Right from the get-go, you could tell this game was on a budget. The first thing I noticed when I received Die Hard: Vendetta was that on the box, where Bruce Willis should be with guns a blazin’, he wasn’t. Instead, a faceless hero, that could be Bruce Willis, stood in his place, trying to fire his 9mm. but was probably jammed. Now Sierra did have enough money to afford two names: McClane and Die Hard, which should score them a few points because if it wasn’t for these minor signs of hope, I might have given up on the game in the first ten minutes of gameplay.

But later I really did wish that I hadn’t even played Die Hard: Vendetta, because you see kids, considering how flooded the first-person shooter market is these days, you have to put out a pretty dang good product to even register a blip on the gaming radar. Simply put, for you readers with busy schedules, Die Hard: Vendetta, aside from some good graphics, is a shoddy example of a FPS and you shouldn’t waste any of your time on it.

You know a game is rushed when you find out that a better version is being released a month or two later on another console. That’s right, Die Hard is coming to the PlayStation 2 with more features! Oh boy! That one will actually have a multiplayer function with over 100 characters!

"But wait!" One of you might ask, “You mean to tell me that the GameCube version doesn’t have multiplayer?” That’s right kids, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. The GameCube version has no multiplayer. Ouch! That’s like shooting yourself in the foot and not giving any justification whatsoever. What you end up with is another FPS that gets lost in an already overstocked shooter market. I don’t even have to write any more, because with only a single player function (and a poor one at that, but more on that later), you can’t justify dropping twenty bucks on something this bad.

But in the end, who cares?! They got that cop from Family Matters to do the voice acting for Officer Powell! (Who actually did play Officer Powell in the Die Hard movies, for all you haters out there?) That was sarcastic if you didn’t pick up on it.

But seriously folks, I can’t even begin to tell you how little the puzzle logic makes sense in this game. Make sure you exhaust all avenues if you attempt to play this game, because the one you least expect to work will likely be the answer. You think shooting a water faucet and flooding the bathroom will help you open the control room door? My ten bucks says you’re right! What this game should be is a guns-a-blazin’ free-for-all. Instead, every five or ten minutes everything comes to a screeching halt, stymieing your very thoughts on how to provoke the game to let you proceed into its video game abyss.

The action is aplenty however, and with a very accurate and snappy auto-aim, the job of killing terrorists is easier than flippin’ burgers. Which is good because using the C-stick as a look analog just doesn’t cut it; reason being it was made for making Mario’s head move around to look occasionally, not wheel your guns around constantly to blow someone into oblivion.

Multiple paths await you in the single-player mode of Die Hard, and that’s it folks. That’s all the replay value you get; live with it. Coupled with a lackluster story that could have been written by a ten year-old, you’re already in the red in the motivation department when turning on the power of your GameCube.

I’m a huge fan of the Die Hard movies. Honestly, I wish this game would have been more like what the Die Hard movie series is: totally sweet. However, with no multiplayer support, poor controls (although it is with a GC controller, which is a losing battle in and of itself), a storyline that puts you to sleep, and puzzles that will make you give your TV the finger, I am forced to tell all of you to hold on to your hard earned cash. Die Fast should be the title, because Die Hard just brings the series shame.