Stranglehold Review
Sep 4, 2007
Although countless video games have been influenced by John Woo's classic blood opera Hard-Boiled, it's never received a video game treatment it could call its own. That's no longer the case -- while Stranglehold doesn't actually carry the Hard-Boiled moniker, it's a sequel to the movie in all but name, right down to the involvement of both the movie's star Chow Yun-Fat, and John Woo himself.
For once, Woo's involvement isn't limited to putting his name on the game's box. His trademarks are stamped all over Stranglehold. Flocks of doves? Check. Slow motion? Check. One way or another, much of the game takes place in slo-mo. Dual pistols? You bet. Tense armed standoffs? Tons of them. The man even stars in the game, manning the bar in the opening level.
Stranglehold sees Hard-Boiled star Chow Yun-Fat reprise his role as Inspector Tequila, the renegade Hong Kong cop with a chip on his shoulder and a pistol in each hand. His task: To shoot his way through eight hours of levels heavily inspired by Hard-Boiled's action, motivated by a suitably unlikely and overdone plot, and produce a mountain of bodies that'd shame a perfectly good natural disaster. Forget floods, earthquakes and tsunamis -- Tequila's in town.
To help him along his way, he's armed with four special moves, most of which involve almost supernatural slo-mo death-dealing and/or invulnerability. Why exactly he should have these is not explained, nor is his ability to never reload and capability to withstand a few point-blank shotgun blasts. It's just one of those things you'll have to take on trust.
Inspector Tequila comes with four of these "Tequila Bombs," fueled by pulling off stylish kills. One gives you a little health boost, another slows down time and gives you a "precision shot" that'll kill an enemy in one hit, the third gives you unlimited ammo and invulnerability for a short time, and the last works like a smart bomb.
For once, all of these extras are invaluable. Precision Shot's our favorite, thanks to the almost loving way it shows the unfortunate target reacting in shock to his new piercing before crumpling to the ground. But all three of the combat Bombs are implemented with attractive visual effects, and although three doesn't sound like many, it'll be a long time before you tire of them.
Stranglehold's levels look superb, too. Tequila takes in a variety of locations during his killing spree, from Asian fishing villages to Chicago car parks to elaborate casinos. Each contains a delightful plethora of stuff to blow up. You'll be taking cover behind a concrete pillar as incoming shots take chunks out of it, or dodging falling sculptures in an art gallery, or shooting watermelons into a kind of red mist. As its heritage might lead you to expect, it's a very cinematic game.
But all this destruction isn't just window dressing. Some environmental features will take out enemies as they fall: rock slides, neon signs and exploding cars all prove useful tools. Likely targets are picked out with a sparkle effect, so there's no need to just destroy random things to find one that'll damage an enemy. Unless you want to, that is. More could have been made of this feature, as it's quite unevenly distributed about the levels, but when they show up they're great fun.
Stranglehold includes the almost compulsory set of multiplayer options, but the abilities that sparkle so much in single-player don't work so well online. You can't slow down time just for yourself, obviously, so much of the advantage of doing it is gone. It's nice to have the option, and it'll go some way to breaking up Stranglehold's often monotonous single-player levels, but it's more of an afterthought than a main course.
Monotonous single-player, you say? You bet. Stranglehold loves to pile on the objectives. Plant 42 C4 charges around this dock. Blow up 700 meth labs in this Hong Kong slum. You get the idea. Sure, this stuff's just there to provide some context to the combat, but Stranglehold doesn't exactly go out of its way to make life interesting.
Mind you, the combat is very nearly capable of carrying this game on its own. There's a real elegance in the way Stranglehold looks when a big firefight kicks off, an alluring character that's authentically John Woo and superbly stylish. Everybody loves to kick back and blow the crap out of stuff from time to time, and Stranglehold satisfies that need more than adequately.
But it's not the most sophisticated of offerings. There's not much here other than the destruction -- the levels are repetitive, and most encounters play out similarly. Little differentiates the game's weapons, and the plot is threadbare. Would Hard-Boiled be as good if it were stretched out into a eight-hour movie rather than a hundred minutes? Stranglehold is best played in similarly short bursts. Although it's a creditable adaptation of John Woo's cinematic style, it's a shallow experience among its video game peers.