STRANGLEHOLD

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Midway Chicago And Tiger Hill Entertainment

Publisher : Midway Games And Success

Engine : Unreal Engine 3.0 ( Heavily Modified ) With Havok Physics

Genre : Modern Third-Person Shooter

Release Date : September 18 , 2007

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows XP / Windows Vista

CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo Processor / AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+

Memory (RAM) : 2 GB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 512 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 7800 Series
ATI : Radeon X300 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 15 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Stranglehold takes place many years after Hard Boiled, though Yun-Fat's Inspector Tequila doesn't seem to have lost a step. He's still a rogue cop on the Hong Kong police force, and when a member of the force turns up dead, evidently offed by one of HK's major gangs, Tequila steps up to deal with the situation. What follows is a sometimes confusing and ham-fisted story of gangs double- and triple-crossing one another. Somewhere in there, Tequila's former girlfriend and daughter both end up being held hostage by one of the gangs. It's a decent crime tale that's certainly better than much of John Woo's American work, but there is still something about the whole story that feels very Hollywood. It lacks the gritty feel of the original flick, and a lot of the film's cool factor to boot. Nevertheless, the plot serves as an OK-enough motivation to get Tequila back in action and shooting people in the face--and really, that's pretty much all you need. You will shoot a lot of people in Stranglehold. This game's body count is pretty staggering for a game that runs only about six or seven hours. Enemies come flying out of every nook and cranny of each stage, and always with guns blazing. Fortunately, they don't have the ability to jump and dive around in bullet time like our man Tequila. Tequila can interact with practically every piece of scenery in a level. If you run up to a table, you can choose to slide right over it, or kick it over and use it as a temporary cover point. If you run up to a wall, you can dash up it and dive even further than usual. If there's a rail nearby, you can run up or slide down it. Pieces of the environment can also be shot or otherwise destroyed for both fun and efficiency. If an enemy is standing underneath a neon sign, shoot it and watch the sucker get crushed. Exploding barrels are all over the place, and you can imagine the havoc they wreak when shot. There are even occasional environmental puzzles that require wooden poles or planks to be shot out to create new pathways for Tequila to traverse. These are arguably the game's weakest links, in that they're often difficult to discern and sometimes take more shots than they ought to actually work.

There's nothing remotely realistic about the game's guns, mind you, though that's arguably a good thing in the context of this game. Being able to shoot a guy from a hundred feet away with a shotgun and still take him out is helpful when you've got dozens of heavily armed enemies running around. Apart from that, you've got Tequila's default pair of pistols, along with assault rifles, submachine guns, heavy machine guns, grenades, and even the occasional rocket launcher to play around with. Cover points are also helpful, though you can rarely stay in one place for very long, as the environment around you tends to get destroyed very quickly. Likewise, enemies are usually smart enough to run up and start shooting if you stay in one place for too long. The Tequila bombs become a lifesaver in a few situations, though they also tend to make a few of the boss fights overly easy. Apart from the short single-player campaign, there are some production bonuses to buy through an extras shop, and a multiplayer mode that's probably not going to garner much attention. It's not that it's completely awful or anything, but it feels very tacked-on. You can only engage in standard deathmatches or team deathmatches with up to six players. Though the multiplayer plays a lot like the single-player game, it's not nearly as good. Maps are a little on the condensed side, and though you can use the slow-motion mechanic in multiplayer, its scattered execution in this mode makes it all but worthless. Essentially, it seems like you can't go into slo-mo unless you and your opponents all have a full Tequila time meter. It's really quite impressive how much of every environment is destructible. It's also a boon for the gameplay, because each cover point you hide behind tends to get shot to hell very quickly, which forces you to duck and run. On the less positive side, character models are overly shiny and not especially detailed, animations are limited, and the camera periodically gets in the way of the action when it snaps to angles that are hardly beneficial to your survival. Audio is more consistently enjoyable than the visuals. Chow Yun-Fat joins several other noted actors for the voice cast. Dialogue is appropriately cheesy, especially when Tequila's boss keeps tossing out every angry police captain cliché in the book. Largely the voice acting is quite solid. Yun-Fat dead-reads a few of his lines, but mostly he sells the character as well as he can while speaking English. It is sort of weird that the sequel to a classic Hong Kong action flick would be entirely in English instead of Cantonese, but considering the audience, it's also not really surprising. For as long as it lasts, Stranglehold delivers a satisfying, if somewhat derivative action game experience.

GAME REVIEW :-

7/10

Stranglehold Trailer :-