Bloodstroke – As We Play

Aside from being one of the most respected Hollywood action directors on the planet, John Woo has also enjoyed a healthy relationship with the video games industry.

A few years back, he famously created a video-game sequel to his classic film, Hard Boiled. Strangehold captured the likeness and voice of Chow Yunn-fat and followed in the vein of action/adventure Max Payne with bullet-time, big explosions and hard-hitting story. This was also the first game to make use of Unreal Engine 3 and was the first project both Yunn-fat and Woo had worked on since the original Hard Boiled. The game was received very well by the critics and is still one of the finest examples of a game based on a movie we’ve seen out in the wild.

Woo’s latest is an entirely new intellectual property and currently a mobile exclusive. A logical move, considering the amount of people with access to the platform. The biggest surprise however, is that this is a more entertaining skirmish than his Hard Boiled follow-up.

This time, Woo has cast a female lead. Mai Lee  in the title role. Lee is a former combat pilot, but after serving her country dutifully, she decided to stop putting her life on the line and took a job in private sector as a translator. All seemed well and Lee was enjoying her new role, until she suddenly finds herself being pursued by the Odessa Mafia. Her employer’s security detail is completely massacred, except for one man, Terrence Williams, the founder of the employer’s security detail..

Under Terrence’s tutelage, she became a member of the Phalanx Elite, codenamed Lotus. Six months later, she’s taking on her first mission: To protect Dr Koorse and kick bad guy butt.

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The narrative moves forward throughout the game, and we come to learn more about Lee, the bond between Koorse and Lee, her previous life, and her relationships with others; whether they can be found at the bottom of a martini glass or with them facing the barrel of her gun.

The game is entirely coated in paint-stroke black and white, except for Mai’s red coat and the blood that pours out onto the streets of Hong Kong, Beijing and everywhere else Lee travels. The visual aesthetic is striking and the game instantly stands out from anything else you may have in your mobile library. Bloodstroke doesn’t necessarily feel like a mobile game – even when you’re dictating the action entirely via touch – you become so engrossed that you forget this is all happening on the same screen you write WhatsApp messages on.

The narrative moves forward via end of Chapter cut-scenes, depicted in a comic book style, and post-mission talking heads. The idea of each mission is to guide your VIP, Dr Koone, towards the end of the level without him being shot or cut to pieces. It never feels like you’re lugging behind a palette of pixels. There is life, meaning and purpose to both Lee and Koorse, again to the game’s immense credit.

But anyway, to the action. Mai is controlled by an invisible virtual stick in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and from a long range, she can fire off bursts of ammo from her handguns by holding the crosshair button on the right hand side. There are only a limited run of bullets however, so Mei will need to keep reloading. The speed of this reload and the size of ammo clips can be upgraded in-between missions, but you’ll need to earn coin from playing through each chapter. Coin, which can, of course, be purchased as a micro-transaction. But another thing I love about Bloodstroke is that the whole MS system seems completely and utterly voluntary. It’s never slammed in your face, and accumulating the necessary credits never seems too much of a radical feat. Everything is plausible and achievable through your own in-game graft – mostly by replaying the arena modes and trying to go back and get all three stars per mission. In fact, you can even turn off in-app purchases through the options in your phone. But I still find it irking that an MS system even pops up in a paid app. Still, that’s another story.

So Mei can keep trotting along, shooting every thug that’s hiding behind a car or the alleyway of a building, but when she reloads, both Mei and Koorse are potentially very vulnerable. That’s where her other method of attack comes into play. Mei can physically run toward an enemy and hack through them with her sword. This never needs recharging, nor is there any delay in attack. You could even run through the entire level slicing and dicing. As long as Koorse isn’t shot down and killed and you’re doing a good enough job of shielding him from danger, you’re golden. Like the guns, the sword can be upgraded and given improved damage and reduced swing time.

Later on, Mei can also gain new weapons, like a shotgun, uzi and even a rifle. She can also gain dual chakrams and a super-sword that is razor sharp to the slightest touch. She can even get her hands on some heavy weapons, like rocket and grenade launchers and even spend points to increase the hitpoints of Koorse and regenerate his HP.

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The virtual stick is fairly nimble and responsive, though in close confined quarters and tense missions, the 4S screen feels too small to fully take advantage of everything. This is where a 5S or even a tablet would definitely benefit play time. Still, I have no noticeable concerns with the control scheme, although the change in directional path can sometimes create confusion and often get Lee caught behind a car when the game is forcing her to turn in the intended direction. This causes some clipping glitches and graphical hiccups.

Apart from the story, players can also take part in the Arena to earn more cash. Arenas simply pit you in the middle of the screen with Koorse and you have to protect him for as long as possible. The more kills you make, the more money you receive. There are also set conditions for each arena tussle and if you meet all of the criteria, you earn extra cash rewards. For instance, the game may ask you to kill 6 enemies in one session or kill several with melee or ranged attacks. It offers refreshing diversity, keeping things interesting and helping to soften the blow of having to keep coming back to earn more money.

In addition to upgrades, cash can also be spent to revive Koone if he dies in the middle of a mission, to skip levels and to skip objectives in the arena. But you wouldn’t want to do things like that. Would you?

Areas for Development

  • Issues with graphics and glitching if you change direction and not towards the path the game wants you to take.
  • Game harder to play on smaller 4S screen as sometimes the virtual stick is slightly too responsive.
  • On some enemies, not always clear your upgraded weapons are having a differing impact compared to a lower level
  • Better use of Game Centre for multiplayer score comparison on leaderboards.
  • The Facebook connectivity takes too long to respond and usually lags the game
  • Maybe some form of online co-op
  • Further missions and arenas

 

Final Analysis

Bloodstroke is an exceptional mobile game. The action never becomes monotonous as a new weapon is introduced just before things become stale, the environments fluctuate and differ regularly enough and the story ensures there is backbone and reasoning to this wanton chaos. Enjoyable from start to finish, we’d be happy seeing Woo oversee more projects, and hope the game sees further content down the road.

Technical Competency – 8.5/10

Graphical State/Sound Quality – 9/10

Network Stability – 6/10

Overall – 8/10

 (These grades assess our playthrough, taking into consideration how many (if any) bugs were encountered, whether there were any interruptions in gameplay and the product’s final technical state. These scores, coupled with the Final Analysis and Areas for Development, are suggestions for future patches and updates which the developers could (and in our opinion, should) explore. These scores are separate to our DLC/Expansion Reviews but link into our Patch/Firmware Reviews.)

(These scores are not designed as a grading system to determine the entertainment value of a product and should not be treated as such..)

Issues you’ve encountered

  • Control issues
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