Stranglehold successfully captures the charm and feel of the Chow Yun Fat & John Woo movies
Stranglehold is a pretty old game, but I just played through it recently so I figured I’d give it a review. Looks like there’s enough content to write about that I will give it an indepth review instead of a quick one. I actually had low expectations going into this game and came out realizing that it was pretty fun. It could have benefited from a bit more polish, but at a retail price of $20 these days, I think it’s definitely worth it at present.
The Good:
- feels very much like a John Woo game: slow motion 360 degree shots, double fisted gunplay, doves flying, etc.
- quite satisfying to play as Chow Yun Fat if you are a fan of his movies
- interesting and satisfying style system that encourages you to kill enemies in a more “stylish” manner
The Bad:
- multiplayer sucks
- singleplayer a bit short
- storyline is hokey
Intro
I loved the John Woo & Chow Yun Fat movies growing up. I re-watched movies like The Killer, Hard Boiled, and A Better Tomorrow more times than I can remember. Reading Wikipedia has taught me something new about those movies I loved and why I loved them:
Heroic Bloodshed is a genre of Hong Kong action cinema revolving around stylized action sequences and dramatic themes such as brotherhood, duty, honor, redemption and violence. The term heroic bloodshed was coined by editor Rick Baker in the magazine Eastern Heroes in the late 1980s, specifically referring to the styles of directors John Woo and Ringo Lam. Baker defined the genre as “a Hong Kong action film that features a lot of gun play and gangsters rather than kung fu. Lots of blood. Lots of action.” Woo’s film A Better Tomorrow was said to have started the heroic bloodshed genre. Woo has also been a major influence in its continued popularity and evolution his later works, namely Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow 2, and The Killer.
The basis behind Stranglehold is that it was created to be a video-game sequel to the movie Hard Boiled. The game was overseen by John Woo, and Chow Yun Fat would reprise his role as Inspector Tequila, just like in the movie Hard Boiled. Sounds like the concept behind a winning game, but the big issue I had was the game was developed by Midway, a videogame company that has yet to produce an awesome console title. Knowing the resume of Midway, I decided to hold off on buying the title at launch.
After discovering that it cost $30 million to make the Stranglehold game, Midway had the audacity to claim to shareholders that it would be no problem because Stranglehold would be the top selling game for the 2007 holiday, beating out the likes of Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, etc. Yeah pretty absurd. The game went on to sell about a quarter million copies on the 360 and 160,000 on the PS3 in the United States – not really up there in terms of numbers. But to its credit, I must say that this is definitely one the better games that Midway has released on a console, and the use of the Unreal Engine 3.0 and Havok physics engine may have certainly contributed.
Adored by his many fans, the shades and dark suit outfit for Chow Yun Fat makes a return in this game
Storyline and Premise
To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to the storyline at all, skipping out on most of the cutscenes throughout my first playthrough of the game. The storyline is pretty poorly told anyway (plus the lack of subtitles made it difficult to follow the conversations at times), but that’s not why I’d imagine anyone would buy the game. You want to kick butt as Chow Yun Fat wearing sun-glasses indoors holding a gun in each hand!
Thankfully, you’re able to do all of that and more. It’s funny how much of the game is devoted to just Chow Yun Fat himself – in each level he’s dressed in a different outfit so you have his various looks from different movies and scenes. On top of that, he has facial expressions like gritting his teeth when he’s getting shot at, just like in the movies. Then there’s even the elevators in the game where you’re in an elevator for several seconds waiting for it to ascend, and you can just pan around Chow Yun Fat to admire his face or something. It’s amusing, but a little scary at the same time that one want be that much into the guy.
The storyline isn’t anything really interesting. Chow Yun Fat’s character decides to investigate the death of a police officer in Hong Kong, gets tangled up with the Triad, and ends up blasting his way through seven levels of Asian and Russian guys. I didn’t really care that much about the personality of the enemies and bosses – pretty much one boring Asian guy right after another. I wonder if non-Asian people were turned off by this game because it was mostly Asian characters?
The destructability in the game is illustrated here – those pillars were completely in tact before the firefight started.
Gameplay Mechanics
Combat
The most important aspect of this game is its combat. If the combat didn’t work the entire game would be unplayable, as the entire attraction of playing this game is to feel like you’re in a John Woo movie and dropping bad guys left and right. Fortunately, the combat works marvelously. The various weapons like handguns, SMGs, assault rifles, and the like, all have a good feel and killing enemies is rarely ever a chore. Hundreds of thugs appear and you just drop them like nothing – quite satisfying.
What makes the combat even more satisfying is that practically everything in the environment is destructible. Battlefield: Bad Company made a big deal of this when it was released a few months back, but Stranglehold was already doing this last year. It’s neat that you can just lift a table up to take some cover, but then you see the table break right in front of you or the chunks of rock flying from a pillar you’re standing behind get torn apart. It creates a very realistic feel to the game, but of course there are certain things in the environment that won’t take damage (understandable for the sake of level design). There are often times when you are encouraged to take out enemies using the environment, such as shooting air conditioner units or signs to fall upon them. At the end of each level it informs you how much destruction in terms of dollars you caused to the environment, which is a nice touch.
One thing that is littered throughout the game is the “Mexican standoff”. I put the term Mexican standoff in quotes because in the movies, it usually entails Chow Yun Fat and his partner(s) up against several other enemies where everyone is pointing a gun at each other. One person fires, and then everyone just goes crazy. Stranglehold tries to recreate some of this craziness but the problem is Chow Yun Fat is completely by himself in the game’s standoffs. As you walk through a door, suddenly five guys all show up and point their guns at you. This changes over to slow motion mini-game where the camera focuses you on each enemy so you can dodge the bullets they fire while landing your own bullets on each one. It’s kind of meh, but adds a little flair to the game I guess.
Most of the environment is interactable, such as Chow Yun Fat sliding down this dragon statue now to take out an unsuspecting enemy.
Style Points/Combos
What separates Stranglehold even more from the traditional shooters is the amount of interaction Chow Yun Fat has with the environment. The assortment of moves he has is a great homage to the John Woo movies as he is able to dive in any direction (the most fun is jumping up against a wall, and leaping off the wall on your back and shooting enemies as you come down), slide down banisters, swing across chandeliers, slide across tables, etc.
To encourage the over-the top stylish antics of diving onto a food cart and sliding across the room to nail three different enemies in the head, Stranglehold implements a Style system. Any enemy you kill is ranked between 1 to 5 stars. A kill from a regular body shot gets you 1-2 stars, a headshot typically gives you 2-3 stars, a stylish kill (where you’re interacting with the environment) gives you 3-4 stars, and a headshot when interacting with the environment gives you 5 stars. Although there’s no bonus for it, killing enemies in a row within a certain period of time allows you to chain your style meter to see how far you can get through a sequence being completely stylish. There’s a sequence on the first level where you can slide down a banister, shoot down signs onto your enemies, then leap from the banister onto a rolling cart, take out enemies coming out the door, and the run up another banister and killing another group of enemies along the way. This whole sequence would net you something like an 80 starpoint combo, which can certainly makes you feel like a total badass.
A nice touch is that the style points you earn are considered the currency for unlocking all of the special features in the game such as the artwork, bonus videos, and unlockable multiplayer characters.
Tequila Time
What makes all of your stylish kills possible is Tequila Time, a meter that allows you to slow down time, making it so you can land your headshots when you’re diving or jumping off a wall. It’s a meter right underneath your lifebar that regenerates when not in use, but can be turned on manually when you’re just walking around or turned on automatically when you’re in the middle of a stylish move.
Tequila Time is pretty much identical to the Bullet Time feature used in the Max Payne games, but what’s interesting is that the Bullet Time from those games was influenced by the John Woo movies, so now it’s all pretty much come around full circle: a John Woo video game using a feature that was used by another video game that was used in a John Woo movie.
On the easier difficulties, it’s not as necessary but on the hardest difficulties, you pretty much have to turn on Tequila Time when you’re just walking because one shot can potentially kill you.
Sometimes the game feels like a glorified shooting gallery but it’s up to your special moves to spice things up a bit!
Special Moves
In addition to the destruction, stylish moves, and Tequila Time, the feel for a John Woo movie is complete with the inclusion of Special Moves. Killing people and earning style points also feeds your special meter, which has four different special moves with varying requirements. Using anything up to a quarter of the meter will allow you to restore some of your health, while filling up a quarter meter allows you to perform a guided bullet shot. Basically, when you activate this special move you can target an individual across the map and it zooms in on them, allowing you to guide a single bullet to tear through their head. It’s pretty much a sniper shot that is welcome in a game without any scopes or zoom-in.
The latter two special moves, which require half and three quarters of your special bar, respectively, are right out of the John Woo movies. At 50%, you can perform the Barrage special move, one where Chow Yun Fat just throws up a grimace, “strongly” reloads whatever weapon he’s holding, and fires right at whatever he sees for several seconds with invulnerability, unlimited ammo, and extra damage. It’s basically him going “postal” like in the movies. The 75% special move allows for a spin attack, one where once activated, Chow Yun Fat automatically spins around in a circle in slow motion, emotionally firing everywhere, doves flying, and all enemies in the room dying instantly. It’s great.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer seems to have only ranked and unranked Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, which I never bothered to try out. There were basically no one playing it anymore these days, which is understandable due to several more prominent multiplayer titles out there. I didn’t think the style of these games works well for multiplayer (Max Payne games never had multiplayer, maybe for this same reason).
Riding carts are a great way to tear through a crowd as your surprise and speed will produce an advantage.
Achievement System
Based on what was available, I’m pretty content with the way the single player Achievements were planned in the game. There are Achievements for beating the game on each difficulty that are stackable too so you don’t have to play through the game on each difficulty to earn its corresponding Achievement. Then there are Achievements for killing people with the various moves in the game. I like that the developers laid out the Achievements enough to get you to try out the cool stuff like killing people swinging from chandeliers, riding on carts, and getting a style combo greater than 50. Then there are Achievements for unlocking everything in the game, giving you more reasons to play through it more than once.
The Multiplayer Achievements were planned poorly though, as several of these Achievements required you to host several matches on a particular level. If everyone is hosting, then who is going to join the other games? Why bother trying to get everyone to host games instead of joining others? Fortunately, the points for the multiplayer Achievements are only about a quarter of the total 1000.
I can’t get enough of the backwards diving headshots in slow motion. Just beautiful…
Final Thoughts
I actually enjoyed Stranglehold a lot, but I think it’s because I have always had a certain fondness for the classic John Woo and Chow Yun Fat movies. This game works very well fans like me, but the mechanics of the game are still quite enjoyable that even someone who doesn’t know who John Woo or Chow Yun Fat are can still enjoy it. While the hardest difficulty, Hard Boiled, was pretty brutal, the easiest difficulty, Casual, was the most fun I’ve had in a while with a shooting game. Often times when I play shooting games and try the easiest difficulty, I find myself nearly falling asleep because there’s really no challenge.
Stranglehold on Casual difficulty is probably the best way to enjoy the game. On the easiest difficulty, you take minimal damage and your special meter fills faster, so it encourages you to try to really play stylishly. On easy mode I was sliding across tables, diving off buildings, double fisting pistols and pumping guys full of bullets as I sat in awe over how cool I felt. In a sense, playing it on the easiest difficulty allows you to challenge yourself to see how stylishly you can play – the enemies are just background as you rack up your style. Playing on Hard Boiled was a completely different game, one where I had to play timidly, taking cover and hiding wherever I went. It was not the Chow Yun Fat I had grown up with!
I give the game a B at its current $20 retail price. Pretty entertaining, but it’s definitely not good enough to be a B at its $60 launch price. In comparison to other games, I wish the game was longer, as seven levels can be completed in about five hours or so. Double that length, add in a better storyline, and make multiplayer more playable and the game would have been excellent. But still, while the game is short, it tends to have more replayability than others because of all the cool moves you can do. The game sometimes feels like it isn’t really about moving forward through the level but rather how you make your way through the level. It feels almost like a shooting game with skateboarding mechanics due to how Chow Yun Fat can interact with the environment.
