Stranglehold [X360]

The third rung earns you Barrage, the most useful of the Bombs. Once selected, Tequila loads up the weapon of choice with bullets. You now have a good 20 seconds of enhanced firepower and invulnerability. With Barrage, you can tear through the environment (particularly with the shotgun) and lay waste to enemies. While many will drool over Stranglehold's slick slow-motion options and environmental interaction, for my money, Barrage is the most stunning element in the entire game. It's beautifully brutal -- especially with a rocket launcher in hand.

Lastly, you acquire the smart bomb. Hit up this final Tequila Bomb and the good Inspector spins in a circle, firing with stunning accuracy. As doves flutter about, Tequila kills every enemy on screen. It's a useful power, though it does take away the fundamental element of Stranglehold -- killing people yourself.

Each of the Bombs has its uses and initially you may find yourself ignoring them for the satisfaction of using normal gunplay to end the lives of each enemy. However, about halfway through Stranglehold, the difficulty gets a serious ratcheting up and it becomes almost impossible to complete the game without making use of the Bombs. Fortunately, you will be killing so many enemies in the final three levels that your Tequila meter fills quickly, allowing you to make use of the Bombs with great regularity.

Of course, no Woo movie would be complete without some slow-motion kills. These come in bunches. In fact, a good majority of Stranglehold is played at a slower speed. On the HUD, just below your health, is a Tequila Time meter. You can enter this manually with a tap of a button. The screen is washed in a sepia tone, bullets can be seen as they slowly approach, and Tequila can aim more easily. The meter runs out quickly, but fills almost as fast.

Tequila Time also engages any time you interact with the environment or dive. The Left Trigger is your greatest ally. Hold the Left Trigger to dive in any direction. Time slows and people die. If you're near an object (railing, chandelier, wall, roll cart, etc.) Tequila will interact with that object and (again) time will slow. This allows for some truly cool moments. You'll be sliding down banisters, running up the spines of fossilized dinosaurs, swinging from chandeliers, and sliding across the tops of counters, popping enemies as you go.

Quite a lot of things in the environment are interactive. And you'll know about each one, as Stranglehold has every item flashing. "Hey, over here, Tequila! It's me, your old friend the banister. Come run along me!" I would hope gamers aren't so stupid that they need their hand held through every single level. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that after the first "training" level, gamers will get the idea. It gets a little bit obnoxious after a while to see the environment flashing and actually takes away some of the fun of discovering new areas of interaction.

The real problem, however, is that the interactive elements are buggy. You'll be next to a railing, hit the trigger and dive forward instead of hopping onto the rail. Or you will face a wall, expect to plant your feet and push off as you've done in the past, only to find Tequila standing motionless staring at the wall like an idiot. Now, 90% of the time, the interaction works perfectly. But that's still 10% of the time when you will meet frustration. And this is really the greatest flaw in Stranglehold, because the lack of a fluid interaction system hurts one of the title's strongest selling points.

Should you get frustrated at any of the failed interactions, you can always take it out on the environment. Just about everything in Stranglehold is destructible. Tables splinter, support columns shatter, and every spot of cover quickly erodes. Every bullet needs to go somewhere. In the chaos of the many arena battles, the game world is often left in a heaping mess. This affects gameplay, because in later stages you'll be forced to take cover. But almost every piece of cover will be destroyed given time, forcing you to move forward and never allowing the action to slow for too long.