With the release of Halo 4 everyone seems to be talking about it.  In one of the video game podcasts that I listen to there was mention of the Anniversary edition of Halo which contains hidden terminals that augment to story (give you some background) and if you've watched all of the terminal videos (supposedly) your enjoyment of Halo 4 will be greater. 

I did, just by accident, find one of these terminals, but in all honesty I didn't spend much time looking for them (despite the achievement you get). Luckily, there are  people who record these and post them on YouTube :-)  Enjoy!

OK, if you weren't watching before, you should watch this before picking up a copy of Halo 4. Forward unto dawn is not a prequel (I don't think), but it gives people a little more information about the Halo universe. As someone who's played most Halo games, and have read more Halo books, this was certainly an interesting live action show.  I am not sure what it cost to make this, but I would certainly watch an entire season of this.

One thing that was personally disappointing was the death toll in this.  There were so many actors that I recognized in this series that just died.  What the heck?  I was hoping for more name-brand actors to survive, but in the end only three cadets make it.  Oh well. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised since in the short stories most people end up dead anyway ;-)

Well, this past weekend I slogged through stranglehold, and in all honesty it was just to get it done! I had some pretty high expectations for the game, it being a John Woo game with Chao Yun Fat as the lead character (Tequilla).

That said, the first couple of hours of the game really tainted it for me, mostly because I was getting Alone in the Dark vibes from this game: in other words, nice concept, poor execution.  I decided to drop the difficulty level to Casual in order to get through the game. This actually made the game more enjoyable because I was able to progress through the storyline much quicker, and the storyline was actually much better than Alone in the Dark!

There is really no need to talk much about the story itself. If you've seen a Hong Kong police movie with all the crazy action and gang/cartel related (and honor related) plots, you've got a pretty good idea of what Stranglehold is all about.

In terms of game play, the Tequilla time (bullet time) was actually pretty good, and something that game the game more enjoyable. The thing that got pretty tiresome, really quickly, were the standoffs (see video bellow).  The first, and second time, around it was pretty exciting.  After that, the same formula was followed many, many, times, which made it just another thing to do in order to get closer to get closer to the end of the game.

At the end of the credits I was expecting some sort of wrap-up cinematic...but that never came. Oh well.

When all was said and done the game gave me a final score of "D" (hey, it's passing!) and I collected 20% of the achievements (11/55). M'eh.  Stranglehold, you gave me a "D", so my grade for you is a C.