Strangehold - X360 demo 09/08 [PC/X360]

[Ruslan74]

An Unreal 3.0 Max Payne like game which offers :

Acclaimed action director John Woo presents Stranglehold, a stunning 3rd-person action adventure videogame for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. A "spiritual sequel" to Woo's action masterpiece, "Hard Boiled," Stranglehold redefines the action gaming experience with its acrobatic gunplay, thrilling cinematography, frenetic combat and incredible Massive Destructibility (Massive D). Chow Yun-Fat reprises his signature role as Inspector Tequila, pitting gamers as a take no-prisoners cop waging a personal war with Hong Kong crime lords. Tequila's loyalties to the force are tested when his ex-wife is kidnapped by the Russian mob in Chicago. Tequila struggles to balance his duty to uphold the law with doing what it takes to save his family.

SIGNATURE CINEMATIC ACTION

Stranglehold allows gamers to play a John Woodirected action blockbuster movie. Dual-wielding, stunt-laden gunplay combined with massive destructible environments ensures that Stranglehold will be a true tour-de-force. The environmental interactivity and two-fisted gunplay all come online, bringing the experience to a whole new level.

AMAZING GUNPLAY & STUNTS

Gamers will experience smooth flowing gameplay, such as running up railings, swinging on chandeliers and leaping onto moving objects, all without interrupting intense gun battles.

BLOCKBUSTER HOLLYWOOD TALENT

Featuring the cinematic flare of acclaimed action director John Woo, Stranglehold will also benefit from Woo's direction on storyline, camera placement and cutscenes. Starring international action-star Chow Yun-Fat as Inspector Tequila, the game's cast is also comprised of other A-list Hollywood talent.

GROUND-BREAKING TECHNOLOGY: MASSIVE D

The innovative physics engine will provide gamers with an unprecedented level of interactivity. With two huge areas to explore (Chicago and Hong Kong), the interactions will be infinite with each level offering massive amounts of destructibility.

INNOVATIVE TEQUILA TIME MECHANIC

Stranglehold's unique Tequila Time slow-motion system goes well beyond the slow-motion gameplay that typifies so many current action games and allows players to simultaneously aim and shoot at targets with a greater degree of focus. In a case of art imitating art, John Woo is the master and originator of this style of gunplay action and it's taken to a new level in Stranglehold.

UNREAL 3.0 AND HAVOK

Using a highly modified version of the Unreal 3.0 engine integrated with the Havok physics system, Stranglehold will breath new life into game envinronments and characters with stunning graphics. Incredible "Rock'n Roll" physics make it possible for everything in the world to be destructible and interactive, allowing for an ever changing battle ground depending on how players approach different situations.


Grab screenshots here and the trailer here.

Expected ETA November 2006.

[Ruslan74]

A PC & X360 demo will be availble for the Midway Unreal 3 powered John Woo's shooter in August :

X360 demo 8th August.

PC demo around 20th August.

[Ruslan74]

The demo let's gamers play through the first level of Stranglehold, but adds a few extra touches (golden pistols, being one of them). As Inspector Tequila, you enter a Hong Kong marketplace in search of some men who abducted a fellow officer. Over the course of the ten-minute demo, we learn that Tequila does most of his talking with his guns.


The demo is incredibly fun, as it lacks the difficulty of the later levels. With a relatively easy course to follow, players are free to test out what aspects of the environment are interactive. Get close to a fountain in the first arena, pull the Left Trigger, and Tequila slides along the rim poppin' random foes attempting to circle him. Run down a set of stairs later on and you can leap off, onto a rolling cart where you can slide along a courtyard dealing death. Interactive objects usually glow, but occasionally you'll find some interactivity that isn't so obvious. If Tequila is running towards a wall or closed door, hit the trigger and he plants his feet and pushes himself off. As Tequila leaps backwards in an acrobatic arc, you can lay down some serious heat on your foes.

Demo info.

PC specs.

Windows XP SP2 / VISTA (Games for Windows compliant)
Dual Core Processor
2 Gigs of Ram
Nvidia 7800 or higher / ATI x1300 or higher
Disk space: 15 gigs

This UE3 powered game better rock with those specs! X360 version FTW!

First impressions from the X360 demo here.

Today's demo shows off the entire first level of the game, bringing Chow Yun Fat through the astonishingly mean streets of a Hong Kong market area. As you probably know by now (and if you don't, you could always swot up with our in-depth preview), Chow reprises his role as Inspector Tequila from Woo's 1992 action classic Hard Boiled. In real terms, this translates into two things - paper thin plot, and a hell of a lot of slow motion, dual-fisted action.

As such, we'll forgive the game for throwing wave after wave of pistol-wielding maniacs at us with no explanation - other than a text box informing us that this is a "rough neighbourhood". The conceit of the demo is that you run through this rough neighborhood, learning the ropes by capping a bunch of bandits en-route, and then get ambushed in a busy marketplace. Cue plenty more fighting your way through elaborate set-pieces as you head for a final showdown at a bustling tea-house (where none other than John Woo himself is the bartender).

The whole experience is about 20 minutes long at the outside, but unusually for a demo, there's quite a lot of replayability built into the code. Playing through this section in the full game, we only got handed one of Tequila's special powers ("Tequila Bombs") - a superb slow-motion zoom which allows you to pick off a distant enemy, and showcases the locational damage and astonishing range of death animations.
However, in the demo, completing a play-through unlocks harder difficulty modes - and also unlocks additional Tequila Bomb powers. Play through twice, and you'll have access to all four powers (healing, which is unlocked from the outset; zoom mode, barrage mode, and spin attack). It's a nice mechanism for showing off everything the game has on offer, and means that there's vastly more meat on the Stranglehold demo than you'd expect from the usual Xbox Live demo offerings.

As for how the game is actually shaping up, well, you'll be the ultimate judge of that once you get your paws on the code this evening. However, having played through a significantly larger chunk of the game last month, we can confirm that the first level seems a pretty solid indicator of where Stranglehold goes in subsequent stages.

The demo, like the rest of the game, is essentially built as a series of arenas - each new area you walk into has a certain number of enemies, a certain number of explosive objects or destructible scenery components, and of course, a certain amount of cover. (In this demo, there's generally also a certain amount of fruit to splatter all over the place.)

Looking groovie! Size is 1.28 GB.