Thursday 27 April 2006
Stranglehold is fantastic. We'll tell you why in a moment, but first a word to game developers, producers and marketers: slapping a different name on an old concept doesn't make your ideas any fresher. Destroying lots of stuff, for example, isn't new; from old-gen Mercenaries, through to Full Auto, The Outfit and inevitably Gears of War, everyone is at it.
And, while we're at it, labelling it, say, massive destructibility, or even 'Massive D' doesn't make it any more
Thursday 31 August 2006
"Chow Yun Fat movies are really famous for their gun ballet - lots of guns, really smooth flowing, dual-pistol action, lots of high body counts, everything in the environment getting destroyed, slow motion... so we try to recreate that in this game." So says Stranglehold senior producer, Alexander Offerman and, after getting a chance to play the John Woo directed action-extravaganza again, it looks like the Midway development team is going to achieve its aims and then
Videogame makers have been ripping off John Woo for years. A longtime master of Hong Kong action films, the accomplished director's distinct style has been imitated in dozens of games. And Midway is helping Woo "take it back" with Stranglehold. The spiritual successor to the 1992 film Hard Boiled (directed by Woo and starring Chow Yun-Fat), Stranglehold is an attempt to faithfully recreate Woo's style in an interactive medium. The brief portions of the game we were able to play left us
“I've been trying to develop a sequel to Hard Boiled, but didn't know how,” said action movie helmer John Woo in a video interview shown at Midway's Pulse media event in late February. Looks like he found one: John Woo Presents Stranglehold, is an upcoming action/adventure game that reunites Woo with his frequent star Chow Yun-Fat in a return to the world of Inspector Tequila.
Better to call it a “spiritual sequel,” though; the game won't pick up where the film left
John Woo may have made some recent big-screen stinkers (Windtalkers and Paycheck anyone?), but Stranglehold looks like a spectacular return to form - even roping in Chow Yun Fat to reprise his role as Inspector Tequila from cult movie Hard Boiled. Theres little to the game other than blasting enemies in the most inventive ways you can think of, and it just so happens that you get to look amazingly cool while doing so. We can live with
Xbox Live Arcade could have been the place where old games went to die; looks like it's where old games go to be reborn instead. One of the first of a very large summer crop of coin-op classics on tap for Microsoft's downloadable game service is Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, the game that defined 2D fighters.
When we played an early version of the game on Xbox 360, we found just what we expected to find: a spot-on recreation of the arcade original, right down to the ugly palette-swapped
Everyone and their mother knows Street Fighter II. Its rise to arcade supremacy made Chun Li a household name and influenced countless other games to this very day. Despite this world-famous allure, many skipped the lavishly animated Street Fighter III when it arrived years later, partly because there were so many iterations of SFII and Alpha already clogging arcades, and also because SFIII introduced an unfamiliar cast of characters with advanced play mechanics that required a serious time commitment. Didn’t have the time, money or inclination to sit in an arcade and learn how to perfectly parry Ken’s Super Art? Then you probably got stomped by those who did...
It’s tough being Capcom. There are fanboys of every stripe in the gaming world, but rarely are there more rabid and stubborn fans than those of fighting games. Die-hards analyze every frame and gameplay change down to its core, and they petition endlessly for their favorite obscure character to be included in every game Capcom releases.
Yes, that's your chin that's twelve feet off the ground and that's our chunky fist propping it up. Sho-ryu-ken! You know what Street Fighter's all about, from the first baby steps mashing the SNES pad to the intricate magic of SF III's parry system - it's all about knocking people out of their socks. And Street Fighter IV is going to knock a hell of a lot of socks off. Oh yes.It's taken Capcom a long time to come to SFIV (a good 10 years since
There's not a lot left to say about Street Fighter IV. After talking to Capcom's SF master, detailing 12 tiny nuances we love and comparing classic combos to their SFIV counterparts, we're at a loss for words. Well, we were until the latest character, Rufus, was announced and we couldn't take our eyes off his pulsating belly. It's hypnotically disgusting, trust us.
