Immortal John SaysDeath of the Reprobate is wacky renaissance painting Die Hard with a Vengeance, and an ideal game for the holiday periods long dark teatime of the soulIt might not teach you who the 21st President is, but you will be able to hum the tune of Ballet CCLXVIII from Michael Praetorius Dances from Terpischore on demand.Image credit: VG247 Article by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on Dec. 26, 2024 Warning: Spoilers for both Death of the Reprobate and Die Hard With A Vengeance lie ahead.One day, youre just living your life, and then bang, some dickhead has to come in and mess everything up.For the protagonist of Death of the Reprobate - a point-and-click indie game thats one big collage of wacky renaissance paintings - its a messenger being wheeled in on the bad boys barrow, interrupting some lovely execution orderings to tell him that his father, Immortal John, is dying.For John McClane, in Die Hard With A Vengeance, its an unknown baddie blowing up a department store, and then ringing up the NYPD demanding to take to the suspended detective who once dropped Professor Snape out of a window near the top of the Nakatomi Plaza.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. For both, its a bit of a bummer. Driven by a desire to weasel into some nice inheritance in one case, and by the fact that lives on the line are more important than a hangover in the other, the pair head off to heed their respective callings.Both are forced to meet with men they hate, but who have power over them, in the forms of Walter Cobb and Immortal John, in packed meeting rooms filled with these two figures various cronies. Then, the job begins. For Death of the Reprobates protagonist, its to do seven good deeds for the townsfolk, in order to prove that you arent just some selfish, godless wanker. For McClane, its to head off to Harlem wearing a sign designed to get him killed, with the threat from the mysterious Simon that more destruction will be wrought if the instruction isnt followed.Its a crappy situation, but youve gotta do what youve gotta do. And the good news is, both men are set to be supplied with a mate who has links to a god to help guide them through the tough tasks ahead.For DOTRs protagonist, its a literal fellow resembling the lord himself, dangling little signs indicating who needs a favour doing for them from a little fishing rod. McClane, meanwhile, has his life saved by Samuel L Jacksons Zeus Carver, named after the Greek god of thunder, and cursed from then on to follow the divorced cop on his painful pilgrimages to various locations across the city. We all know a Powerful David. | Image credit: VG247An array of different challenges await these poor fools, as they voyage from point to point in the surrealist nightmare that is New Yorks urban jungle, and a relatively mundane by comparison fictional town constructed entirely from the landscapes, portraits, and other doodles of artists like John Everett Millais, Willem Koekkoek, and David Teniers the younger.Some, like McClanes trip to Harlem, and Immortal Johns heirs quest to find some apparel thatll allow some men to engage in a bit of gentle bottom fisting out in the country air without traumatising the locals, involve clothing. Some, like the water jug puzzle McClane and Zeus have to do to prevent a bomb going off in a park and the bit of monkey dice roll estimating DOTRs main character has to do when he visits the tavern, involve the kind of maths you hated at school.Some involve children, like the house full of screaming, crying, and hungry tykes yelling toff like Feed me! that DOTRs protagonist has to find a way to settle down, or like that bomb Simon says hes planted in a school which leads Cobb and co on a city-wide search. Some, like the train bomb McClane just about manages to detach before it rolls into a packed station, are designed to be impossible to accomplish by conventional means, which is why he probably wishes he could be handed a magic flute by a goat king, like DOTRs protagonist is.Getting through all of this - including solving the riddles given out by Simon in one case and some weird people blocking entry to a forest in the other - is all about thinking outside the box, doing the unexpected, or the blatantly obvious in a couple of cases. Its mental gymnastics, right up until the moment everything flips on its head. We've all been there. | Image credit: VG247In McClanes case, he starts to figure out what Simon - real name Peter Gruber - is up to. Hes not out just to scare everyone and avenge his brother, hes also here to steal a ton of cash, a bit like DOTRs leading man. After nearly being drowned twice - once inside a dam, and then when Gruber sinks him and Zeus aboard a ship filled with slag - McClane is probably less of a fan of things being filled with water than the lady who wants you to turn a well into a hot tub in DOTR.With all of this over, it looks like our protagonists have both run all over town for nothing. DOTRs poor fella has to listen as his mean Uncle Vladimir twists all of his good deeds into sins in his relaying of them to the about to kick the bucket Immortal John, resulting in him being denied that precious inheritance. As McClane and Zeus are brought ashore, Gruber and his cohort escape with the stolen money.But its not over. McClane discovers the location where his foe is headed via a bottle of aspirin Gruber threw him, in one of the most Im literally shouting at my telly bad guy blunders of all time. At Immortal Johns funeral, the real god himself intervenes,m refusing to let the game end this way.And so begins a mad chase, both to a truckstop north of the US border and to start an apocalypse on the painted world. Birds are shot, swarms of locusts are unleashed, choppers are scrambled, and eventually both McClane and DOTRs protagonists end up facing their respective devils head on, but as underdogs. Being heroes, albeit flawed ones, they get away. Devil on your shoulder? | Image credit: VG247But their tales dont end there. For McClane, theres an awkward phone call to be made to Holly Gennaro. For DOTRs protagonist, theres some form of eternal damnation.Because the moment the camera stops rolling isnt the end to things for these characters. Theyre just living their lives in the narrative version of that weird armpit of the year between Christmas and the turning over of the calendar.