Stranglehold's Creative Director speaks

What sets Stranglehold apart from other games that do Bullet Time, like Max Payne and Total Overdose?

Offerman: We definitely looked at Total Overdose while we were making Stranglehold, but we looked at all games that had any similarities with what we were trying to create. TO is a little more “gamey” than Stranglehold, because we wanted to make something a little more realistic. We couldn’t make a John Woo game that didn’t have slow-motion in it. A game like Max Payne is a John Woo game. They borrowed so many traits from his movies that it was impossible for us to make Stranglehold without looking at it. But we let you interact with the environment more, like jumping on roll carts, swinging from statues while still shooting. There’s a short term benefit in slow-motion shooting that lets you get the drop on your enemy, but long term, as you do these cool interactions and cinematics, you get style points which go towards unlocking your Tequila Bomb special moves.

So the style points are represented by silver stars, right? How do they work?

Offerman: Correct. It all depends on how you pull off a kill. If you take someone down normally then you’ll get one point, but if you do it while you’re diving you’ll get two style points. And say you dived off a wall, spun around and killed a couple of guys with headshots, then you’d get more and more style points. The cooler you look doing stuff, the better you’ll be rewarded.

What does Stranglehold do that other games can’t compete with?

Offerman: There’s a lot of stuff being destroyed in Stranglehold, which is a trademark of John Woo’s movies. We wanted to capture the slow-motion diving bits, like where Chow Yun-Fat is flying through the air and all the while gunshots are ringing out everywhere and the whole place is falling down around him. Plus there are so many intricacies with Stranglehold that you won’t notice them all until you play.