 Preview By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | Midway |
| Publisher: | Midway | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Mature | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | HDTV 720p | |
| Estimated Release: | 10/29/2007 |
While I would refrain from calling Stranglehold an original property, it’s still nice to see a game that likely already has a cult following without already being an established game franchise. A sort of spiritual successor to Hard Boiled, a popular Hong Kong Blood Opera directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun-Fat, Stranglehold is a promising third-person action/adventure game in development for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC and due out in mid to late 2006.
Stranglehold is being developed by Midway, in collaboration with John Woo, and it stars (in a sense of the word) Chow Yun-Fat, who reprises his role as Inspector “Tequila” Yuen from Hard Boiled (or “Hot-Handed God of Detectives” as it translates from Chinese).
If the game is anything like Hard Boiled, players can certainly expect plenty of action-packed gameplay and intense situations. After all, in Hard Boiled, well over 200 people die. While that may not seem like a lot when stacked up against games like Grand Theft Auto, where you have the leisure of shooting just about anything that moves, it is still quite a bit for a movie (even action films). In addition to that, in Hard Boiled there is a nearly three minute scene near the end where Yun-Fat/”Tequila” and his partner fight off a constant convergence of enemies between two floors of a burning hospital with an elevator ride thrown in for good measure...think the department store shootout in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (the Pitt/Jolie one, not Hitchcock’s), just on a much larger scale. So while the only gameplay tidbit officially confirmed is that the game will feature “hyperkinetic, choreographed action and freeze framed sequences” similar to the typical Woo movie, that in itself hints at scenarios like the one in Hard Boiled outlined above. The potential for that kind of action in a game that also presents a strong storyline is very promising indeed.
As a gameplay trait becoming more popular in recent years, we’re going to go out on a limb and guess that Stranglehold is also likely to feature dual wielding. As the line in Hard Boiled goes: “Give a guy a gun, he thinks he’s Superman. Give him two and he thinks he’s God.” And, as Midway’s touting the involvement of both John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, and given its source material, Stranglehold is also very likely to feature martial arts and most any other style of fisticuffs you can think of. There is, well, practically nothing on the actual story yet, though we can of course always hope that it is a true detective story. What we do know is that the action is set in both Hong Kong and Chicago.
Slated for release in mid to late 2006, Stranglehold has been confirmed for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Keep checking Video Game Generation for more information on Stranglehold as we receive it.
Posted: 2006-02-22 21:33:50 PST