is still a shame.

On the plus side with the graphics, there are staggering water effects in the outside ponds and curved glass effects through such doors, but I could spot glitches in walls where jagged straight lines weren't quite right and flicker at you rather a lot. Other than that, everything's fairly standard and will hold no surprises. Given that the Gamecube has no facilities for Dolby Digital or DTS, unlike its two main competitors, the gunshots give little to get excited about. Dialogue and the background music is clear. It feels like a cheat to have the auto-aim function on, but the alternative is trying to aim yourself with the yellow joystick, which self-centres to a degree whether you tell it to or not, making the gameplay feel more like a Time Crisis 2-style game than a Quake-style FPS. There's also the ridiculous auto-jump feature once you approach the edge of the surface you're on, the scourge of the Harry Potter game from last year, as it makes such a task far too easy.

"Hero mode" slows things down for a few seconds while playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", the classical piece heard when the vault was finally unlocked in the first film. Overall, it's an entertaining diversion but far from an essential title. Fans of the Die Hard series will be its main audience, but that's just a hook upon which to hang the threadbare story. It's not one for younger games, given the colourful language within. There's no "Yippee Kay-ay Kimosabi" in a dodgy Japanese accent here, the swearing is uncut, although I've yet to hear McClane's trademark phrase. We've 'been here, done that' many times before, so you're probably best trying before you buy with a rental first to see if you'll stick at it longer than an evening.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.