Lethal Weapon it is not
I am a Die Hard and Lethal Weapon fan, and I also like First Blood, but I'm much more into Lethal Weapon TBH. I think A Good Day to Die Hard is the best film to complete this franchise. Live Free or Die Hard is not a Die Hard movie and it's a terrible movie. It did not gain popularity among anyone. It's garbage that has aged horribly all for the wrong reasons. And its PG-13 rating is a complete joke. I saw it back in 2011 when it first came out, and I didn't like it one single bit. Even worse, it was also a box-office bomb.
As for this game from 1991, released twenty years before Live Free or Die Hard and three years before Die Hard with a Vengeance, released three years after the first film and one year after the second, this is one of the first NES games to feature a different ending in the case of both the player character and boss character defeating themselves. In fact the game is more intelligent, more involved, than the likes of Contra, with multiple endings depending on your actions. But words cannot describe what's wrong with the game itself.
First of all, the cover art. That's all I have to say.
Second, it can be too rigid to follow the plot of the film: at one point of the game, if the player finds the fire hose and tries to jump off the roof, John McClane will say something like "I'm not crazy to do this, no thanks." Yet, he has no qualms with jumping out of the window and dying instantly. The irony is that John McClane used a firehose to get to one of the floors from the roof and in game this is reserved for near the end should you want to do this the hard way.
This game is extremely difficult. Compared to a Lethal Weapon game, that game is extremely easy. But here, it's very well possible that the first enemy in the game can easily kill you. Make the mistake of going to the 33rd floor and you are ambushed by more terrorists than were in the film, a beginner's trap guaranteed to catch out unwary players. Actually, the enemies are difficult to kill: The guards have crack shots against you, and they will bombard the screen with bullets and stun grenades and reload quickly. Terrorists spray and pray in a large area before taking time to reload. This type of tactical gameplay would be something many players are not prepared for. Some enemies move around too quickly, and your bullets end up missing them. Oh, and if you do die, you have to restart from the beginning, with all of your progress gone.
Outside of the generic kill all the terrorists, there are numerous optional objectives: radio the police before the second lock is undone, find the rocket and blueprints to blow up the computer for more time and supplies, find Heinrich when Hans deploys him and take his detonators, etc.
While the cutscene graphics are well drawn, the graphics during action scenes are confusing and lack detail. It's tough to tell what's broken glass and what's not. It doesn't help that the game was developed by Pack-In-Video, the same developer behind the terrible Rambo game on the same console three years prior to this game. The frame rate is quite choppy for an NES game. It's evident when there are more than two enemies on screen.
There's one other thing, and that's the soundtrack, which is at least decent and plays appropriate music at the right time.
I say just stick to Lethal Weapon or something.