Stranglehold
Welp, seemed like it was a good idea to try this out given that it's billed as "the sequel to Hard Boiled." Sequel my ass, it's just another generic Midway shooter, like that other one you can see previews of in-game, Area 51: Blacksite (a "reboot" of the 2005-ish David Duchovny vehicle, without any big-name actors, just using the UT3 engine). Now, from the moment I started the game I was like "hooly shit" because the title screen menu (or scene, more accurately) is awesome: Inspector Tequila spins around and fires at things while doves fly from somewhere, we follow one of Tequila's bullets along, or we see other random people in the area doing things (including some guys that Tequila can't see yet). The sound menu, for example, sends the camera over to a guy on a cellphone while bullets strike around him. The controls menu sends you past the doorway a thug (who's about to get hit in the eye by a bullet) is shooting out of, and into the room where you see a guy passing a pistol to another hidden thug. Neat idea and well executed; my description doesn't do it justice. Unfortunately, this is one of the few production highlights of the game.
The game scores you based on a variety of factors, but all I cared about was getting as high a world damage level as possible. Of course, this means running around and shooting up as much walls as possible.
It feels disrespectful to Tequila to be able to do that, it feels like I'm the gunrunner from Hard Boiled telling Tequila to pull his pants down.
Anyhow, the Chicago penthouse level is broken in interesting (or maybe not interesting) ways. First, I noticed earlier in the game is that occasionally mounds of garbage will impede your progress - but you can just dodge through them (the classic Max Payne maneuver). In fact, one level tries to seal off a retreat by dropping a shipping container behind you; I was able to retrace my path through the level (by taking a zipline back into the earlier section) and would've been stuck behind the shipping container if I didn't try dodging. Yeah, I don't get it - Tequila can dodge into tight spaces he can't walk into? Next, in the penthouse level there are laser-triggered explosives. The game is big on letting you deconstruct most things with repeated shooting (too bad it takes up valuable ammo, and some things are very resilient; lots and lots of time was wasted revisiting ammo respawn points, and they don't respawn right away), so it's easy to shoot up a table and send the metal legs flying into the laser, triggering the bomb while you remain safe. I was able to defeat every one in the level this way, and the first phase of the boss fight is pretty silly when you're running around in areas you're not supposed to get to, instead of following the circuit you're meant to. Back in the first part of that level, I'm not sure exactly why the attack Huey was hovering outside one of the doors with a soldier hanging on the door when I could peek out a window and shoot him repeatedly, instead of facing him properly like the one before. If I had gone into a doorway that would've triggered, but luckily I was hunting for more bits of windowpanes to shoot. All that shit art and Soviet statuary was apparently worth only $14 million dollars (and I shot literally EVERYTHING, including some things I had to get into nooks and crannies to even see a few pixels of; the game should have counted a few parking garage levels worth of cars, too; yep, the game is boring me). Later in that penthouse area, there's a door that automatically closes behind you. Oh no! Just find a good bannister to jump on and then jump down to the bottom level. Going back through the level path again, the door opened up, so good on Midway for not screwing that one up.
It is really cool to see John Woo as the barman in the "unlock shop," where you can use your hard-earned style points to buy extra things (2D production art and slideshows, videos, and multiplayer skins - John Woo's is the most expensive thing in the store by far, twice as expensive as Tequila in a tux), and have him tell you "Good Luck, Inspector" as one of his parting lines. On the whole, though, I felt like John Woo's and Chow Yun-Fat's names just got slapped onto any ol' game. Much of the "acting" is terrible, although perhaps it's just uneven (especially the character models - some are great, some are weak). It does represent a step up from the earlier generation of Midway third person shooters, but I'm not sure it's actually better-looking than Blacksite. Same generic types of actors you'd see in any other Midway third person shooter from the Xbox / 360 era, same generally lousy expression animations, same stupid plot. The game makes references to "18 years ago" (game came out in 2007; Hard Boiled is from 1992, I don't see how this fits in the same timeline) but none of that shit was a part of Hard Boiled. Tequila, we are led to believe, cares deeply about polygonal deficient random daughter of the major Hong Kong organized crime kingpin, and a daughter they had together. Overall, the whole production is definitely missing the magic. Man, that makes me want to shed a tear, thinking about how awesome a Blacksite and Stranglehold mash-up would be, if it had all the shit (i.e. most of each game) torn out mercilessly, and properly funded / given time for development. Midway's third person shooter games repeatedly missed the mark; although they did keep up with advancing technology, they weren't matching the fun or polish level of other studios, and in that sense they didn't really advance further. I see that they actually are in the process of liquidating their assets. A shame, but I can't really say their 3rdPS games were promising when there wasn't any obvious improvement from one to the next - they all have been kind of quirky; some have more neat ideas than others (especially both of The Suffering titles), but they all fall short of greatness. Without exception.
Speaking of Chicago and Midway, there is a more interesting rendition of the city by Midway in their 1999 lightgun shooter Invasion: The Abductors, which crashed one me only when I got to the final level. Interesting, somewhat humorous (darkly so, at points...) game. Save the WaterTower!
null1024 wrote:Armored Core [PS1].
Pretty good actually. But gah, turning is the death of me. If I could rotate the damn thing with any amount of speed, I'd be 10x better off than normal.
I use the spider legs only. Pretty fun game, haven't picked it up in a bit though. The first thing I bought was actually the most expensive generator, and it's saved my bacon many times. Yes, there is a supposedly better gold generator (got it, not too hard to do) but the improvement (redline/capacity, I think it is) didn't really justify the loss of recharge speed. Also, one or two of the Human+ upgrades helps in this area immensely, although the game was perfectly playable even with default power drain.
MOSQUITO FIGHTER wrote:I rented Max Payne 3 at the Redbox. The amount of cutscenes in this game is obnoxious. Shoot three guys cutscene, shoot five guys cutscene, shoot two guys cutscene. It's way worse the Metal Gear.
That's my Max Payne. Well, more or less.
What I really need to know is whether there are more episodes of Address Unknown (doubting it, given that it switched developers).
See the next paragraph to learn why I've been perfunctorily leveling a twelve-gauge at cartoon monsters' faces before casually obliterating cranium like so much bone n' brain piñata! 
Whenever I use bad language please read it in 
). So, it's pretty much right up my alley.
