Tetsuo Time

Brian Eddy: "Interactions with objects to do cool acrobatic stunts while traversing the environment is one of the core game-play elements of Stranglehold, and we make it clear to the player when they can interact with those objects by subtly highlighting them. If the highlight is on, and you press the interact button an interaction will always happen. If it is not on, no interaction occurs and Tequila will dive instead. It is straight forward and easy to do, but the results look like complex stunts and stunt combos.
In a typical example of game play, Tequila can be running along a second floor railing taking out enemies below when a chandelier comes into view hanging in front of him. It will highlight to show that you can interact with it and then the player just hits the interact button to cause Tequila to jump out, grab on to it and beginning swinging while being able to still aim and fire at enemies below. Then, the player can have Tequila drop to the ground (even on the head of an enemy, taking him out) or have him using the momentum of his swinging to jump to the second floor on the other side of the room.
It may sound a little complex, but it actually feels very intuitive! We want you to concentrate on the smooth flowing gunplay action and not fumbling with controller buttons"

Simple intuitive controls is what I like. This game is another example of a cool Unreal Engine 3 game to look forward to. Especially for a shooting game junkie like me. Full interview here.

Hmmm... they said they aren't releasing details about multiplayer in the game. You know what I'm thinking... stranglehold coop! Ok that may just be wishful thinking but you can't blame me for dreaming. I wonder what other characters would make for a good partner for chow yun fat in coop mode... hmm..... typically I think this type of thing he goes it alone but I think he worked with some other guy at some point of the film. What would be cool is if it had his other costars from crouching tiger hidden dragon made up as stranglehold characters as other player choices for multiplayer. But since they haven't made a big deal about anyone else starring in it then it probably doesn't. But they could at least have some lesser known hong kong actors\actresses as choices. If they make the PC version moddable though it is possible for someone to make a coop mod and include those other actors.

Stranglehold deathmatch would be another thing entirely. One wonders how tequila (bullet) time would work in multiplayer However, unlike Max Payne in this game you aren't in control of it even in single player. In multiplayer it simply would affect everyone in the times it gets activated by the game.

One last thing, some people wonder if this game will match the action of the movie it's a sequel to: Hard Boiled. The thing is though is that from what I have seen so far and having seen the movie this game actually surpasses the movie believe it or not. There's a lot more over the top gun play stunts in the game than there is in the movie especially in the first scene, the Tea House.

Even sliding down the rails or interacting with them like running up and down them in the game is a lot more than what it was in the movie. There was only one scene that was like it and in that scene Chow Yun Fat was at the top of the stairs and accidently got knocked into the rail and there was a guy at the bottom of the stairs and he started sliding down by accident but then figured out it was in his favor and started shooting.

Some people compare the bullet time in newer movies and games to the infrequent slow motion shots in older John Woo movies like Hard Boiled. The slow motion shots in that movie where very infrequent and very simple compared to bullet time where certain parts of the action can be slowed down independently of other parts so a character could dive in slow motion while aiming in real time. This is different than everything being slowed down with the frame rate just being lowered. Which as an example that a lot of people know when they do slow motion instant replay in sports. Another example of modern bullet time cinematography is in Jet Li "The One" where the other characters where in slow motion but Jet Li was in regular or faster motion. They had nothing like this back in the day.

A bit more about John Woo's Stranglehold.. I recently saw an interview with someone working at midway talking about how John Woo was walking around a game tradeshow sometime in these past few years and saw people "borrowing" ideas from his movies for games. So he was kind of like why am I not doing that? So then now we have him making a game which is a sequel to "Hard Boiled" which came out in '92. He wasn't sure how he could make a sequel that is even better than the original movie but here is his answer.. make the sequel into a game! So while some of the elements in this game where in other games already it should be noted that those moves where taken from John Woo in the first place. So this is almost like original coke.

One thing about the game which I didn't mention in the last entry was this, "It may look and feel like Max Payne at first glance, but the sheer level of destruction is unlike any other gun game we've seen. If you see it, it can probably be broken, set on fire, or dropped on someone's head. And Woo's ballet of death translates surprisingly well to mouse buttons and analog sticks." (Of course you'd most likely use either not both)

With the people who made Max Payne making a different style of game now this is what I see as the next best thing to them making a Max Payne 3. If they make a Max Payne 3 it wouldn't be with the involvement of the original studio that made the first two so I would rather not have a Max Payne 3 and for that style of action in a new game I would choose Stranglehold and then for a new\different experience I would choose "Alan Wake".