Stranglehold is okay and Turistas was better than it deserved to be.

Finally got sometime off to do chores and putter around the kitchen and watch some movies and get some gaming done. Down to brass tacks:

Stranglehold is pretty disappointing. It looks good, plays pretty well, has good music, etc, etc the game is just...boring. There's nothing wrong with the game but there's nothing outstanding either. The story is your run of the mill HK mumbo jumbo recycled double cross blah blah blah Russian mob, yadda yadda yadda, we've seen it before. The levels are well designed and fun to play - a.k.a. blast to pieces - and tearing through waves of hired goons is fun too for a little while. One of the problems is the levels are actually too short - by the time a level starts to get good it's over. Several times I said, "Oh, wait, what? That's the end of the level? Huh, guess I'll play the next one then. Is the dinosaur museum level next?"

Stranglehold is a perfect example of a game that does not remotely compare to its $60 price tag. I was even disappointed by spending $10 on a rental. I played for a couple of hours last night inbetween chores and making dinner and have the feeling that I've completed most of the game. I don't particularly feel like finishing it and will probably wait to polish of when I have nothing else to do.

On the other hand Turistas (2006) was a lot better than it had any right to be. I didn't enjoy Saw or Hostel or any of their sequels or knock-offs or straight-to-video clunkers that end up on the wall of a Blockbuster and I just lumped in Turistas with those junkers. We rented it because summer is horror time for us. For me summer and horror just go together but I don't want to see the bad stuff - i.e. the stuff Fangoria raves about. It's tough being a horror fan with a sense of taste. Sometimes though I just want to sit slack jawed and see attractive people get chopped into little pieces by some kind of baddie. So we rented Turistas with a sigh and a "Fuck it, how bad can it be?"

It's really more of a thriller than a horror movie and not graphically gruesome - okay there's some gory stuff but no close-ups of ragged stumps or blow torched eyes or severe decapitations. Oddly enough director John Stockwell of Into the Blue fame manages to take a cast of unknowns and slightly familiar faces like Desmond Askew and makes them generally likeable and smarter than your average horror victim. The whole production is solid - acting, effects, story, bad guys, cinematography, chicks in bikinis, etc, etc. . The only reason that I can come up with for this movie being as good as it is - well Turistas wasn't a Lions' Gate movie. If I see this at the supermarket for under $10 I'll be picking it up.

Folding a Crane Part II.

About a million years ago I watched True Romance. I probably watched that movie several hundred times more than I should have. Early on in the movie Alabama - Patricia Arquette - is watching some crazy action movie on tv. I guess I always just assumed that it was something awesome that was filmed for the movie to be something awesome to be shown on the tv.

Fast forward a couple of years and I meet Mike who proceeds to show me practically every worthwhile HK action movie. During the end of Better Tomorrow II well there's the sequence that was featured in True Romance.

Fast forward another million years and here I am pretty much jaded and rundown on HK movies. John Woo hasn't made a decent movie since the 90s. Chow-Yun Fat, well, I still love him but I haven't really seen him in anything I've liked. He was great in Curse of the Golden Flower but he's turned into the go-to-Asian Harrison Ford. I still throw in the classics now and then but more or less have shelved the genre.

Playing the demo for Stranglehold last night reminded me how much I used to love HK action movies. In between hollering, "Holy Shit! I'm Chow Yun-Fat!" and na-na-na'ing the theme from Better Tomorrow II and just having a grand old time I realized how much I genuinely miss those movies and the fun and excitment that went along with seeing them.

Nostaligia aside Stranglehold is - from first demo impressions - a blast. The interaction/slides/dives/stunts are controlled with the left trigger - shooting is controlled by the right trigger. What's kind of interesting is what they are calling "Massive D" - special actions triggered by pressing in a direction on the D-Pad. However there's a meter you have to build up in order to use each skill. You build up the meter by pulling off awesome & fancy shots i.e. shooting a sign that drops on the head of a foe...in slow motion. The first D skill is a health restore, the second is a zoom-in - the hit location animation is great and at times wince inducing, the third is a kind of beserker fire mode, the fourth is going to useful when swamped by enemies - it's the Chow Yun-Fat spin and shoot. Sure we've seen it a million times but it still rules.

It looks like it's going to be a really fun game though I don't understand why it's not in Cantonese with English subtitles. I also get the impression that Stranglehold is going to be a really short game than relys on multiplayer to beef it up. We shall see.

"Who will fold a crane for me when I am gone?"

Right out of the gate:

• Stranglehold has a demo up on X360. Hacha-cha-cha. I know what I'm doing when I get home.
• This August on Live Arcade they are releasing: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix - which is quite possibly my favorite puzzle game of all time and yes I play as Felicia, Space Giraffe - billed as a "psychedelic shooter", Hexic 2, and some game called Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords - a puzzler with RPG elements. Huh.

In other news:

• Orneryboy was particularly funny today.
• Robocop is one of my favorite movies ever made period. I didn't see it in the theater but I saw it soon after it was on VHS. To quote Cartman, "It warped my fragile little mind." On August 21st the 20th Anniversary Edition is being released with the theatrical and extended cuts and bonus goodies and awesomeness.

There have been updates to the other sites though I am considering combining all of the sites into a mega-site maybe...possibly...any input from you fine folks?

Another tasty piece of PS3 news.

There are a couple of us who kind of sort of like John Woo's Hard Boiled. According to the game news Stranglehold - the PS3 sequel to Hard Boiled - is going to have a special edition release with a Blu-Ray of Hard Boiled. I think I just peed myself a little.

If you haven't checked out the Stranglehold site then shame on you. Shame. Here's the link: http://strangleholdgame.com/us/index.html