Took a little hiatus yesterday to polish off Dark Souls, but here we are with another Octurbo. Following the end of Man Week, the theme of the next group of games is that there is no theme. Pretty avant garde, right? First on the chopping block, and following in Batman's wake somewhat, is another Japan-only game based on a beloved 1980s action movie from America. I mean, it's Die Hard., you can all read titles. I just get so lost as to what to put up here sometimes.
The Die Hard game isn't quite the departure from its source material that Batman was, but it's still taking a few liberties with the plot of the movie. It's actually a lot like the NES game, which is explicable given both are top-down shooters with the same developer (Pack-in-Video), but oddly enough not quite as advanced despite being on a 16-bit system. The NES game had a lot of interesting ideas, though it's worth noting that it was released a year after this TG-16 version and Pack-In-Video had a bit more time (and feedback) with which to improve it.
But whatever, this is a movie license game. Looow expectations to overcome.
Play a TurboGrafx-16 Game, Get Together, Have a Few Laughs...
And that's the TG-16 Die Hard game. If it ever gets to the point where it remembers that it's supposed to be based on a movie with scenes that wouldn't be impossible to translate into an action game without adding leftover level design from Commando, I didn't see it. I was too busy getting horribly turned around by Ellis' goddamn basement garden maze. They really let success go to their heads back then, huh? Why couldn't he have spent it all on nose candy like everyone else.
Die Hard's not a bad game on a purely mechanical level. A little uninspired maybe, since the top-down path it follows was well-trod even by 1990. It does throw plenty of new weapons, health pick-ups and armor at you at regular intervals to keep things fair, barring an insta-death pitfall or two. Ultimately it is its dubious connection to the movie, adding in stages from stock Vietnam shooter games that have no place being adjacent to a skyscraper in downtown LA, that really make it seem like a lazy cash grab. The plot of Die Hard would not be incredibly difficult to turn into a game, as the later NES version would almost sort of figure out, so it just seems baffling as well as disappointing. Oh, and fuck maze levels in shooters. At least give me a map!
I know, a movie license game wasn't all that great. Octurbo will presumably continue to blow your minds with the blogs to come.