The Corner Penthouse

The Italian Job video game is based on the 1969 movie starring Michael Caine (as Charlie Croker), Noel Coward (as Mr. Bridger), and Benny Hill (as Professor Simon Peach). Interestingly, the movie was remade in 2003 with Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, and Donald Sutherland. That movie also had a tie-in video game on the PlayStation 2, which is a completely different game than the one I will be reviewing today.

The plot of the movie and the game is very simple: A gang of crooks steal four million dollars through a traffic jam, while avoiding the police and mafia. HOW they do it is the fun part!

The game contain 16 missions across three different locales. Eight are in London, six are in Turin, and the final two are in the Alps.

I'd like to preface these next few paragraphs by telling you that I saw the film in it's original widescreen format (aka letterbox) on the Speedvision cable channel. Although this is a commercial channel, I presume the film was not edited. If it WAS edited, some of what I'm about to write may be incorrect.

Out of the eight London missions, only two are directly based on the film: "The Ambassador's Car" is implied in the film (they don't explicitly show you driving from the prison directly to the garage to pick up your car). "Peaches For Peaches" is also implied in the film (we see the hookers outside in Charlie's car while at Peach's place, but we never see him actually pick them up and take them there). The other six missions are completely made up using characters from the film.

The first mission in Turin is completely made up. It's just there to help you locate the places that you'll be visiting in later missions. I don't know why they make you visit the police station, since it is never visited in the game (or the film). The other five missions are directly based on the film (although the game maker's had to take a few minor liberties to make them work in the context of the game). Both Alps missions come directly from the film.

This is the only game that I can think of based on a film (or TV) license that makes PERFECT use of that license. To have a game this faithful to it's license is extremely rare.


GAMEPLAY

Before you even get to play any missions you have to deal with an extremely long loading time of about 30 seconds for each mission. This could be enough to turn some people off, and make them turn off the game, but I had enough patience to wait out each of these loadings.

Some of the missions are extremely fun, some are downright annoying, and one or two are hard as heck. Since I couldn't pass a few of the missions, I had to use the in-game cheat code to unlock all of the missions. This was great because it allowed me to play all of the missions (or at least attempt all of them) and I could keep playing my favorite ones.

"The Getaway" mission in Turin (a near-exact recreation of the film's iconic Mini Cooper chase scene) is one of my favorites even though I could never pass it. The reason why I couldn't pass it is one of the game's few faults: the cops. They are completely annoying, but are a lot better than the cops in Driver 2. As you get their attention, they (of course) pursue you. The only way to get the cops off your butt is to drive fast enough and take enough turns so as to lose them. When you have a timer counting down and a mission objective to take care of, this is a major annoyance. As if that wasn't bad enough, while they're chasing you, the cops are trying to write down your license plate number. If they get your whole number, you're busted (or "nicked" as the game calls it). Although this is a major improvement over the way the cops deal with you in Driver 2, it has one major flaw. Logically, and in real life, even when the cops get your entire license plate number, you can still drive away and have them chase you. For the game to simply have your mission end because the cops got your entire license plate number is ridiculous. Most often the cops are the reason why you'll fail missions (such as why I couldn't pass "The Getaway").


Using a walkthrough found at GameFaqs, I went into Free Ride mode and tried to recreate the path of "The Getaway." Although it didn't have the thrill and excitement of the actual mission, for the most part, I was able get a sense of what that mission is like ... and that was a lot of fun. It was because of that that I got interested in seeing the film (I first played the game without having seen the film). I wanted to see if the cool getaway in the game was just as cool in the movie. I never thought I'd say this about a game based based on a film, but the game's getaway was BETTER! The film cuts back and forth between the getaway chase and scenes that take place elsewhere at the same time. This completely throws off the continuity and excitement of the getaway. Still, a game that will make you want to see the movie it's based on is a good thing indeed (especially for the studio that owns the film and the license).

AUDIO/VIDEO

The music is a top-notch mixing of an instrumental of Quincy Jones' "Get A Bloomin' Move On" (aka The Self Preservation Society theme) from the film, bits of "Rule Britannia" (a traditional song also used in the film), and quirky background music that fits the setting perfectly. I enjoyed the Quincy Jones theme so much that I put the game CD in my computer's CD-Rom drive and extracted the short song to my hard drive for later recording onto a music CD so that I could listed to it with my regular music collection. How often do you want to do that with video game music?!?

The graphics are standard Playstation 1 graphics, though they're actually pretty good. There's nothing graphics-wise that stood out as being really bad or exceptionally good, so there's not much to say.

REPLAYABILITY

After finishing the main game ("The Italian Job" mode) you will have access to the Challenge mode, which consists of short missions with tough times where you will test your skills in braking, turning and jumping. There are five jump tests, but since all five use the same course, this gets boring real fast. There is one break test, but it isn't as hard as it initially seems. A checkpoint race on an icy road, a survival lap around the city, and two destructor races (one on an icy road and another viewed from overhead) round out the rest of the challenges.

Along with "The Italian Job," there are other modes that are unlocked from the start. They are:

• Checkpoint - You have to reach all of the checkpoints in the allotted time. Each checkpoint you reach gives you a little extra time to make it to the next one.

• Destructor - Here your mission is to destroy the line of cones in the sequence before the time runs out.

• Party Play - This is the multiplayer mode in which you can play with up to 8 people in different Checkpoint, Destructor and Challenge mode stages.

• Free Ride - Here you can cruise around London and (if you unlocked it) Turin in any car (you start off with one unlocked). You can use this mode to familiarize yourself with the cities, but be aware of the cops. You'll even find some secrets within this mode. Check the walkthrough here are GameFaqs for more info.

As you complete the missions in "The Italian Job" mode, you will unlock extra cars and tracks for these other modes.

The problem with all these extras is that they get boring after a while because it's just the same thing over and over again. At first it's fun, then it's just tedious.

TO BUY OR TO RENT?

Rent. The game is just too darn short to have as a permanent part of your collection, even with the unlockable extras.