Stranglehold. ehhh

I recently got a game called, Stranglehold from a pawnshop. Because it had no name recognition, I was thinking it was going to be, “Okay” at best. Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. Stranglehold had TONS of action and plenty of awesome guns—which is always good for keeping my interest.

It definitely had a lot of downsides though, one of them being the fact that the character and the game didn’t change much from beginning to the end. In most games, as levels go on, your MC steadily improves and, by the end, he is super awesome! Not in this one. Throughout the game, the only character growth you see is minor abilities that you get every couple of levels. You have a gauge at the bottom of your screen, when it fills up, it allows you to use these abilities. 

 Also, when it comes to mobility, John Woo (the main character) didn’t let me do much. The only thing I could do, with the exception of running, is a slow-motion dive in one direction. That was cool when the game opened, but it got stressful and annoying when I wanted to jump over a  wall and all I could do is dive face first, in slow motion, toward the brick barrier. I also couldn’t climb fences or get on top of ledges. I felt very limited in my ability to maneuver.

The point is, I would have been ready for the final boss battle at the beginning of the game and to be honest, I could have cared less about the main character. The general feel of the game was cool, but it seemed as if it shouldn’t have been released yet. It definitely needed more character development, some kind of growth in the character and better mobility. I give this game a 4.8 for little change and bad flexibility--but a good fighting system and decent graphics.