0
hmm... good review but no scale of 1 to 10 one what you think overall? 
Blogs:
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption In..., Stranglehold Demo Review, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, Super Stardust HD
Such was my thinking with Stranglehold. Ok, I'll be brutally honest, that wasn't my thinking (but I do love PSN!). Rather, I downloaded the Stranglehold demo out of sheer content desperation for my PS3. Aside from Untold Legends and 1-2 downloadable games, I haven't played jack on this $900 (after all taxes, etc etc) doorstop I got in November 2006.
My previous knowledge of Stranglehold consisted solely of the vague notion that it was an interactive kung-fu action crime thriller. And I was pretty spot on.
The game takes place in a 3rd person (think GTA). Personally, I'm absolutely horrible at aiming with this kind of setup. That said, I was able to get through a few checkpoints to get a sense of what the game had on offer.
If you've ever seen a Jackie Chan film you'll know what's in store, but with guns rather than acrobatics. John Woo doesn't waste time kicking people, he just blows them away. To add a bit of flare to the game, if you can call it that, you can shoot signs, propane tanks and other environmental objects to do away with the baddies. Killing them in these unique ways, rather than simply gunning down them, yields you stars which increase some sort of meter that you can use to replenish your energy or use matrix-time to dispatch of the endless army of gangsters that pour from alleys and doorways like the plague.
The graphics were great, the controls were fine, but the game seemed a little repetitive. Admittedly I was playing the demo, and I'm sure there's more to the game than just walking around streets. Perhaps there's a factory level? Shipyard? Maybe an office battle with shattering glass and a hair-raising helicopter scene?
I started to lose interest at the point where every corner I turned just introduced me to a new and "cooler" looking way of killing someone, or about 15 minutes in. It's great that a developer is basically trying to put you in control of a movie. That's precisely the feeling I had -- I was controlling the guy in an interesting action thriller movie. But I couldn't tell if they were piling on the "cool, did you see how I shattered his knee while sliding down the railing?" or trying to engage me in the story. They had me with the story and cut scene, but then the gameplay was just repetitive.
I put the controller down at the point where I unlocked the move that allows you to follow the bullet and watch the guy's head get blown in slow mo. I mentally shut off when I'm watching movies like that and I immediately saw that this game was more about making you feel like it was cool to kill than trying to tell a story.
Update
Finally finished the demo. I realized I didn't touch much on the graphics above. The environments are literally littered with things that can be pushed around/destroyed. Watermelons, crates, boxes, doors, fruit, hanging pigs. You can even destroy support columns partially and take the plastic layer off a soda machine. You'll inevitably discover all these things when you're trying to aim but your character also glides around on his ass whenever he's next to a surface, knocking everything over. There are a few instances (during cut scenes in particular) where there is some strange artifacting, but it's mostly smooth sailing.
With all the action going around the game runs quite decently, there aren't really loading times, but the game does hiccup for a split second every now and then, presumably to load in something.
To push the interactive movie angle, you also get to be in control of particularly tough scenes where you're surrounded by 3-6 guys. During these scenes, everything goes into slow mo and you're giving literally a second to aim on a particular guy and shoot him before the camera twirls to the next guy. You'll have to be a good aim to get it on the first try.
This game really is like a movie, with you in control, but the element that I found most unlike the high action asian films I've seen is the heavy amount of blood. The developers haven't shied from showing you a drug dealer get hit in the face with a bullet, and then again, and then they'll zero in on the face for a few seconds just in case you missed it. I know this is right up some people's alley, and I hate to sound elitist like I'm "beyond that", but that kind of violence DOES just sicken me. It's like the world has become so desensitized to death and violence that it's ok to have a close up of someone get gunned down in brutal detail.
It's too bad because I was interested in the story line thanks to the occasional cut scenes, but it's just too much more gore and centered around too much blood/violence. Give me watered down Jackie Chan please.
