Just explosive, over-the-top fun. This single disc was bursting with arcade action, containing fully realized video game adaptations of all three (at the time, the only three) Die Hard movies, each one completely different from the others. The first is a third-person shooter that has you gunning down hordes of terrorists as you navigate Nakitomi Plaza, while the second is an on-rails, first-person shooter that sees you blast your way through Dulles Airport and beyond before a ludicrous final sequence takes you to the skies in a helicopter, from which you shoot terrorists off the wings of an in-flight 747 before bringing the whole evil airplane down. It’s surprising, stupendous, and so uniquely video games.
The one I remember the most, though, is Die Hard With a Vengeance, an absolutely crazed driving game in which you barrel down the streets and around the parks of New York City. Drawn into a terrorist’s twisted game, you must intercept cars that have been rigged with bombs and prevent them from exploding, which, of course, you do by crashing into them repeatedly, Chase HQ-style. You get an assortment of camera options here, one of which is a first-person, in-the-car view. Hit pedestrians in this perspective and your windshield might get momentarily splattered with blood, quickly washed away by your windshield wipers. It’s all very ‘90s edgy and extreme. With a Vengeance, while pretty simple and limited, is possessed of the kind of kinetic energy that would later make games like Burnout 3 so exhilarating, and Die Hard Trilogy as a whole crackles with a balls-to-the-wall enthusiasm that made it a defining release of the early PlayStation era.—Carolyn Petit
