NightWoundsTime
A nice hunk of young man
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2004
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Ok so I just finished this wonderful little single player campaign in the new game Stranglehold. It's a third person action shooter directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun Fat.
At first look, this game was really awful. The mechanics of play are something like Max Payne mixed with a little Tony Hawk. Yes, you dive, time slows down, you shoot. But then you can do things like slide down or walk up handrails, roll on carts, jump off walls, and swing on chandeliers. All of these actions cause an automatic time slowdown to occur as long as you're looking at an enemy.
What made it hilarious is that for all these actions you earn "Style Points". Just standing around and shooting an enemy earns you one point, diving will generally earn you three, and anything really creative can get you to 4 or 5.
This all had my laughing my butt off in the beginning, but once you learn how to earn points it becomes fun, because they have their rewards. They fill up a bar that can trigger some great moves, starting with a simple heal and a focused pistol shot that's the game's equivalent of a sniper rifle. Past that there's Barrage which is great, triggering unlimited ammo, no reloads, and no damage for about 10 seconds (A long time in this game). It's great with the shotgun, takes a pump style and makes it full auto with an unlimited clip. Even better though is the spin move, which can be used with any weapon to take out every enemy in an area. The animation on it is really great and I got to laughing again when I used one with my rocket launcher equipped.
The graphics are decent. Most of the work went into the facial animations, since they were looking to make a playable movie. They succeeded in most areas. The plot is bad but it's a John Woo script so who can complain? Lots of crazy action, and boss fights again remain very humorous. Perfectly normal humans taking 20 gutshots from a shotgun always makes for a fun game
.
I played it on the 360, it's out soon for PC and PS3. You may laugh and think it's a horrible game at first but seriously, this thing gets real fun after a few minutes. It's short, around 7 hours, but I can easily see myself playing this again sometime.
At first look, this game was really awful. The mechanics of play are something like Max Payne mixed with a little Tony Hawk. Yes, you dive, time slows down, you shoot. But then you can do things like slide down or walk up handrails, roll on carts, jump off walls, and swing on chandeliers. All of these actions cause an automatic time slowdown to occur as long as you're looking at an enemy.
What made it hilarious is that for all these actions you earn "Style Points". Just standing around and shooting an enemy earns you one point, diving will generally earn you three, and anything really creative can get you to 4 or 5.
This all had my laughing my butt off in the beginning, but once you learn how to earn points it becomes fun, because they have their rewards. They fill up a bar that can trigger some great moves, starting with a simple heal and a focused pistol shot that's the game's equivalent of a sniper rifle. Past that there's Barrage which is great, triggering unlimited ammo, no reloads, and no damage for about 10 seconds (A long time in this game). It's great with the shotgun, takes a pump style and makes it full auto with an unlimited clip. Even better though is the spin move, which can be used with any weapon to take out every enemy in an area. The animation on it is really great and I got to laughing again when I used one with my rocket launcher equipped.
The graphics are decent. Most of the work went into the facial animations, since they were looking to make a playable movie. They succeeded in most areas. The plot is bad but it's a John Woo script so who can complain? Lots of crazy action, and boss fights again remain very humorous. Perfectly normal humans taking 20 gutshots from a shotgun always makes for a fun game
I played it on the 360, it's out soon for PC and PS3. You may laugh and think it's a horrible game at first but seriously, this thing gets real fun after a few minutes. It's short, around 7 hours, but I can easily see myself playing this again sometime.
