Stranglehold for the XBOX 360

I don't even know where to begin with this game. When I first heard of this game, I thought about Max Payne and how this was a clone. When Stranglehold was released in August of 2007, my assumptions were confirmed. I tired to have an open mind, but it was painfully obvious that another unoriginal game had escaped through the production line and into unknowing consumer hands.

I will start with the graphics, the graphics in this games are sub par. Max Payne on the PC a few years back looked better than this game. The textures are all blurry when close up and the character models are blocky as well. The graphics seem like they could have easily been pulled off on the Playstation 2. The character animation when Tequila moves around is stiff. When he nears an object that he can slide on, he just automatically switches from a walk cycle to a slide animation with no transition whatsoever. Unrealistic to say the least.

Camera... The camera in this game is so wonky that I felt I was on a spinning teacup in a Great Adventure theme park. The camera did not respond to my movements the way it should and I ended up getting caught in corners or walking backwards while getting shot at repeatedly. Welcome to in-game cameras from Tomb Raider 1....

Collision detection boxes are as bad as they are in Timeshift. I shot people point blank or in the head, and they magically continued firing at me as if I were firing water instead of bullets at them.

The last complaint I have is the slow motion ala Max Payne bullet-time. In this day and age we should be innovating and pushing the envelope of gaming, not rehashing the same old crap from years ago. If you are going to reuse someone else's original idea, improve upon it, don't just regurgitate the same idea minus a few interface changes.

The only thing original in this game is the story which supposedly is a successor to the movie Hardboiled, which wasn't even a good movie.

Steer away from this game unless you enjoy mediocre gameplay, lack of originality, sub-par graphics, and horrible camera work.