I never saw Hard Boiled, which is apparently some of John Woo's best work. I have seen other John Woo movies though, like Mission Impossible 2, Face/Off, Broken Arrow, and Paycheck. Out of those, Paycheck is the only one I'd watch again, and that might be because I'm a tech guy myself and find the plot mildly interesting. It's safe to say I'm not a fan. Having said that, I think he should stick to movies, as all of those movies are better than Stranglehold.
Stranglehold has a serious identity problem. It wants to be a movie, but it just isn't. It clearly doesn't have the kind of budget that a game-wanting-to-be-a-movie needs to pull it off. To start the graphics are nothing to write home about. The character textures and lighting look plastic and completely emotionless. The animation is sufficient, although when you're switching between different types of moves, there's definitely a shift. This is in contrast to a game like Heavenly Sword where there's very little, if any, visible shift between motions.
One of Stranglehold's claim to fame is the destructible (and interactive) environments, and oh boy are they destructible. Just about everything can be blown up, much like a John Woo movie. The problem is that the debris from everything blowing up constantly fills the screen to the point where you can't see the guys you're supposed to be shooting. Another problem is that every level is littered with so much stuff, you can't run in a straight line without sliding over a table, or knocking something over, etc. In other words, the amount of junk in every section of every level is ridiculous and leads to a feeling of claustrophobia.
Go ahead, try to run to the other ride of the room while avoiding the tables.The sound is decent, I suppose. There's nothing great about it, but there's nothing bad about it either. The voice acting seems stiff, but that could be because the actors look stiff. Chow Yun-Fat gives the best performance, but everyone else phoned theirs in.
The gameplay is where it starts to come together. The interactivity of the environments ranges from sliding down rails to hanging from chandeliers to riding dining carts across the room while shooting at a veritable legion of bad guys. The gunplay is pretty good, actually. There's always plenty of ammo laying around, and plenty of guys to fill with it. Another great feature is Tequila Time. You gain Tequila Time by performing Woo-worthy cinematic-style sequences (like shooting a sign above someone's head, which then drops and kills them). There are 4 possible uses for Tequila Time, and the best one is a single-bullet kill shot. To do so, you press a direction on the directional pad (down, I believe), and the camera will zoom in and let you aim in first-person. Aim at whoever you'd like to dispatch, and fire. The camera will then follow the bullet and treat you to an outstanding location and body-part specific death scene of your victim. If every shot was like that, I'd still be playing the game.
Awesome.Unfortunately, the good parts are always balanced evenly with bad parts. In the case of Tequila Time, you'll find that if you happen to run up against a table, there's a good chance Tequila Time will activate and you'll suddenly see everyone running in slow-mo, using up your precious meter. I found myself hitting the Tequila Time button more often to turn it OFF than I did to turn it ON.
While you're running around shooting people, it may occur to you to use some of this "interactive" environment to your advantage. I must stress that this is an evil thought and must be immediately purged from your mind. The environment exists to prove that the environment can be interactive, not to actually be used interactively. You see, to use anything in the environment, you have to center the camera on it, hope it highlights, and press a button and hope that another object hasn't taken the focus from the highlight. If you do this correctly, you may be treated to some cool animation of Inspector Tequila doing something with the object. The downside is that while you're trying to get something to highlight, or pressing the button to interact with it, those pesky minions don't stop shooting you. Therefore, I urge a warning: Don't try to use the environment. It'll just kill you faster.
Man, look at all that crap. Is there a bad guy in there somewhere?As for another note about the gameplay, it seemed like no matter how many bad guys I shot, there were always more coming. I especially felt that way in the casino (the last level I played, by the way). In that level, you'd walk into a restaurant on the first floor, place 2 guitar cases full of guns anywhere you'd like (and take as long to do it as you need, there's no rush), and wait for the onslaught. Once the second case is placed, bad guys start pouring out of every doorway. There must be about 10 waves of 5 guys each. When I was done, I felt like taking a nap. I was a good gamer though, and continued to the next room... where the exact same thing happened. I finished that room too, and it took me to a room with a band playing and told me not to let the band die. Sure, OK, I'll do my best. After about 30 bad guys, I died. I reloaded, and died again. I repeated this procedure for the next hour, dying a total of around 10 times. That's when I'd had enough. I play games for entertainment, and maybe some challenge, but it became frustrating. After Amped, I do not allow myself to become frustrated at games like that.
Thus, I have to give Stranglehold a 5 out of 10. It has a few moments, but those moments were far outweighed by frustrating gameplay, last-gen graphics, and endless spawnpoints (seriously, the end boss must have a million minions). I will admit that I did not finish the game, so if it gets much better after the casino level, awesome... I just didn't see any of that promise.
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