The main characters of the game, according to the storyline, are John McClane and Chris Thompson, who plan to rescue the daughter of U.S. President Caroline Powell from terrorists. The player navigates through levels alone or cooperatively while facing enemies. Attacks can be made against opponents using both hands and feet, or with weapons and health kits found after battles. However, all inventory collected (except for the pistol) is lost at the start of each level, and the player must gather everything anew. When a character moves in rooms, a small input prompt appears on the screen using an interactive Quick Time Event system: a player must press the displayed button combinations within a certain time to defeat the enemy or avoid injuries. If the heroes fail to perform the QTE, there are boss fights at the end of each level, which might include the biker Hog, the Mexican wrestler Jocko, the twin brothers Oishi and Tubbs, Spiderbots robots, and Wolf “White Fang” Hongo. Although the game has several endings, the final boss will always be Wolf Hongo, with the player fighting him on the roof of a skyscraper. The Sega Saturn and PlayStation 2 versions of the game include an old Deep Scan arcade game where you need to destroy submarines and obtain extra lives for doing so. In the remaining platforms, the player is only given three lives to proceed, and if they lose them, the game restarts.
