The Die Hard movies, highly regarded as one of the best action movie franchises ever have found their way to mobile. It’s a good idea in theory; play as hero cop John McClane and terminate the terrorists, and rescue the hostages. The repetition quickly sets in though, as collecting keys and defusing bombs isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Players walk around various levels of the ‘Tech Corp’ building, shooting bad guy after bad guy and collecting key cards to open doors. On each level the lift is broken, and the lift isn’t fixed until you defuse all the bombs (by solving a simple puzzle) and the hostages have been rescued. Instead of the action game it was intended as, the game quickly becomes an adventure akin to ‘Where’s Wally?’ For the uninitiated, the ‘Where’s Wally’ series is a series of books where readers search the page for Wally. This is basically the same experience felt in Die Hard, with players searching cabinet after cabinet, toilet after toilet, for keycards and bombs (by pressing the # button for 5 seconds at a time). Admittedly, there are people that may enjoy repeatedly searching for things, but these are not the same people that buy a game called ‘Die Hard’, based on gritty action movies. You can tell the developers can sense this too, when they chuck in a meaningless time-trial level to save 10 hostages in 5 minutes. Shooting terrorists provides slightly more entertainment than tiresome searching but is ruined by the fact that you can’t even reach them until you unlock the darn door.
Die Hard
Players walk around various levels of the ‘Tech Corp’ building, shooting bad guy after bad guy and collecting key cards to open doors. On each level the lift is broken, and the lift isn’t fixed until you defuse all the bombs (by solving a simple puzzle) and the hostages have been rescued. Instead of the action game it was intended as, the game quickly becomes an adventure akin to ‘Where’s Wally?’ For the uninitiated, the ‘Where’s Wally’ series is a series of books where readers search the page for Wally. This is basically the same experience felt in Die Hard, with players searching cabinet after cabinet, toilet after toilet, for keycards and bombs (by pressing the # button for 5 seconds at a time). Admittedly, there are people that may enjoy repeatedly searching for things, but these are not the same people that buy a game called ‘Die Hard’, based on gritty action movies. You can tell the developers can sense this too, when they chuck in a meaningless time-trial level to save 10 hostages in 5 minutes. Shooting terrorists provides slightly more entertainment than tiresome searching but is ruined by the fact that you can’t even reach them until you unlock the darn door.
Die Hard
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