The Besson game you'll ever Luc at! Let's Play The Fifth Element

01: Nucleolab
02: NYPD
03: Escape From NYPD + Tutorial
04: Cornelius (K)
05: Cornelius (L)
06: Zorg's HQ (L)
07: Zorg's HQ (K)
08: Escape From Zorg's HQ
09: Depths of N.Y. (K)
10: Depths of N.Y. (L)
11: The Factory (K)
12: The Factory (L)
13: Astroport (K)
14: Astroport (L)
15: Call From Zorg
16: Fhloston Flight (K)
17: Fhloston Flight (L)
18: Fhloston Paradise (K)
19: Fhloston Paradise (L)
20: Machine Room (K)
21: Machine Room (L)
22: Free Cornelius
23: Bomb Alert (K)
24: Bomb Alert (L)
25: Egyptian Temple (L)
26: Egyptian Temple (K)

The Fifth Element is a 1998 third-person action-adventure game developed for the Playstation by Kalisto Entertainment (Nightmare Creatures, Fury of the Furries) and published by Activision (Apocalypse, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style). Following along with the events of the 1997 film, players assume the roles of Korben Dallas and Leeloomina� Lekatariba Lamina-Tcha� Ekbat De Sebat on a mission to gather up four ancient stones and save the world from Absolute Evil.

Get in your hover-taxi and buckle up, because this game is primed to explode -- this is the ride.

I'm Phenwah, joined once again by Lobst and DemoWeasel. Welcome to The Fifth Element!

Note: this game uses solely footage and dialogue from the film for its cutscenes, and we're going to be talking over them. If you haven't seen the film, you'll probably get lost pretty quickly, as the game makes very little effort to fill in the gaps between story beats. Also, it's a genuinely good piece of entertainment and worth a watch on its own.

Heh, all three of their faces in that screencap perfectly express my reaction upon learning that this game exists.

On the other hand, this will probably be an entertaining LP, if the first video is any indication!

It was quite famous in its time. I don't think you could call it the worst of all PSX games after the system went through its lengthy fat-Elvis period, but it held the title for a good long while in the late '90s.

I'm mad because they never released the Fifth Element action figures because Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman wouldn't sign over their likeness rights. So I'll just watch this instead.

Wanamingo over on SA pointed out that The Fifth Element is on Netflix Instant, so I've slipped a link to it into the OP for folks who'd like to follow along. Also, here is a behind-the-scenes image explaining why the game's FMVs as presented in this LP don't look like total trash.

I will do my best not to disappoint!

Metacritic doesn't have an aggregate score for the game but IGN gave it a 5, which I'll choose to wildly misinterpret into a 3-out-of-5 instead of an F-.

And yet rights acquisitions didn't hold this game back at all!

Leeloo's been reconstructed, but Korben got arrested during the procedure and now we've gotta break him out!

Today's video is pretty short, so I padded it out with the game's tutorial. I never really understood why Korben and Leeloo fled the police station separately; it strikes me as kind of lazy writing on Luc Besson's part.


(fun fact: the growly-looking cop in this screenshot is Sam Douglas, who you may recognize from Heavy Rain)

You know, if you actually really want a game with a character modeled after Chris Tucker with a special Cower Power, Resident Evil Outbreak has you covered.

Now that Leeloo and Korben have reunited, it's time for them to split up again -- in this mission, it's up to Korben to get some matches from his apartment so he can save the world from Absolute Evil.


Was there a Genesis side-scrolling platformer based on the Friday movies?

I'd rather play a game with Mr Burns' Glower Power. It's super effective against Flower Power!

I guess you guys should just have considered things more carefully before making your one collective wish.



Also that's a lot of lives racked up so far. Will you eventually be blowing through them constantly in the later levels?

And is there a point where Corbin turns around so we can see the trapezius muscles one must assume adorn his chest?

While Korben was raiding his apartment before meeting up with Leeloo, Leeloo was raiding Cornelius's apartment before meeting up with Korben! It makes sense, don't worry.

You know, I thought I'd get used to it, but I literally cannot avoid thinking of Resident Evil with Leeloo's footfalls there. Is that actually a public domain sound sample?

Funny how both of those guys now have a few figures each to his credit.

Shit, Willis just spent a movie playing THE action figure.

Cornelius got kidnapped by Zorg henchmen and it's up to Korben and Leeloo to break him out! They make such a great team~


I'm aware of a small microphone-placement issue on my end in this video and some other videos we recorded in the same commentary session; I managed to remove most of the pops, but had to dismiss the rest of them as known-shippable. We also had to switch from Skype to Google+ Hangouts for a bit, and the latter apparently really likes to adjust the system's microphone levels and make things clippy every now and then. Sorry!

It doesn't help that I boost the game volume through a dynamic-range compressor to make the auto-ducking more consistent. So when there's nothing else going on, the footsteps are the loudest thing in the feed.

GI Joe: Retaliation was great.

In today's video, Korben has to deactivate Zorg HQ's central security system so he and Leeloo can escape with Father Cornelius*.


*Father Cornelius not included.

I'm PRETTY SURE I know the answer, but would those crawly tunnels have been open for Leeloo if you'd played through as Abs Back first?

I like how they repurposed that ending clip to represent Zorg HQ blowing up. Like Zorg just happened to be out on a smoke break during all of that, and he's not even surprised when it happens.

Zorg's HQ (K) had to be reuploaded to resolve an issue when viewing the video in HD that was brought to my attention over on Something Awful; if you experienced a sudden migrane or bloody nose as a result of the changing time-stream, I apologize!

Nope.

Here's another of the game's shorter levels! I'm think the back-of-box copy editor might've forgotten about the "escape from" sequences when they arrived at the "23 mind-blowing levels" count.

There sure were a lot of 1-ups lying around that level. Was that to offset all the cheap random deaths, or just... well, we need SOME power-ups, and there's no combat in this one!

Here's the moment you've all been waiting for: the hover-taxi chase sequence!

Hey, let's get lost in New York again.

I choose to interpret that as a single title. Look Who's Talking 4: Armageddon

Also because WELL NOW AREN'T WE ALL CURIOUS, I had to go and look for Star Wars/5th Element crossover fan art, and all I could find was this:


But! As I continuied scrolling down, hoping to find SOMETHING else, I turned up THIS:


Does this game eventually have highly trained fleas, and a brain in a jar as a boss?

I never knew Gaultier did CoLC. I... should have, in retrospect.

Depending on the ambient temperature, one of those people is very uncomfortable.

Apologies for the present delay! YouTube's having trouble "converting the video file" for the next mission, even though it's had no issues converting 10 files just like it, so I'm trying to figure out why that is.

In today's video, Korben is reunited with his faithful taxi cab while Leeloo is off doing some stuff we'll find out about in the next video (it involves platforming).

After watching the entire level, I think that's actually supposed to be a foundry where they're smelting down your repossessed taxi. The meter maids of 20XX don't fuck around.

It's time for some more fun in the Factory with Leeloo!