First I'll cover John Woo,
acclaimed Hong Kong action movie director who
is behind Stranglehold. Now I've seen most of
his top movies; Hard Boiled, The Killer, Bullet
In The Head, Police Story, and his western movies
Hard Target, Broken Arrow, Face/Off. I like
a good action movie or a good crime/drama, but
none of his movies have been very memorable
for me. In fact I can barely remember a thing
about Hard Boiled, and it's only been a couple
years since I saw it! Stranglehold is the video
game sequel to Hard Boiled. I'm not sure that
it really features much of the plot, it's really
just the same guy (Tequila, voiced/played by
Chow Yun-Fat) in a completely different story.
The story in Stranglehold follows
Tequila as he tries to get his long lost love
and child back from a gang, who are using them
to blackmail another gang. So Tequila sides
with both gangs at some stage in order to get
his family back. The story is okay - plenty
of action movie cliches and rather predictable,
but at least there is a story going on with
cut-scenes throughout. I would have hoped the
game would have featured something a little
more interesting coming from John Woo; I could
have thought up this plot in five minutes, but
a game with a good story is rare. But the player
model looks just like Chow Yun-Fat, which is
great.
The gameplay in Stranglehold
is straight-up action mixed with Timeshift and
Max Payne. Bullet-time is important and used
constantly during battle. There is a cover system,
but it's not necessary, thank god, but jumping
is missing. You also have special abilities
which build up over time as you kill bad guys
- simple health boosts, precise slow motion
sniping, a fury mode where you can't be hurt
and don't lose ammo and a spinning attack. They
were good little features, in particular the
sniping and fury were very helpful during boss
fights. But I ended up using the health boost
the most.
Weapons are all okay. You have
only two weapon slots so I mostly stuck with
the few machine guns and pistols. You do go
through ammo quick and have to switch weapons
often, but there are plenty around. Only the
shotgun I didn't like - it was a bit useless
unless at very close range. Overall the combat
was fun and quite constant. Sometimes it felt
a bit Painkiller-esque as you seem to enter
one arena and have a set number of spawning
enemies before you can continue to the next
arena, but other parts of the game were more
flowing so Midway didn't overdo the arena feel.
Nor did they make the common mistake of endless
spawns until the player moves forward - I really
hate games that do that.
Stranglehold does feature a
checkpoint system, so marks down for that as
always. But it's not so bad here as the game
won't have you dying over and over. I played
on the lowest skill setting because I hate checkpoint
replays, so I only died several times during
the game at the most (mostly boss fights), but
it wasn't stupidly easy either. There was still
some challenge and strategic gameplay involved.
The final level was suitably tough.
Stranglehold uses Unreal Engine
3.0, so it's no surprise that the game looks
good. Unfortunately Midway really struggle with
the structure of the levels from an aesthetic
viewpoint, instead relying on lots of debris
and detail instead of fantastic open levels.
The levels are often very small and tight. When
I got to the Slums level it started out with
a great looking scene over a run-down city,
but before I knew it the level had turned into
trekking through tiny rooms, sewers and corridors.
You also get to play through a museum, a penthouse
building, a massive restaurant, even the Hong
Kong marketplace, but while they all look really
good, they're also quite small. Only the Tai
O island opens up a little, filled with wooden
huts and walkways through the island bays.
Strangehold may not do islands
as pretty as Crysis or restaurants and casinos
as impressive as Rainbow 6, but there's nothing
to really complain about with the design.
The only major bug forced me
to change the resolution every time I started
the game or I'd just get a black screen. A minor
annoyance though since I completed the game
almost in a single sitting.
Usually after playing a game
I know exactly what it did wrong and what to
complain about. But in Stranglehold, to be honest,
there's nothing really that bad here. It's just
a good, action-packed game to add to the collection.
Decent design, fun gameplay. Perhaps it's only
big flaw is it's very short length and only
seven levels.
