John Woo's Stranglehold review

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


It's time for tequila-time, activate tequila-time, tequila!

0:00 Single Player
15:16 Multiplayer
17:10 The Cancelled Sequel (co-starring Vin Diesel!)
 
Really fun game , its available on GOG for under a tenner. i mean its not as good as Max Payne 3 but well worth it if you want some stylish killing and fun shooting
 
This game was a fucking blast back in the day. Someone really needs to re-invent this style of game with todays technology and a more fluid movement system like in SunSet.
 
I remember demo being fun but full gamebeing super boring and repetitive back in the day
 
It made some very good things, but the level design hurt the game on the long run, as it was a bit too linear and predictable. A pretty fun game nonetheless.
 
Its one of those classic jank games that's good. I re-brought a copy a few years ago and still had a blast with it.
 
A very fun game, best enjoyed as short bursts, the source material for the game was a cult action movie: HARD BOILED and it was batshit insane and as a sequel to its story the game gets the job done, MAX PAYNE 2 was a few years old at that time and 3 won't show up for many more years after...

On PS3 you had the movie HARD BOILED as a bonus, Chow Yun Fat is a legend.


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I love when threads are just some random YT vid to watch instead of the poster actually typing something out.

I'm good on that.

And Stranglehold has always sucked a collective dick. You don't need to watch a video on it for proof.

Just play Max Payne 3 and shut the fuck up.
 
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A very fun game, best enjoyed as short bursts, the source material for the game was a cult action movie: HARD BOILED and it was batshit insane and as a sequel to its story the game gets the job done, MAX PAYNE 2 was a few years old at that time and 3 won't show up for many more years after...

On PS3 you had the movie HARD BOILED as a bonus, Chow Yun Fat is a legend.


Go Ahead Reaction GIF

Fun fact: It was the only 1080p/BD copy of the film at the time when it came out so you had to buy the game to get the "best" transfer of the film. I'm not sure what cut it was or how accurate the subtitles were though, probably not very unfortunately.
 
It was a fun game, but I think it aged worse than Max Payne 1 & 2. I would gladly pick up a remake with next-gen graphics and physics if someone decided to make one.
 
I remember when Chow Yun Fat was the coolest dude alive. This game was a lot of fun for sure.

His coolness lives on even today!


Chow Yun-Fat, A Better Tomorrow

Both stylish and perfect for concealing a Thompson machine gun, the trench coat has been synonymous with organized crime in film since the era of James Cagney. And in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow Chow Yun-Fat models an update on the classic trench. As counterfeiter Mark Lee, Yun-Fat is all ultra-cool swagger, perpetually clad in sunglasses and with a toothpick hanging ever so slightly from his lips. His long teal trench coat adds a sweeping style that looks even cooler during John Woo's slow motion shootouts. Despite meeting his maker at the end of the film, Yun-Fat's "Brother Mark" character was so popular that he returned for A Better Tomorrow II as Mark Lee's brother and reprised his original role in a prequel. A Better Tomorrow was a big hit in Hong Kong, inspiring countless teenage boys to incorporate long trench coats into their wardrobes. In fact, in colloquial Cantonese, trench coats are still referred to as "Mark Gor Lau," which literally translates to "Brother Mark's coat."
 
I'm playing it right now at 4K but then with 4x MSAA + 4x TRSGSSAA and it looks so amazing, I literally can't see any aliasing even if I look for it so I'm overjoyed. It dropped below 60fps once during a closeup of some explosions + other transparency effects but thats par for the course.

If you are on a modern 4K TV make sure you lower the gamma slider in the settings menu until the contrast becomes more acceptable, the other settings with Default, film, plasma, LCD, CRT etc is really just the brightness afaik so set it to one of the brighter settings if you find the whole image too dark after doing the gamma correction. The lighting will look very flat by default on a TV picture mode calibrated to 2.4 gamma, but especially bad if you are on 2.2 or higher so make sure you change it.

The dialogue is hilarious, I know its meant to be a "HK blood opera" and I love the films so much but its not very well written or VO'd, but thats just how it was back then for many games I suppose.
 
Hell yeah. A Better Tomorrow 1 and 2, The Killer, Hard Boiled, City on Fire. What a legend.

I am waiting for HKR - https://www.hongkongrescue.com/pages/coming-soon - to release The Killer (hopefully this week!) so I can watch it again with my friend, we just watched Hard Boiled from HKR and he really liked it. I can't recommend these releases enough, the distributors/rights holder don't gaf about these films so I'm glad someone is doing something with it and not taking the piss with what he charges, after all the material costs and his time physically constructing the product you are left with about a $12 for all the hard work he puts in on these films, like literally going through every frame and cleaning it manually, fixing all the transfer mistakes and colour grading it to what he deems the most accurate release (Usually director approved Criterion or similar releases), the best thing is you can just buy the digital copy if you aren't sure about the quality, don't need the discs or have the ability to burn your own disc. Its like $6 and its just the iso's so you don't lose anything in terms of quality, just the lovely BD case, case & disc art, which is all Criterion quality (A bit less arty most of the time though).

The A Better Tomorrow I 4K release was pretty nice but the subtitles and audio are still rubbish so I'm waiting for HKR to release that after The Killer as well before I rewatch with newly introduced to John Woo films friend. I also love A Better Tomorrow II even though its quite a bit sillier and has some downright weird parts, I hope he does that down the line too as the releases of that are pretty poor.

I've never seen Bullet in the Head (No CYF there I don't think though) and he just got access to a 4K scan of a real 35mm print so thats pretty exciting since my first watch will be the best quality you can see it in outside of the original cinema release.

I'll check out City on Fire, not seen that one, cheers!
 
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