Happy Independence Day!
What can be said about Die Hard: Vendetta? That it sucks? Has terrible controls? God awful level design? Laughable combat? Horrendous gunplay? All these are perfectly apt descriptors. Frankly it plays just as bad if not worse than Bad Boys: Miami Takedown.
Falling square in the camp of kusoge, DH:V is an absolute turd of a licensed stinker, released in November 2002 to the chagrin of Die Hard and FPS fans. Consisting of 11 horribly designed stages with the worst of the worst early 2000s licensed game hallmarks, DH:V has rightfully been lost to the trashbin of history. However, I revived it on a whim, because I'm a masochist.
Keep in mind the times listed alongside each level are the ingame time that is listed on the level completion screen at the end of each stage, not a time calculated in frames.
https://www.speedrun.com/die_hard_vendetta
Difficulty level -
The game is only ran RTA on Die Hard (easy), enemies have 100% HP (die in 2 hits) and you take 100% damage, bosses also have a visible healthbar. Die Harder puts them at 150% and Die Hardest (the difficulty the TAS plays at) puts them all at 200%. This also has the effect of extending boss health to double their normal length and also removing a visible boss HP bar from the HUD. Aside from this, there are no other difficulty differences I can find.
- Some tricks and notes about quirks in the game -
- Movement is implemented somewhat like Goldeneye, all your momentum moves in the cardinal directions, the game takes time to sway the camera left/right, and you can only jump if moving directly forward (or if autojump bounces you to prevent collision issues). It was also implemented with bugs. When crouched, we can forego the camera tilt and can strafe left/right FASTER than by walking forwards while crouched, moving at the same speed as walking forward normally while standing. There is also a prone mode, which puts the camera and the players hitbox all the way to the floor, allowing you to clip around certain geometry for skips, or, rarely given how situational it is, get a speedboost by launching yourself forward out of prone into standing by clipping into overhead geometry.
- All the ingame geometry has hitboxes modeled directly to them rather than having brushes of invisible walls. The effect of this is that we will be abusing our crouch and prone state throughout the run to squeeze through fencing and doors so we can bypass huge sections of levels.
- All weapons (besides the shotgun and rocket launcher) do the same exact amount of damage. McClain's .38SPC boot revolver hits just as hard as a .308 AR loaded with explosive rounds. The only major differences for DPS is the fire rate, so we use the AR/dual-SMGs as much as possible. Bullets also are physical objects, not hitscans, which take time to reach the enemy and McClain, so we can dodge bullets when necessary. Since this is hard (Die Hardest) mode, this means we have to pump 4 shots into each badguy to kill them, or get a headshot (which we don't need to do often, unless they are in our direct path or we need to kill them to trigger an event). Headshots also do not appear to do any extra damage to boss characters.
- Objectives are just a suggestion. So long as we can get to the necessary triggers, we can bypass huge sections of levels without following what the game wants us to do normally (save hostages, collect items, talk to certain NPCs, etc.)
- You start each map in "holster mode". You are stuck in this state for a few seconds until you can fire a shot and unholster, letting you move at normal speed. When holstered, your jumps are shorter (less momentum) and enemies suddenly cannot see or hear McClain because of unfinished, bugged out stealth mechanics. We will abuse this in later stages in the run to avoid activating certain triggers when being in the area should lead to a game over.
- You get forced into holster mode in the final stage after using the bomb disarm tool, because your codes have the B button.
- The games logic runs at 60fps, but the framerate is unlocked, dipping as low as the single digits a few times. However, because the logic is steady, we can just play around the visual lag and move forward as normal.
Townsend Museum - 1:18
- We start off by skipping a minute of dialog by jumping onto Al, autobouncing off a cop and crouch jumping through a corner of the top gate. We run through the building, kill some thugs in the courtyard and wait for the door to open on a timer. We run out and kill every thug in the 2nd courtyard, freeing Lucy. Freeing her triggers the final 2 guards to spawn from behind to ambush you, but we kill them and finish the level.
Hollywood Boulevard - 1:58
- We run past Fat Larry, skipping the investigation segment and entire first half of the level, running past some gunmen at the end of the road and running through some windows to get to the next checkpoint. We then skip another segment, jumping off one thugs head and being autobounced backwards ontop of the ledge, running downstairs ASAP so the enemies and civilian despawn before they can kill him. We run past some bad guys and into a store that's being robbed. We disarm 2 of the crooks and take one hostage so we can get info, then wait out the sequence until we can run into and out of the record shop with the item inside. With all the items needed to get into the pool hall, we get inside, kill Sergio for his item, then run to the backend of the map (bouncing off an enemies head in the pit to skip another sequence) and get inside the theater.
The Chinese Cinema - 1:03
- Inside, we run past the entire first half of the level by going right through the exit doors instead of saving the employee and killing the thugs as intended. After the checkpoint, we setup for a precise physics glitch to launch ourselves up onto the ledge above us, bypassing a minute of running past enemies and up stairs.
- The trick is accomplished by shooting the banned hanging up on the ledge so that the right side falls down onto the row of chairs below, where it will clip into 2 of them after a short time. By positioning ourselves inbetween those 2 chairs and crouch jump spamming as it brushes past us, McClain is launched upwards, with our forward momentum from pressing forward at the last possible frame being just enough to get us over the hump.
- We then run to rescue hostages, only 2 of the groups need to be saved as we will not be triggering the other 3. We then run onto a theater ledge and hop down, performing the same chair launch physics trick again, this time getting stuck inbetwen 2 chairs with broken collision and using an enemies bullet hitting us (they are physics objects and not hitscans, as previously noted) to launch McClain upwards and onto the stage, bypassing the RTA method of hopping down onto the rising organ platform and jumping off it onto the stage. (As far as I am aware, this trick has never been performed RTA, and is too exact and luck based to be possible to do without savestates). We run through the back of the stage and down a vent, completing the level.
The LA Subway - 5:04
- We get a hobo outfit and run down into the train tunnel, getting as far as possible without getting run over. It's not possible to 1 cycle the train or get onto the left ridge, unfortunately. We shoot down the door, Mario down a pipe, then it's on to the next section. We hop around some level geometry to skip a section involving moving platforms back and forth, then run upstairs to the end of a hallway to trigger enemies spawning on hostages, then speaking to Frontier on a laptop. We wait for John to cough before we turn around and run out the door, collecting the painting scraps and then back down the hall where we save the hostages and bounce back through level geometry and up another exit hall. We climb a ladder and meet Laben, where we wait for him to start unlocking a door and then sprint down the sewer tunnels, waiting for Laben to finish his scripted sequence (while leaving some graffiti) and sliding down the poop-water disposal tube to end the level. (fitting for this game)
Century City Police Department - 6:13
- We run down the carpark floors (meow) and open the door that's being guarded, McClain complains about coffee and donuts while running up some stairs and down halls, then we get inside and kill 3 badguys so we can talk to the reporter and trigger the checkpoint. We wait for a door to explode, say hi to Al, then go through a sequence where we need to talk to Lucy in the interrogation room. We then head to the cells and free some fat guy that never shows up again and (NOT DANNY TREJO) Nitric. We trigger a bug that let's Nitric teleport upstairs and defuse the bombs a minute faster than without the teleport, despite some waiting that's still unavoidable regardless. We wait for him to say "neck" then run back to to the back of the room so he will disarm the bombs, then we get to the next checkpoint.
- This bug, until now as far as I know, has been considered a random occurence with no way to reliably trigger it. However, after watching some RTA runs, I concluded that it can be manually triggered by stopping the fat guy right before he reaches the end of the hall after talking to him again. For some reason that's unknown to me, when he gets to the computer room, this will cause Nitric to suddenly teleport upstairs instantly and begin defusing the bombs, skipping a long sequence of him slowly walking up the stairs, down the hall and through the rooms to get to the bombs.
- Outside, we have to kill every single thug and collect the evidence held by a thug hiding behind a police cruiser. We get through them as quickly as possible, then it's onto the next stage.
- At the end of this level, 'Hero Mode' is activated, which would normally stall the end of the stage/checkpoint until it cools off, but because the completion flag is set a few seconds before the screen changes, we are able to activate Hero Mode and mess around for a couple of seconds.
Hollywood Film Studio - 1:34
- We skip the first part of this stage by hopping up on the entry gate, onto a ledge and then across onto another ledge above some wounded cops. (you will notice McClain bounces when he lands. This is intentional and not a time loss. He cannot make this jump without mashing jump upon landing on the very edge, which will send him forward one more time against the wall) We then perform a TAS/M+KB only trick by hopping around a pillar on the side of the wall, through some windows and then kill a sniper. We then have to kill the next 5 snipers that spawn in before we can continue.
- We hit the next checkpoint, turning around and ignoring the entire second portion of the level and running downstairs, jumping on the back door so we can hop onto a light and over a fence, getting us right into the boss section. Killing some thugs, Nitric shows up and we mag-dump him in the face until he dies. Because we are so close, his guns actually clip through us and spawn the bullets behind our hitbox, meaning we take virtually no damage. Great game!
The Sierra Correctional Facility - 6:22
- We start the stage with an immediate checkpoint reset. Because of a developer oversight, it opens up every cell gate, letting us get right to our objectives. We set a mattress covered in shit on fire (there's a metaphor for the game) and grab a guard, bringing him just far down the hall enough that he doesn't blow the whistle on us, then wait a minute for another guard to walk down into the checkpoint booth. He doesn't see us until we put the gun down, because reasons, and then we run past all the guards without killing them, as this will trigger an instant game over (basically impossible on the hardest difficulty RTA without luck or retries). We get on the roof and hop down to our next checkpoint.
- We ignore the baddies and get an AR, hop through some windows and kill a couple of guys so we have just enough health to get up the ladder without dying, then it's inside again where we free the SWAT captain and get his uniform. After his schpeel, we blow up the control panel just as we go inside the gate, skipping another long walking section, where we then proceed to run through some guys until we get to the Warden, who let's us through the door onto the rooftop.
- We faceoff with Nitric on the helipad, activating hero mode early so as to keep his AI passive while we flood his brain with bullets. (on easy mode in most RTA runs, he dies here in 1 cycle, but he has 200% health because of the difficulty level) We dodge some bullets until he is forced to reload, where we can then position McClain in a perfect way so-as to break Nictric's AI, letting us finish him off without the threat of his boss super DPS shredding us in under a second.
Cesar Tuna Factory - 2:58
- We quickly run across the shipping containers and rescue the workers, killing the bad guys down below before we leave the area so they don't kill a hostage hidden offscreen. We jump down onto a panel, entering prone mode and activating it at the same time, then jumping up and unproning in midair, so we can hop on the crates and into the toxic bath. We knock 2 barrels down so we can hop across using the left platform, then go prone through the stairs and launch ourselves forward. We damage boost down the meat grinders, then kill a bunch a dudes so we can grab the gloves and medkit. We perform a grenade jump so we can skip lifting the crate with liquid. We magdump the glass to save the employee from drowning (if we run away without having it drain fast enough, he will always die when passing the flame thrower). Thawing out the door, we trigger one of the nitrogen canisters to freeze the door, then run up and break the door.
- We trigger Hero Mode right before turning the corner, so the guy on minigun breaks. We down to the 2 hostages and save them, then get to the platform controls and hop through, bypassing the majority of the section by abusing our holster stealth while hopping on the shipping containers so we can get into truck and beat the stage.
Fernandez Warehouse - 3:17
- We wait to leave the van, then grab the first thugs AR and run into the control booth. We cap the bad guy, grab the rocket fuel objective list and activate the button on his desk, sending the truck inside. We run over to the nearby boxes and jump into the oncoming truck, hopping over the wall and running inside the building. We hop up some more boxes, do some nifty platofmring and run inside to "save Lucy" then run down to the next checkpoint.
- We pop our medkit and crouch back jump so we don't set off the room full of bad guys, then head through a door to trigger one of the guys dancing to DnB. We shoot a door panel control and then proceed to crouch slide through the warehouse floor, getting onto the catwalk to setoff some fireworks.
- We kill the most pathetic mini-boss of all time, then save a minute of running around by jumping up and triggering the conveyor controls from underneath their platform. We then crouch slide through the conveyors, making our way to the next bossfight. This boss, a female assassin who's name I don't care enough to look up, can spawn in 1 of 3 locations on the floor above the missile, running back and forth shooting John and running behind doors hidden around pillars, chosen by RNG. We manpiulate where she spawns by moving the camera around and spinning McClain about, until we get the spawn point that's advantageous. This cannot be 1 or 2 cycled on Hard mode, as far as I can tell, as she will always escape before you can reload. We trigger her stall animation on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cycle to get in some extra damage.
Nakatomi Plaza - 3:51
- Ah, Nakatomi Plaza, a perfect place to spend the Christmas holiday. Running past Al and skipping his dialog, we trigger the elevator ambush early and head upstairs. When the elevator reaches floor 22, we run in to speak to Gruber on a laptop, and trigger a cutscene.
- Running outside and down the scaffolding, we head back to the elevators. We wait to go past 2 trap floors, and hit floor 25, where Gruber has managed to haul enormous 20mm Vulcan miniguns into the officespace.
- We kill some bad guys and get the High Powered AR, which we will be using the rest of the game. (despite the exploding bullets, it does no more damage than a basic pistol. However, it fires a shot on every frame, which makes it unbeaten for DPS besides the Dual SMGs, which are no longer found in this part of the game) We run through some bad dudes, hop on a table and talk back to Gruber.
- We speak to Lucy, run upstairs and grab the codes, hopping in and out of the window, then finish clearing out the room. We wait on Lucy, then mash open door to cause it to vanish from existence and save us a few frames. We bypass the Grube boss fight by hitting (what I think is a debug trigger the developers accidently left in) a spot under the stair case leading to the helipad, completing the mission.
The Holmes Observatory - 4:58
- We start off by avoiding the landmine of the ground and grabbing the rocket launcher, firing off a shot ASAP to kill the chopper. We then wait for the chopper to crash and blast the door open. (if we aren't far enough away the chopper deals 999 damage and instant kills McClain) We get the circuit breaker and hop down a tree, using it as a platform to hop across and saving us 20~ seconds of running down and killing enemies. We talk to a cop and bug out his speech, getting the walkie talkie and telling Al to fuck off. We disarm a bomb and continue forwards by moving the observatory dome (we move it just far enough to the left that enemies do not aggro and kill us from the ground while we are climbing) After disarming another bomb, it's onto the next checkpoint.
- We kill some thugs and grab a medkit, which we immediately use so we can hop down and damage boost into the next hall, disarming the third bomb. We get another bomb disarmed, kill 2 thugs (the others can damage us but not enough to kill us) and make our way down the maintenance corridor to activate a button. We save the hostages, knock down the globe and disarm the bomb, all within 3 seconds, then hit another checkpoint after running past more minigun guards.
- We skip the final enemy gauntlet entirely by just hopping down the stairs, activating Hero Mode to turn the final boss showdown with Frontier into a complete joke. We directly into him so his bullets can't hit us, pumping hot lead into his big dumb face until he plops over. We dash back the way we came, all the enemies now having despawned, jumping up when hitting the final door just as all the ret of our bullets do. That's it! It's over! It's finally over!
- The final ingame time presented on the stats screen is 38:26
A special thanks to the runner 'Sigh A-Nide' who holds the WR and made an excellent set of tutorial videos on tricks for this game. https://www.youtube.com/@sighahnide689
Yippy kai-yay mother fucker.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Well, I know I am excepted to write up a good review here...but honestly, I might disappoint. What I can say, is that this run leaves all human effort in the dust. Your ability to manage each round is far beyond any normal RNG, as you have to manipulated the AI to group up or lure people to the right place for better optimization. I might sound like a broken record, but this reminds me a lot of the manipulation that is done with Super Metroid TASes, where certain tasks require the repositioning of enemies in order to escape a room faster. Overall, this was an impressive run that has a super strength over humans...as it is roughly 17 minutes faster than the WR. Now, I realize that some strategies were missed, but honestly...this is not enough to strike this down. Heck, I even missed an important trick in my F-Zero submission. I think this run can hold its own without that being in there, as I doubt any future RTA run could even come close to this time without a significant find. Just remember, new discoveries will certainly be made in the future. We don't expect you to find everything possible.
In regards to entertainment, there are a number of places that I chuckled at. Your use of "down-time" held my attention...especially when you shot walls to reflect writing. Oh..yes, I saw your signature shot in the wall. Nobody would even dare try to take your inputs and claim them for their own work! LOL Also, I loved how you played around with people in your conversations. I cringed when I thought you were actually shooting an innocent person.
Now I know this is a stretch, but I find that the presentation of this entire movie could possibly receive a rating of "Stars". I will make mention of it to our senior staff and hope for the best.
Well, congratulations on this work. Even though you have a "lower than expected" re-record count, it appears you did a lot of hard work. I can't imagine how this could be easily put together, especially that it deters your from going back to fix mistakes. That tells me that the game must be a real pain to deal with.
Accepting.
feos: Processing...