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Stranglehold Review

2/11/07 | Michael Loder (Loads)

Is one of china’s greatest action heroes about to become the latest videogame toughguy

It’s been a while since we saw a good fast passed action shooter, and John Woo Presents us with Stranglehold the action shooter of the year. In Stranglehold, you step into the shoes of a local “on the edge” Chinese cop that begins the fight against street gangs that have his wife captive and are threatening to upset the peace in down town China. The game itself is good fun and will last you up to a good 12 hours of solid game play in which you will shoot, leap and go slow mo in order to take out any opponents you may run into. Now that’s all good and proper but Is this game really worth the $99.00 AU your going to fork out for this bad ass cop shooter?

Well the game is fun but however it can become a little repetitive and repetition (as we’ve seen) can kill a game as people these days are really looking for something new around every corner, not that stranglehold doesn’t do that, its just that most of the game is pretty linear and straightforward that it wont require too much of you mentally, pretty much just keep the enemy in your sights and gun them down is all there is to it. The game is seemingly simple with not to much as far as complexity goes and this can be a real let down to those of you who really like a strong story based game with lots of twists. How you play is simple there are three main buttons you use shoot, dive and switch weapons is pretty much all you really need. The game does offer you grenades (that aren’t introduced until about half way through the game) that can be thrown to create devastation and fear in your enemies. As far as complications go all that really happens is you receive new special moves that allow tequila to preform health boosts, Precision aiming and a Barrage attack that gives you unlimited ammo for a short period of time. The Multiplayer in stranglehold is somewhat stale and nothing to exiting, basically it is the one player game that allows you to go at it in a death match or team death match (not to much variety there) against your friends, again can lead to repetition fast and with not many people online playing stranglehold it makes it a reasonably stale online game (get halo 3) you can make use of your tequila time (slow mo) that in fact effects everyone in the match that can be frustraighting when your not involved in a battle and are just trying to navigate the map.

The environments are pretty much all destructible which is amazing to see when you pump a magazine into a shark hanging on a pier fishing dock and watching each piece fall into the water and making the satisfying splash sound. This is also great for shooting enemies through walls (being extremely satisfying). The graphics are really good and the cut scenes are extremely cliché police on the edge type things, giving you the real feeling of being in a John Woo Movie. There are a good few creative ideas that have been put into Stranglehold to give it that real action movie feel, things like being able to swing from a chandelier in slow mo and being taken on by a black hawk chopper in a large glass house (you know what they say never throw rocks at a glass house…how about bullets) that is absolutely cut like butter. This is all of coarse followed up with great sounds, each piece of glass, bullet shell and chuck of wood hitting the ground can be heard its nuts the amount of detail and sounds they have managed to pack into this game.

Stranglehold is a good game full of action with lots of fun and great cut scenes that will have you interested in the characters story. However the fact that all you do in the game is shoot. There isn’t much change in the enemies you face, there are bosses but they are really just normal enemies with a health bar and a bigger gun? And buy the end of this game it will leave you feeling like it was more of a Arcade mini game rather than a full console game, only thanks to the repetitive nature of it. So my thoughts are don’t go paying 100 bucks for this game wait a while till a pre owned one hits the shelves for a cheaper price.

All in All

Sound:

(Sounds great every detail has a sound effect)

Story:

(A standard cop film story packed with clichés)

Graphics:

(Destructible …everything makes for a good looking piece of software)

Gameplay:

(Repetitive! But fun in its own way)

OVERALL:

(a fun game not worth $99.00 but that will have pre owned buyers pretty satisfied)

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