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 games: stranglehold
This week, bullet-time on the streets of Hong Kong. Chinese film producer John Woo has already had a huge impact on videogames, most notable via the Max Payne games. His use of slow-motion acrobatic gunplay has become one of the most powerful cinematic influences on the way we play, and the slow-motion mechanics of games such as FEAR owe much to the way that Woo scripted and edited films such as Hard Boiled and The Killer. It's no real surprise, then, that Woo should finally get a game of his own. Stranglehold is ostensibly a sequel to one of Woo's earliest movies, Hard Boiled, starring Chow Yun Fat. The film is an epic gangster tale, with endless scenes of ultraviolence, and some 307 deaths before the closing credits. The game, needless to say, gives players an achievement award on hitting 307 kills – but they'll far exceed that here. Stranglehold is a third-person shooter set in a series of urban environments – each one packed with cover, destructible scenery and things that go boom. Fights devolve into a blizzard of projectiles and falling debris; you're just as likely to kill a foe by collapsing a balcony on him as you are to get the perfect headshot. Dive or leap over scenery and you enter Tequila Time, the slow-motion mode that allows you to dodge bullets while improving your accuracy. You also find yourself getting caught up in set-piece stand offs, where you have to use quick reactions to kill a series of gunmen in quick succession. It's thrilling.  Woo gets a cameo in Stranglehold, as he does in many of his films, as a wise bartender. Quite how much influence he has had in the actual delivery of a videogame (the production of which could hardly be more different from a movie) is hard to say. Not that it matters, because Stranglehold captures the spirit of his movies: what it lacks in depth, it makes up for in style and showmanship.
Jim Rossignol
Stranglehold is out now on PS3, PC and Xbox 360.
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 enemy territorygames #220  the orange box games #219 medal of honor: airborne #218 empire: total wargames #217  kenta chogames #216 books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
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