SGD '07: Joystiq hands-on with John Woo's Stranglehold
Click for the full version of the box art.
Waiting for John Woo's Stranglehold to hit store shelves is a bit like watching one of his movies; there's a lot of slow-motion, and plenty of bullets and destruction during the wait. We got our hands on the latest build at Sony's recent Gamers Day, and fired thousands of rounds in an effort to see how we were at controlling Chow Yun Fat.
Now, if you haven't seen a John Woo film, you need to rush out and rent one right now. Since Hard Boiled, which is the prequel to this game, comes on the Blu-ray disc, we'd recommend The Killer. Both of 'em star Chow Yun Fat, tons of guns, and a lot of over-the-top action. Hong Kong action cinema at it's finest.
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The game takes places ten years after the events of Hard Boiled, and you played Fat in his iconic Inspector Tequila role. He obviously hasn't been trying to get himself promoted, or else he's still a pain in the ass to work with. After all, he does tend to leave high body counts behind him. Probably the best news about this game is that Chow Yun Fat lent both his voice and his likeness to the game, otherwise this would be just another shoot 'em up with bullet-time.
Actually, make that "Tequila Time" ... seriously, that's what Midway is calling it in this game. It works the same way as bullet-time in other games, hit a button, slow time down, watch meter drain, refill, repeat. Besides that, Tequila also has several special moves that can be triggered once you've blown away enough bad guys. There's a focus aiming feature that also slows time down a bit, and offers some extremely graphic death animations which vary based on where you shoot the baddie. You also get a unique 360° spin feature which lets you whirl around like Wonder Woman, firing guns like crazy.
We played through a museum level where you can literally blow away everything ... the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, the stuffed meerkats, even the paintings on the wall. Nothing is safe from our poor aim, and we sure hope that place is insured. You can also interact with the environment; sliding over tables, sliding down bannisters (whilst firing two guns, of course) and even swinging from the pterodactyls that are hanging from the ceiling. Talk about a night at the museum. Zing!
Even though diving through the air and firing guns as Chow Yun Fat is pretty awesome, we wish we'd seen a bit of the story to let us know what was going on. Granted, the storyline in Hard Boiled is pretty thin, and its all about balletic gunplay, just like this game, but we wanted to hear some dialogue and seen some Fat (zing, again) cutscenes. Interestingly enough, the Midway developers told us that the Xbox 360 version was much more finished than the PS3 version, and that it looks a bit better to them. Make of that what you will, fanpeoples.
