{"id":1407,"date":"2012-10-17T11:37:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T11:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2012-10-17T18:03:23","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T18:03:23","slug":"my-top-100-66-die-hard-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1407","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #66 &#8211; Die Hard Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1415\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/diehard.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1415\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1415\" title=\"diehard\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/diehard.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"545\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/diehard.jpg 620w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/diehard-300x263.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1415\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">1996 &#8211; Fox Interactive (PC, PlayStation, Saturn)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As a kid, it wasn&#8217;t very often that I\u00a0had to\u00a0be prevented from seeing violent movies.\u00a0 I was never into guns, tanks\u00a0or other &#8220;macho&#8221; things that others my age tended to be interested in.\u00a0 The furthest I ever got to it was playing &#8220;war&#8221; with friends in the woods behind our house.\u00a0 It was fun as hell playing with pretend guns, but it never made me want to watch violent action movies &#8211; it wasn&#8217;t a question of not wanting to see violence on screen, but a question of interest!<\/p>\n<p>Screw <em>TimeCop <\/em>&#8211; I wanted to see <em>Kindergarten Cop <\/em>whenever it got to The Movie Network!\u00a0 That stuff was hilarious!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, my point is that I only really started to watch action movies once I hit my teens.\u00a0 <em>Mission: Impossible, Twister, Independence Day<\/em>&#8230;\u00a0 1996 was a great year to turn (PG-) 13, but I had quite a bit of catching up to do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3gsfwh_oyiU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Also released in &#8217;96 was <em>Die Hard Trilogy<\/em> for PlayStation.<\/p>\n<p>To me, this console was going to be a flash in the pan &#8211; why wouldn&#8217;t it be?\u00a0 Panasonic&#8217;s 3DO and Phillips&#8217; CDi were both busts, and\u00a0Sega&#8217;s Saturn wasn&#8217;t exactly flying off store shelves, either.\u00a0 Why should Sony&#8217;s attempt be any different?<\/p>\n<p>My\u00a0friend Abba would often rent various consoles, and\u00a0we&#8217;d hang out quite a bit and critique the latest titles.\u00a0 He rented the Saturn with <em>Sega Rally <\/em>one winter, and I felt that that was just a glorified Genesis &#8211; it even had pretty much the same controller!\u00a0 When he rented a PlayStation with <em>Die Hard Trilogy<\/em> (good ol&#8217; reliable Blockbuster Video), I was prepared to be unimpressed.<\/p>\n<p>I was way, wayyyy\u00a0wrong about that one.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s essentially three games on one disc, one for each <em>Die Hard <\/em>movie released up to that point.\u00a0 The first game is a third-person shooter where John McClane fights through hordes of terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza.\u00a0 There were about 24 levels (I think), one for each\u00a0floor of the building that had hostages.\u00a0 It was pretty tough, but you could approach every room with captives in more than one way, which made it oh-so-satisfying to beat every level.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Die Harder <\/em>game was by far my favourite of the three.\u00a0 Though you could use a light gun and play it <em>Time Crisis-<\/em>style, the normal controller was all we had, and it actually worked really well!\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t played it recently to see how the controls have aged &#8211; this game was released before the Dual Shock controllers were available &#8211; but I know the atmosphere in the first few levels was quite awesome.<\/p>\n<p>I guess\u00a0I just love levels set in the Winter.\u00a0 Doesn&#8217;t matter what game it is, if it&#8217;s snowing, I&#8217;ll love it.\u00a0 Strange!<\/p>\n<p>The game based on <em>With a Vengeance <\/em>is an arcade racer, something along the lines of <em>Crazy Taxi<\/em>.\u00a0 Instead of picking up fares, you&#8217;re driving through various parts of New York City to detonate bombs by running into them.\u00a0\u00a0If the timer runs out before you get to your next target, the whole city blows up.\u00a0 Negotiating traffic was the name of the game, and various scripted events would happen to switch it up a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing says &#8220;ownage&#8221; quite like an ambulance running ahead of you,\u00a0clearing a path by ramming all the cars out of the way!<\/p>\n<p>So, yeah.\u00a0 Not only is it quite a fun game, but it brings back so many memories from that awkward period in gaming.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t looking too good there, for a while, until Sony and Nintendo really allowed us to believe that 3D games could work, if done right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1418\" style=\"width: 1290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1418\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1418\" title=\"die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original.jpg 1280w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original-300x168.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/die-hard-with-a-vengeance-original-1024x576.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1418\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">With a Vengeance might be my favourite, but I believe there&#8217;s a Die Hard for every mood.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; As a kid, it wasn&#8217;t very often that I\u00a0had to\u00a0be prevented from seeing violent movies.\u00a0 I was never into guns, tanks\u00a0or other &#8220;macho&#8221; things that others my age tended to be interested in.\u00a0 The furthest I ever&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1407\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,21,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-die-hard","category-playstation","category-top-100"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}