Stranglehold [X360]

The high level of destruction takes a toll on the visuals. While the environments look great, the characters come off as generic, with a very limited set of animations. Stranglehold has a lot of cinematic flair, but lacks the visual pop I'd expected. Considering that apples scatter when shot off a table and a dozen enemies are on screen at almost every moment, the weakened visual fidelity is forgivable. Even with today's technology, there are still limits to what can be done on screen.

None of this excuses Stranglehold's most pressing issue: the camera. It becomes a considerable problem when leaping off walls or otherwise shifting your body in another direction. You have to manually adjust the camera to follow your movements, which is a real challenge in such a fast-paced game. However, if you turn on the "camera spring" option, this issue largely goes away. Why this wasn't made the default is curious, because Stranglehold is a much better game without the nagging camera concerns.

Another staple of Woo films are standoffs, where Tequila finds himself staring down the barrel of several guns. These moments are recreated in about a half-dozen standoff mini-games during play. For standoffs, the controls change slightly. Tequila stands still, but you can lean left and right to dodge the incoming bullets from enemies. At the same time as you are dodging, you must also aim your shot and take down the other members of the standoff. You only have a couple of seconds to take an enemy out before Tequila spins and faces the next villain and the sequence repeats. This becomes quite challenging towards the latter part of Stranglehold. Though people will come for the fast-paced action, the standoffs were my favorite part of Stranglehold. They're tense and exciting.

The single-player game only lasts 6-8 hours. On the bright side, that's four times the length of Hard Boiled. But, then again, this is $60 we're talking about. Stranglehold features online multiplayer for up to six players. It's only deathmatch and team deathmatch, which take place in a variety of locales from the game. Each match is complete and utter chaos. Every player has access to the various Tequila Bombs and can (sometimes) enter slow motion. None of this really comes together though, as players need to be in slow motion at the same time, so that there's no real advantage to using Stranglehold's primary gameplay element. And the Precision Aiming power still has the same slow-mo reticule movements, but the other players are moving in real time, so it's pretty much impossible to use.

While the multiplayer doesn't come together as well as it should, it's still an interesting experiment. Anyone who picks up Stranglehold should give the multiplayer a shot at least once, just to experience the insanity. But this isn't something that will have people playing Stranglehold for the next year.

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