Staying out of the SWAT teams' way is a priority if you decide to add your bullets to the fray. When both the terrorists and the SWAT team show up simultaneously, you're left with no option but to duck behind something and hope the SWAT team wipes the bad guys out so you can leave the room. If you don't pull out your badge fast enough, they'll shoot you on sight. While interaction with the SWAT team is a good idea, execution in the game is problematical. Without the decent visual effects, boredom would set in quickly.

Unlock the door, get attacked, shoot all the terrorists, unlock another door, and repeat. Coupled with what seems like thousands of mindless terrorists that come at you continuously, the game truly is nothing more than a flat-out shooter. Puzzles are fairly straightforward and include loads of locked doors and gates that must be cleared to advance. You rarely know what to do next without constantly checking the objectives window since no visual or sound clue informs you of completed objectives, which results in needless running around. The added sequence at the helicopter pad on the roof, while good, seems a bit forced and stretches the story. You interact with the SWAT team in a personal fashion, helping them around the building and saving hostages. Each floor has a distinctive look and feel, and many areas not seen in the movie, like sewers, are now accessible. To make the game more of a cat and mouse action thriller, the designers added more enemies and sequences. The movie had McClane fighting a dozen terrorists and only focused on a few of the 40 floors. Unfortunately, the entire game plays out in a series of in-game cut-scenes, without which you'd have no hint of the storyline. Much of the film's dialogue is used, and is mixed with some nicely done new exchanges by competent voice actors.

Most of the movie's characters, including your one true friend Sergeant Al Powell, Joseph Yoshinobu Takagi, the rich CEO who really needs to learn to cooperate, and the evil terrorist mastermind Hans Gruber are featured. Using only your wits, a standard-issue police gun, and a few other weapons found along the way, it's up to you in the role of McClane to save the day. Communications are cut off, and the action revolves around a hostages-for-money (untraceable bonds) plot. Seconds after arriving at her company's Christmas party in the ultra-modern 40-story Nakatomi Plaza, a group of terrorists take over the skyscraper. John McClane, a down-on-his-luck NYPD detective, travels to Los Angeles to try and reconcile with his wife. While the game features some funny one-liners from the movie and incorporates additional material, the action and story is stretched a bit too far. The first-person shooter, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, is an attempt to recreate the movie Die Hard starring Bruce Willis.

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