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--== "Give a man a gun and he thinks he's superman...Give him two, and he thinks he's God...." ==--
The Official John Woo Presents: Stranglehold Thread
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General Information
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Published: Midway Games
Developer: Midway Chicago and Tiger Hill Entertainment
Genre: Third-Person Action
Modes: Singleplayer and Multiplayer
Release Date: US September 4, 2007 (Xbox 360), September 18th (PC), October 29th, 2007 (PS3)
MSRP: $49.99, $59.99, $69.99
Platform: Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3
Media Size: 1 BD, 1 DVD-Rom
ESRB: Mature
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Features
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...one "Hard Boiled Cop"
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Some fav quotes:
Essential Viewing to get you...."in the mood"
...The Teahouse
...Hospital shootout with infamous "2:42"
...Warehouse Shootout Part 1
...Warehouse Shootout Part 2
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Story
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Cast
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....oh this guy is in there too!
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Choices
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So as i'm sure you heard by now, we are getting regular editions of Stranglehold for a MSRP of $59.99, as well as getting Collector's Edition for the obvious $69.99
.....well except for the PC, but that version will only be $49.99 anyway, so go PC!
Of course the real notable thing is that, while the Xbox360 version's CE is gonna have a reported 4 "making-of" featurettes, along with extended "cinematics", the Playstation3 version will have all of these supplements, as well as the full feature length, High Def Remaster of Hard fucking Boiled right on the damn Blu-ray!
This is a pretty large acheivment in its own right, and hopefully if the sales numbers speak for themselves, the people behind these projects will be much more inclined to give their titles treatment such as this in the future...
Reports from the internet say that this will indeed be its own remaster and not the maligned recent one from Dragon Dynasty...
At this point the only cause of concern, for me at least, is obviously the "3rd Party Treatment" the playstation3 has been getting lately. Couple that with the fact that, aside from what the public has seen at events like Midway's Gamer's Day awhile back, and the what the press have seen (and have only lightly discussed), there is almost NO footage of the PS3 version in action....except cam captured footage featured in the media section.
I personally am awaiting what I believe to be the "definitive" version of Stranglehold...I just hope there aren't any "techinical shortcomings" when compared to its 360 counterpart, which is very much enjoying a solid release.
UPDATE:
...and for those curious, here's the 360 version's Achievement List (no spoilers in there)
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Reviews
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IGN's Review - 8.1
Gamespot's Review - 7.0
1up - 7.5
Gametrailers HD Review - 7.7 (Right click Save-as)
Official Playstation Magazine UK - 8
Game Informer - 7.25
Gamepro - 4 out of 5
...rest of the reviews here
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Moving Pictures
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(right-click save-as)
Xbox 360 TV spot
Multiplayer Mayhem
Single-Player Feature
Multiplayer Feature
Multiplayer Dock Destruction
Mutliplayer Guns Blazin!
Massive D Feature
Sizzle Trailer
Interactive Features
Weapons of Stranglehold
Making-of Stranglehold
PS3 Collector's Edition Trailer
PS3 Gamer's Day Walkthrough (actual footage of PS3 version)
1up Show Preview
More PS3 footage
...a little more PS3 footage
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....thoughts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....So when the "next-gen" consoles were getting ready to launch a couple of years back, there were two "dream" projects that I was heavily anticipating. Projects that I always hoped someday would be made because when I was growing up they meant alot to me.
One of them was Dead Rising. Being a huge Zombie fanatic (which I still very much am) and Dawn of the Dead being one of my fav all time horror films growing up, the premise of Dead Rising sounded just too good to be true. The game was released and it was awesome.
The other project was of course Stranglehold.
Since I had discovered John Woo, Chow Yun Fat, and Hong Kong Blood Opera Cinema in the late ninties when I was a young teen, I've been such an immense fan. So to hear that we were finally going to get a "true John Woo" shooter, I just couldn't believe it and I was just as much of a skeptic as the next guy that it would probably be marginal at best... Especially with the likes of Max Payne 1 and 2 stepping up and owning the gaming space with its extensive homage to HK cinema itself anyway...
Some will dismiss Stranglehold as just another "pretty fun" shooter for the most part...
For me though...well i'm fucking estatic that we finally get to play this and in many ways, the project has a personal resonance with me because of my childhood and what the subject represented when I was growing up with it...
So sure the title may only be 6-7 hours long, have some techinical shortcomings and may not have alotta depth...but for me, that really isn't the point
....i'm just so glad this project was able to finally get made (^__^)
You can currently download the demo for 360 and PS3
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The Official John Woo Presents: Stranglehold Thread
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Information
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published: Midway Games
Developer: Midway Chicago and Tiger Hill Entertainment
Genre: Third-Person Action
Modes: Singleplayer and Multiplayer
Release Date: US September 4, 2007 (Xbox 360), September 18th (PC), October 29th, 2007 (PS3)
MSRP: $49.99, $59.99, $69.99
Platform: Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3
Media Size: 1 BD, 1 DVD-Rom
ESRB: Mature
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Features
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Official PR said:- Intense Cinematic Gun Battles: Engage the enemy in Tequila Time by targeting and firing in real-time while the world dramatically slows and enjoy the exhilaration of running up railings, swinging from chandeliers, and leaping onto moving objects - all without complex controls!
- The most destructible enviroments ever created: Using the Massive-D physics engine, bring the world down on your enemies, carve your own realistic path of destrction through environments and maneuver through unique piles of debris which persist in the environment
- The only authentic John Woo Video Game experience John Woo partners with Midway to create the ultimate action game with all of the director's signature cinematic action, character focused storytelling, and revolutionary directing style!
- Intense Online Action! Prove you are the ultimate renegade cop as players from around the world show off their gunplay skills and compete online in the most realistic next-gen environments!
...one "Hard Boiled Cop"
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Hard Boiled is a 1992 action film by director John Woo. It was the last film Woo directed in his native Hong Kong before relocating to Hollywood.
The film begins as an apparently straightforward film about the bond between a cop and an undercover cop as they fight a triad gang. However, it develops into an over two hour action extravaganza, with a body count of 307.
It is structured around four major action setpieces: the opening teahouse shootout, the warehouse betrayal in the middle, the dock shootout, and the climactic thirty-minute hospital shootout.
Some fav quotes:
Hard Boiled goodness said:"Mad Dog: You know what I hate? Two groups of people: fucking cops and creeps who betray their old bosses. "
"Johnny Wong: There is no room for failure now. The innocent must die!"
"Tequila: You're really full of shit. The toilet's over there." (a favorite of mine that me and my wife say to each other quite often)
"Alan: [shortly after Tequila reassured Alan that the guy he shot wasn't a cop] Was that guy I shot really a cop?
Tequila: Yeah.
Alan: Fuck!"
"Tequila: I can't afford any of these apartments!
Cop: Why not live in a government apartment?
Tequila: No way, I make too much for that! Wait... jazz bar! I'll live in the jazz bar!
Cop: At least you'll get a lot of "sax". "
"Tequila: Should I salute you?
Alan: You've got the gun. I'll go and milk a cow if you want.
Tequila: Sorry, I don't drink milk"
Essential Viewing to get you...."in the mood"
...The Teahouse
...Hospital shootout with infamous "2:42"
...Warehouse Shootout Part 1
...Warehouse Shootout Part 2
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Story
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"In latter-day Hong Kong, a policeman goes missing. The department is dumbfounded by the disappearance until they receive what appears to be a ransom call from an unnamed source. The kidnapper requests that a single officer appear in Kowloon market. Tequila volunteers for the assignment, beginning a sequence of battles with rival Triads and the Russian Mafia that extends from the street markets of Hong Kong to the museums of Chicago."
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Cast
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"Midway announced the voice talent for the upcoming Stranglehold game. Joining the previously confirmed Chow Yun-Fat (who will reprise the lead role of Inspector Tequila from Hard Boiled) will be Arnold Vosloo, who is perhaps best known as Imhotep from The Mummy movies and Colonel Coetzee in Blood Diamond...oh and he was in John Woo's Hard Target....and 24.
Also on board is Randall Duk Kim, who has notably been Dr. Crab in Memoirs of a Geisha and The Keymaker in the Matrix series.
Other actors in Stranglehold include Grant George, David Lodge, Lydia Look, Neil Kaplan, Stephanie Sheh, Michael Sorich, Russell Wong, Danny Bernardo, Jin Kim, Phuoc Nguyen, Andrew Lee, Joseph Yau, Philip Chan, Ronal A. Cheng and Alexander Brandon."
....oh this guy is in there too!
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Choices
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So as i'm sure you heard by now, we are getting regular editions of Stranglehold for a MSRP of $59.99, as well as getting Collector's Edition for the obvious $69.99
.....well except for the PC, but that version will only be $49.99 anyway, so go PC!
Of course the real notable thing is that, while the Xbox360 version's CE is gonna have a reported 4 "making-of" featurettes, along with extended "cinematics", the Playstation3 version will have all of these supplements, as well as the full feature length, High Def Remaster of Hard fucking Boiled right on the damn Blu-ray!
This is a pretty large acheivment in its own right, and hopefully if the sales numbers speak for themselves, the people behind these projects will be much more inclined to give their titles treatment such as this in the future...
Reports from the internet say that this will indeed be its own remaster and not the maligned recent one from Dragon Dynasty...
At this point the only cause of concern, for me at least, is obviously the "3rd Party Treatment" the playstation3 has been getting lately. Couple that with the fact that, aside from what the public has seen at events like Midway's Gamer's Day awhile back, and the what the press have seen (and have only lightly discussed), there is almost NO footage of the PS3 version in action....except cam captured footage featured in the media section.
I personally am awaiting what I believe to be the "definitive" version of Stranglehold...I just hope there aren't any "techinical shortcomings" when compared to its 360 counterpart, which is very much enjoying a solid release.
UPDATE:
Impressions of PS3 demo compared to 360 demo said:First thing I noticed when booting up the actual PSN Demo was the splash screen behind the icon on the XMB....or really lack there of :lol
Honestly though, I know its a demo so pretty confident that the actual final "wallpaper" will be something more substantial than just Tequila making a mean face against a black background....still, a really odd choice =/
anyway, enough of the trivial...
Comparisions between the 360 demo and PS3 demo
- As far controls go, I definetly prefer the control over Tequila with the SIXAXIS! This is due in part that I've really fallen in love with the sensitivity, resistance, and range of movement with the Analog Sticks on Sony's controller overtime. Controlling the reticule and Tequila just felt sooo much more fluid and responsive.
With the 360 controller's resistance (which i'm NOT a fan of), aiming and movement just isn't as "smooth" and "deliberate." You can be slightly moving the stick in a direction just for it abruptly shift in response and you go from a walk to a full on run. Its obsessive, but little things like this matter to me. As a whole though, this can be something very much tweaked to no end to get just right (see Resistance: Fall of man). Who knows though, as the final build may have more tweaked response with the 360 controller (as aiming overall felt tightened), couple with the fact they may have had more time polish the controls on the Sixaxis. Also preferred the "deadzone" calibration on the Sixaxis more
-Okay here we go! As far as I could tell after extensively playing BOTH builds back to back, is that they are essentially identical!
Allow me to go into more detail. So I was playing this on a 40inch S2000 Bravia, with the 360 version running through component and the PS3 running HDMI
When I finally launched into the PS3 demo, the first thing I noticed IMMEDIATELY was *gasp*...the color saturation just wasn't as "vibrant" as when I was flipping the input back to my 360 demo running. I thought this might be a similar situation with something like Rainbow Six: Vegas, which on PS3, has a much more subdued/dulled overall color palette.
...Also, the contrast wasn't popping as much....THEN, I realized the nature of running things through component as opposed through HDMI, and how component can tend to bump up saturation on colors and contrast.
Once I got past that, I took that into consideration and moved onto something else...
Next was textures and resolution of them throughout the environment. Here at first I thought the 360 build was maybe throwing out a few more visual tricks, like when staring at some bricks wall, it seemed like some of them might have some "displacement mapping" going on to make the bricks pop out more. When I flipped back and forth though between both inputs, the more and more I saw this wasn't the case. BOTH the 360 version and PS3 version seemingly have the SAME low res-ish textures in the EXACT same places.
Stranglehold as whole, doesn't have the strongest (read muddy) textures in alotta places (walls, NPCs, etc), but I still thought the 360 version might have a few slightly higher-res ones scatter throughout the environment....there isn't. At least from what I could tell flipping back and forth between inputs over and over again....as I said before, texture wise, the two skus are seemingly identical...
Moving on to Aliasing, from what I understand, UE3 doesn't do any real aliasing and in the case with Stranglehold it shows on BOTH versions....so no "free AA" for the 360 version...its just as jaggy as the PS3 version. Though at first I didn't think so, but then I again realized the component input was probably just "smoothing/blurring" things out more.
Now time to move on a to "effects"....namely Massive D
Once again, it appears that Massive D spread carnage is identical on BOTH platforms. I shot up several walls, pillars, tables, chairs, etc. and each time it seemed like both versions were spitting out an identical amount of debris.....with NO slowdown differences
Bloom lighting also appears identical....though at first it seemed like there was more pronounced in the 360 version, especially when going into "tequila time"....upon further inspection, it honestly doesn't seem like it
Finally I'll talk about the framerate. The only real difference in framerate between the PS3 version and the 360 version, is that in the 360 demo it appears like the devs "left Vsync" completely off...hence when looking at walls or in interiors, the framerate shoots up into 60+ fps. The PS3 version doesn't....but it looks like they probably turned Vsync back on in this build, because I didn't notice any tearing and the framerate almost stayed locked at 30fps the entire time....so basically it seems the the performance of both versions are also the same....except the Vsync thing, so I like to hear from somene who has the final retail 360 version and if they could tell me if it appears they turned Vsync back on...
....a comparision would be if you liked Bioshock with the "framerate unlocked" or not...thats the difference here...though your NOT getting a bump in "visual fidelity" with the locked 30fps on the PS3 demo...
-Anothering I noticed with the animations was how it seemed like maybe Tequila's animations had been "polished" just a hair more...It just seemed like he wasn't AS spazzy when moving throughout the environment, then when he was on the 360 build...then again, this could be just attributed to the added "range/lesson resistance" with the SIXAXIS analogs.....
-Once last thing that I'm sure MANY have noticed and have promptly exclaimed, "WTF?!"
What the hell happened to the sound quality in the PS3 demo!!!....I know this for sure isn't what it will sound like in the final version, but why release a demo with a problem like this....
I'm blocked at work so I can't check the official Midway forums to see if anyone else has noticed or commented on this, but yes, it is very much fucking jarring and I don't understand...I only hope people don't think this is what its SUPPOSED to sound like....cause its not
So in closing though, I'm an now completely satisfied in my decision to preorder the Playstation3 Collector's Edition, for my concerns of it taking some "techinical shortcuts" have been removed....
I hope I answered or hit on some concerns or curiosities as far as both versions go....it certainly seems like the added delay in releasing the Playstation3 versions has payed off
Feel free to ask some questions or debunk my impressions if you feel you observed something widly different
Once again, the difference between this and something else that uses UE3 on playstation 3, namely RS:Vegas, is that Vegas was a full on port, where this is something that was built for both the PS3 and the 360 simutaneosly...and honestly it shows. Bravo Midway and I am a full on believer of UE3 on PS3...bring on Unreal Tournament 3
thanks again if you read all of that
...and for those curious, here's the 360 version's Achievement List (no spoilers in there)
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Reviews
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IGN's Review - 8.1
IGN said:There are a lot of mindless shooters on the market, but none of them immerse you in John Woo's world. And that's where Stranglehold stands out. This is the true sequel to Hard Boiled, which means Stranglehold is more about style than substance. So, not surprisingly, the story is melodramatic and forgettable and the adrenaline-pumping action is the star of the show. Stranglehold could use two more chapters and a little more visual polish, but it is an otherwise exhilarating experience. There are plenty of "Oh my God" moments and just enough challenge to sustain anyone's interest from start to finish.
Gamespot's Review - 7.0
Gamespot said:Stranglehold isn't the sort of game that's going to set the shooter genre on fire. It's a more-than-competent take on an existing formula, and it has enough unique moments and overall challenge to succeed. Sure, it gets repetitive at times, it's got a few design quirks, and the multiplayer is borderline irrelevant. But there's enough solid, exciting action here for shooter fans to sink their teeth into. It's a short ride, but an amusing one while it lasts.
1up - 7.5
1up said:Stranglehold is good enough to present some solid entertainment for the eight or so hours you'll spend playing through the story. And it's certainly good enough to look forward to a sequel, and an opportunity for the developers to put some more meaty gameplay on top of all that pretty tech. But it ultimately ends up as little more than a mindless destruct-a-thon, heavy on style and just a bit too light on substance.
Gametrailers HD Review - 7.7 (Right click Save-as)
Official Playstation Magazine UK - 8
Game Informer - 7.25
Gamepro - 4 out of 5
...rest of the reviews here
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Moving Pictures
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(right-click save-as)
Xbox 360 TV spot
Multiplayer Mayhem
Single-Player Feature
Multiplayer Feature
Multiplayer Dock Destruction
Mutliplayer Guns Blazin!
Massive D Feature
Sizzle Trailer
Interactive Features
Weapons of Stranglehold
Making-of Stranglehold
PS3 Collector's Edition Trailer
PS3 Gamer's Day Walkthrough (actual footage of PS3 version)
1up Show Preview
More PS3 footage
...a little more PS3 footage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....thoughts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....So when the "next-gen" consoles were getting ready to launch a couple of years back, there were two "dream" projects that I was heavily anticipating. Projects that I always hoped someday would be made because when I was growing up they meant alot to me.
One of them was Dead Rising. Being a huge Zombie fanatic (which I still very much am) and Dawn of the Dead being one of my fav all time horror films growing up, the premise of Dead Rising sounded just too good to be true. The game was released and it was awesome.
The other project was of course Stranglehold.
Since I had discovered John Woo, Chow Yun Fat, and Hong Kong Blood Opera Cinema in the late ninties when I was a young teen, I've been such an immense fan. So to hear that we were finally going to get a "true John Woo" shooter, I just couldn't believe it and I was just as much of a skeptic as the next guy that it would probably be marginal at best... Especially with the likes of Max Payne 1 and 2 stepping up and owning the gaming space with its extensive homage to HK cinema itself anyway...
Some will dismiss Stranglehold as just another "pretty fun" shooter for the most part...
For me though...well i'm fucking estatic that we finally get to play this and in many ways, the project has a personal resonance with me because of my childhood and what the subject represented when I was growing up with it...
So sure the title may only be 6-7 hours long, have some techinical shortcomings and may not have alotta depth...but for me, that really isn't the point
....i'm just so glad this project was able to finally get made (^__^)
You can currently download the demo for 360 and PS3
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