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Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway
Genre: Shooter
Region: NTSC
Format:
Release Date: 29 Oct 07
User Rating
8.8 (4 votes) -
- It's Tequila Time as PS3 owners finally get to experience the John Woo touch with a decent fully immersive shooter action.
Overview
You know being a PS3 owner has its upsides and downsides. And unlike the last console life cycle where we saw the Playstation 2 getting all the games first and then seeing those ported to the Xbox, the opposite is now taking place for a lot of games. Now games are being released on the 360 first and a few months later the PS3. Thus is the case with John Woo Presents Stranglehold, which was released a few months back on the Xbox 360 and just now released for the PS3. Now a few months later were there any improvements to the PS3 version? And for those who haven't checked it out, is this game worth the price of admission? Read our full review of Stranglehold for the PS3 to find out.
Gameplay
I should get one thing off my chest - having already played the the 360 version, I was really interested to see any differences between the 360 and PS3 version, and was surprised not to find all that much. In my personal opinion the differences were so subtle that they quite possibly had no effect on whether this version or the 360 version were superior.
Now let's get started with the story in Stranglehold, which is based off of the John Woo film of Hard Boiled. Although I have never seen the movie, I have a sneaky suspicion that the game does not do it justice, mainly because the story in Stranglehold is a bit corny and often the cut scenes made me laugh when they probably shouldn't have. Then again the game does at least create an experience that at the very least engaged the user to be interested in what is going on and to continue through the game.
So if you have heard anything about Stranglehold then you have heard of Tequila Time, which is just a fancy name for bullet time that was made famous in the Max Payne franchise. In fact, a lot of what you find in Stranglehold can easily be compared to that of Max Payne, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However where Stranglehold tries to differ itself from Max Payne is that it wants you to use the environment while you're in slow motion, something that Max Payne rarely, if ever, did. When I speak of using the environment, I am talking about jumping on carts and taking out enemies on the run, or shooting down billboards that then subsequently fall on the enemies, making for easy kills. Stranglehold isn't shy about being over the top - there isn't a pole that you can't slide down or a table you can't slide on. This certainly makes the the overall experience like playing a Hollywood action shooter movie.
The game of Stranglehold offline is pretty straight forward. Each level has you taking out a multitude of enemies and gives you plenty of chances to interact with the environments. Some issues I had with Stranglehold was, first and foremost, that it seemed to repeat itself over and over again. Much of what you play in this game just doesn't really re-invent the genre, but instead builds upon a lot of methods that have already worked in the past. Sure the game is a bit heavy on the "tequila time", but then again the game doesn't want you to necessarily take it seriously but instead just to enjoy it for being the over the top action game that it is.
There is online multiplayer but I just never got into it. In fact, much of that experience just felt like a forced addition to the game rather than something they really put a lot of effort into. One of the things I should say is that Stranglehold dumbs down the multiplayer and makes it a whole lot less exciting then what we saw in the offline content. In the end, this is not a perfect game, there is a lot of repetition, the online play is lackluster, but the overall product is still an enjoyable and fresh experience and one that I felt actually used the John Woo label quite nicely.
Graphics
Visually speaking, the PS3 version looks nearly identical to that of the Xbox 360 version, which is good and bad. There are a few more prominent colors on the PS3 version then I saw on the 360 version, but really the differences were negligible. The game looks pretty good, the character models solid and the animation is good. The environments are the big drawback for Stranglehold and lack the detail and fine tuning that could have taken them to the next level.
Fun Factor
The main idea behind Stranglehold is for it to just be a simple fun riding action game that like I have said previously isn't taken overly seriously. The offline content is a mixed bag of really fun and not very interesting. To me the game's biggest struggle was to keep you interested, the story was pretty good but nothing that really drove you to say I want to see what happens next. The overall experience is entertaining but nothing that has that long lasting enjoyable effect that the developers were attempting to grab.
Overall
Just like I said in my review of the Xbox 360 version of Stranglehold, I truly believe this is a game that is worth checking out, it doesn't take itself to seriously and makes for a good experience. At the same token, don't expect the game to blow you away, because at its core it still needed a lot of work to get to the next level.
- Gameplay
7.0 - Graphics
7.0 - Fun Factor
7.0 - Overall
7.0
