Gaming John Woo's Stranglehold (PC)

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/...anglehold_pc/1

Dan Boaden takes to the streets of Hong Kong with pistols akimbo and sets out to review John Woo's Stranglehold. Will he come back in one piece with good news or will the game prove more limp than a knee-capped bad guy? Find out within!

[steveo_mcg]

So a firm "meh" from bit then. With every thing else coming out i think i'll wait and get it in the bargain bucket at plays next sale.

[Zurechial]

I don't think anyone should be playing demanding games with Norton running in the background, but particularly not when examining it for a review..

Generally, I'd state that nobody should use that atrocious virus of a program, Norton, at all, but especially not when gaming for a review, even if it shows up a potential problem with the game.

Other than that, it's a pretty good review. I especially liked the reference to the reviewer's body language at the end of the 3rd level - That kind of slumping is exactly what I do myself (without realising) when playing a repetitive game that I still 'like' but am getting bored of.

[Bursar]

I suffered several system hangs and crashes throughout.

How odd. The game has been flawless for me under Vista 64bit. I've got Symantec Corporate AV installed - so not quite the same as the Norton retail product.

Max Payne wasn't exactly a marker for non-repetitive gameplay either. Once you'd played the first couple of levels, you'd pretty much seen it all. Dive round corner in slo-mo, shoot up guys. Rinse and repeat.

The one thing that Stranglehold does incredibly well is the destrutive environments. Most of the things you can hide behind in the game can be shot into little pieces. So most cover is only viable for a few seconds. But it also work the other way and you can just go on a full-auto rampage shooting through the scenary to waste the baddies.

My main niggle about the game is when it goes into Stand-Off mode. I play with an inverted mouse, and the mouse stays inverted during the Stand-Off which given you're using the mouse more like a pointer, is just odd. So I have to wait for the cutscene to finish, hit Escape, uninvert the ,ouse, and then play through the Stand-Off. Ofoucrse it then finishes without warning and I'm left with wonky controls again - cue pausing, inverting, resuming. And generally losing quite a bit of health in the process. - To be fair, I think I recall the 360 demo suffering from a similar problem.

Hopefully any patch will fix that.

[CardJoe]

My main issue with the game was the leaping-butt-slide which Tequila automatically does when you walk into something. The animation looks weird and the fact that he just glides on limitlessly (from what I've seen) really ruined the game for me.

[SNIPERMikeUK]

I bought the game for £16, and am quite impressed with it, I enjoyed max payne and this is very much the same game but with nice destructive scenery, I think lots of games would benefit from this kinda destruction....

I have a X2 4400+, 2GB of DDR1, and a 7950GT 512MB, X-Fi Fatality (64 X-Ram), running on Vista Premium x64, I use AVG Full Retail and there is no issues with that u barely notice its there, and this runs really well with with just a few slight slow downs, no more than a frame rate drop every now and then on say a 360 title.

[SNIPERMikeUK]

The other thing is, its quite a big game coming on 2 DVD-Roms, and taking around 12-15GB's

[Cupboard]

To me, the graphics didn't look anywhere near as good as those on some of the other games that have come out recently. That doesn't really explain the ridiculously high minimum specs either.

[wuyanxu]

However, if your PC can handle it and you’re lucky enough to dodge any of the stability issues then I highly recommend that you buy the game

done!

i very much like this game, just don't play it for more than 1 hour, play this when i kept getting my infantry killed artillery in World in Conflict. just have a go, do some ownage, and go back to a proper game

[perplekks45]

Well, I played the demo yesterday and I have to admit, considering my extremely high anticipation, I felt disappointed. The destructive environment is awesome, sliding over tables or grinding down rails feels fresh too but... it's by far less brilliant as I would've expected it to be.

Oh, and after installing the demo McAfee VS 2008 told me it just got disabled... And there's no start menu entry for me. (Vista 32 over here)
A little question I have: Can you change resolution, details or whatever in the demo? Couldn't find it.

[atanum141]

Never in mylife have i heard a thick accented Chinese man called Tequila........and he cant even pronounce it properly, and its one of the most buggiest games ive ever played.

[culley]

Personally this game should not have got a Bit-Tech 8 rating. The game is very repetitive from the start, It's bang bang, kill him, kill him, get ammo, get health, the storyline is not compelling and it feels to much like a movie.

I did enjoy the slow motion action but that was good when Max Payne came out, and the game is basically the same just with a shitty storyline.

[TheVoice]

Played the demo the other week, and wasn't hugely impressed. Some aspects of it were nice and implemented well but all-in-all, it felt like a very basic, shallow and repetitive title. Not to mention that the end of the demo forces you to sit through a stupidly-long "WOW LOOK AT ALL THIS STUFF YOU GET TO DO OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN" video before you can exit.

Don't think I'd even bother pirating it, to be honest.

[Mathmarauder]

Well above the requirements, latest nvidia drivers, and this game still wont even make it through the first cut scene.

[MiNiMaL_FuSS]

the question is why on earth anybody who knows anythign about computers would choose to run something as awful as norton!

[sam.g.taylor]

I also.

For anyone close to the minimum specs, how does the game look/perform?

[CardJoe]

Well, there's no graphical options to speak of (shadows, decals, resolution, thats it) so that IS what it'll look like on any system I imagine.

THAT's probably the reason for the ridiculous minimum specs.

[will.]

I didn't like it. I found even the demo to be repetitive and pointless.

[Mosey]

I'm quite surprised about the 'love it or hate it' response the game has got actually.

I rather enjoyed playing through it. I agree that it's bit repetitive, has an awful storyline and running Norton is a criminal offence but i derive a lot pleasure out of killing copious amounts of Chinese in different ways. It's a good follow on from the film, stylises HongKong action films well and is a fun game to play.

I think it suffers from the extremely good games that are surrounding it at the moment - which i am definitely not complaining about!

That being said, it's definitely worth a play to see if it's you thing or not.

[tk421]

i was looking forward to this game, untill i read the min specs.

anyone got $1500 they want to give me to upgrade?
this is the first game that has made me realize exactly how aged my system really is. my tiny monitor usually makes up for the cpu/memory bottleneck i have. unfortunately, until tax time (if i'm really lucky) i can't spend that kind of money on myself. rent, power, and feeding kid / wife tend to come first.