Comments on: Hot Shooty: Stranglehold Demo

By: essell

essell — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:15:19 +0000

Yeah, that is the trick – and you achieve that through good level design [lighting, environment design, enemy placement] that subtly directs the player to play through the level how you want them to play it.

Max Payne did it well enough, Half Life 2 does it exceptionally well, while Stranglehold doesn’t do it all all.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:46:44 +0000

After playing the demo, I found myself thinking the AI was *just* like a John Woo movie. That’s what the grunts do – run into the player’s fire.

(The trick, I guess, would be a game based around you having to be gracefully aiming at that position just as they run in – in most John Woo Hong Kong flicks, the enemies don’t get to fire, etc.)

Er… just thinking aloud.

By: essell

essell — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:06:18 +0000

I agree. Everything about it [the level design, the higher level game design, the enemy AI, the lighting, the character modelling, the art direction, the jerky animation] is a mess.

By: arqueturus

arqueturus — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:05:23 +0000

It’s absolute tosh. It’s like Max Payne without the good bits.

By: Janek

Janek — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:21:24 +0000

Well, it doesn’t even load for me. Forces a reboot on the initial control splash screen.

Thumbs up for another completely professional Xbox conversion.

By: Seniath

Seniath — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:08:34 +0000

I dunno, I played the demo on the 360 and it didn’t really grab me in the same way Max Payne did. The story seemed a little flim flam, and ammo/health never seemed a real issue. Maybe it’d grow on me if I played it a bit more *shrug*

By: LlamaFarmer

LlamaFarmer — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 12:02:04 +0000

This looks really fun. Don’t think I can be bothered downloading the demo, will get the game when it’s a bit cheaper though. I loved the Max Payne games.