Stranglehold

"Captures the Max Payne feel, and gives it the next-gen makeover it deserves"

If there is one genre of games I am usually skeptical about, it is games that are based on movie licenses. Almost always are the games that are based off the latest, big-budget release end up failing miserably or being mediocre at best (see: Fantastic Four, Transformers, and Pirates of the Caribbean as some of the latest examples). Then there are games that try to stir things up by being based off classic films like From Russia With Love and The Godfather in recent years which led to varying degrees of success. To my relief, the game I am reviewing, Stranglehold, is of the latter as it is being touted as official sequel to the 1992 John Woo smash hit, Hard Boiled.

With publisher Midway billing this as the official sequel, they mean business as they brought in John Woo to help craft the story, and brought back Chow Yun-Fat's to voice Detective Tequila. Stranglehold takes place 18 years after the events of Hard Boiled, where Tequila is still a do-as-he-pleases cop and decides to step in and take charge of a case that left one innocent cop dead at the hand of a Hong Kong gang. Soon enough, he discovers his ex-girlfriend and daughter are kidnapped and from then on Tequila is all business to rescue his loved ones in a plot filled with somewhat false alliances, double crosses, triple crosses, and more explosions than you can count. It may not set the world on fire with its creative plot, but all the action-movie staples are here to bring Tequila back to form for another round of taking names and cashing checks.

Gameplay wise, Stranglehold is an homage to Max Payne, which interestingly enough was an homage to the crazy type of action found in Hong Kong action movies like Hard Boiled. I wouldn't call Stranglehold a straight-up Max Payne-clone as it adds several different elements to gameplay to help freshen up the game and give it a bit of its own charm, but using this style of gameplay is like a match made in heaven for the license. The game plays so fluidly, and just feels so right it is like you're on a nonstop adrenaline rush in the middle of the madness yourself.

Stranglehold features non stop third-person gunplay, with very interactive environments; I mean nearly anything can be blown up. See a hanging sign over a couple bad guys, shoot it to knock it loose and fall on top of the two foes. Want to shoot off the gigantic bone off a T-Rex skeleton at the local museum? Go for it by all means. Even the tiniest of objects can be blown up like watermelons and bottles and even crates and other objects Tequila can take cover behind which will force Tequila to find some more durable cover or to go out guns-a-blazing. Sometimes I just got lost in the amazing sight of watching everything get shredded to smithereens from the seemingly nonstop onslaught of bullets that I forgot to check my health meter and I was dead before I knew it.

Tequila has a full arsenal of the standard fare of weapons like an assault rifle, shotgun, and dual pistols and as he mercilessly lays waste to the gangs of Hong Kong his “Tequila-Meter” builds up to where he can unleash one of four special “Tequila-Time” moves. These moves come off very influenced from the slow motion “Bullet-Time” effect of the Max Payne games, but are very cool to execute regardless. These moves involve a short period of time where Tequila is invincible and can unleash an infinite amount of ammo in slow-motion to a huge array of enemies, or a devastating spin attack which automatically kills all the enemies immediately surrounding Tequila.

Since you are controlling the always acrobatic Chow Yun-Fat as Mr. Tequila that means besides being the master of weaponry you also got a bunch of crazy moves at your disposal. Tequila can jump off walls and do slow motion dives onto carts with the simple push of a button. He can also swing off chandeliers while still gunning down opponents, as well as automatically sliding across tables and bar counters without a button press. When I first ran across these moves I considered them more of a gimmick, but eventually found them very resourceful when confronted with the hordes of enemies that Stranglehold unleashes on you.

I was surprised at how much fun I had with all the boss battles. They present a great sense of danger when trying to down them whether it was trying to kill them while avoiding a crazy grid of laser detectors or dodging an infinite amount of ammo coming from a helicopter mounted machine gun. They all seem to have the right sense of challenge to them, with each one having a certain trick to beating them. The same can be said for the overall game. I played on normal difficulty, and it presented a great challenge where I died many times, but mostly from my own mistakes and not from a poor camera or game design like so many other action games I have played before.

Stranglehold took me right around nine hours to complete which felt like just about the right length for this type of game. As much fun as the gameplay is, probably just a couple hours longer and I would have probably found it growing to be very repetitive. As for some other qualms I have with the game, slow-motion shootouts were pretty cool the first time or two I ran across them, but I quickly disliked and dreaded them as they just came off tacky and seemed added in as breathers from the nonstop action. There is also one level early on that seemed to drag on forever where you were taking out drug labs on a huge set of docks, and after taking out what seemed like 50 drug labs, you had to go back through the docks and arm several bombs to blow up a bunch of boats. The level just felt poorly designed and was a temporary setback from the otherwise overall superior quality of the main game.

Finally, the online multiplayer is a bust and comes off more as an afterthought. I had a little bit of fun with it initially, but quickly realized the game engine just isn't meant to be implemented in multiplayer (come to think of it, neither of the Max Payne games had multiplayer either). Multiplayer consists of only deathmatch and team deathmatch, where players can go into slow-motion and use Tequila moves against you, which sounds good on paper, but looks and feels broken when on the receiving end.

Graphically, Stranglehold gets the job done. The aforementioned scenery with its incredible amount of destruction is what steals the show as I was awing in its bliss throughout the game. The character models for the main characters are designed and animated well, but expectedly not as much for Gangster #327 that Tequila guns down in the middle of Hong Kong. Aurally, Midway did a tremendous job the with the voice-acting and making the cut-scenes come to life as Chow Yun-Fat does a great job as Tequila and in no way feels like he is phoning this performance in. The same can be said for the rest of the cast. If you have a good stereo setup, you will have a blast experiencing the sound effects as you hear countless bullets whiz right by Tequila and destroy objects surrounding him. A very satisfying score setting the tone of gameplay and kicking in at all the right moments rounds off the overall superb audio quality of the game.

As much fun as I had with Stranglehold, this is one of those games you can easily get your money's worth in a rental. There are a lot of costumes and promotional materials to unlock, as a well as an unlockable “Hard Boiled” difficulty level to plow through if you're committed to it so there is some extra value to be had there, but if you are like me you will most likely be satisfied just renting the game and experiencing it for what it is. If you absolutely want to buy it though, I would suggest the PS3 version as its Collector's Edition includes what I think is one of the best bonuses in gaming history in the form of the full-length Hard Boiled movie in high-def.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/07

Game Release: Stranglehold (US, 09/05/07)