Review: Stranglehold

I just finished playing Stranglehold, and was fairly impressed. Here is my overly-simplified review of the game.

You may have heard of a couple names from this work: John Woo directed the storyline, and Chow Yun Fat plays the game’s star, Inspector Tequila. As the names suggest, the game plays more like a hit action movie.

I shall divide my review into the following segments:

1. Graphics
2. Realism
3. Gameplay
4. Cinematics
5. Extras

1: GRAPHICS
Stranglehold’s graphics are freaking awesome. The characters are realistic and believable, the environments are detailed and (somewhat) destructible, and the Havok physics engine provides for incredible detail when things go flying through the air. Having said that, I would have preferred some way to go first-person.

2: REALISM
I cannot honestly give Stranglehold much credit for realism. Sure, the physics and graphics are great; but when I shoot a man 300 times in the face, he should be dead - No matter how fat, bloated, and rich he is.

Most characters take injury in what seems a realistic enough fashion. If you shoot someone in the arm, they clutch it with the other hand in pain. If a heavy chandelier drops on six people, they all get crushed.

3: GAMEPLAY
The plot and maps are laid out in such a way that you can easily follow them. Unfortunately, the gameplay is entirely linear and provides very little room for improvisation. Fortunately, however, Stranglehold provides a rich experience during the aforementioned highly-linear gameplay.

A signature John Woo event called the Tequila Bomb helps you in a pinch. There are four Tequila Bomb events:
- Health boost (Lame, but useful)
- Precision Shot: Focuses all your attention on one really good shot, which as perfect accuracy and a long range. Kills most enemies in one shot.
- Barrage: For about ten seconds, you are immune to most forms of damage and have infinite ammunition. Additionally, everything slows down to “Tequila Time” (Which is really just “Bullet Time” with John Woo’s name on it). I suggest you use an automatic weapon or rocket launcher for barrages when possible.
- Spin Attack: You spin in circles for a few seconds and kill all enemies in the room (Except bosses). For some reason, every time you use a Spin Attack, several doves come flying out of your coat.

You have to kill bad guys to get “Tequila Bomb” points, which in turn allow you to use more powerful Tequila Bombs. The bigger combo you come up with, the more Tequila Bomb points you get. Without using combos, you have to kill 2-4 people for a Health boost, 4-8 for a Precision Shot, 8-12 for a barrage, and 12-16 for a Spin Attack. Fortunately for you, these points are still racking up during your last Tequila Bomb. So if your Spin Attack kills 16 people (uncommon), you can use another right away for the next wave.

The action sequences in the game are very useful, once you get used to them. You can jump off walls, ride casino carts, slide down banisters, cross gaps by hanging off a chandelier, and lots more - All while shooting bad guys. Yeah, the game is all shooting, but that’s why it’s called a “shooter”.

The last third or so of the game is rather repetitive: Run into a room, kill everyone in it, run down a hallway to the next room; repeat. Fortunately, you can keep yourself entertained throughout this ordeal by practicing your martial arts.

4: CINEMATICS
The cinematics are all rendered in-engine and are well-scripted. The only thing that really bothered me is that Inspector Tequila always enters a cinematic scene holding his useless pistol, which I had discarded long before in favor of more powerful weapons.

5: EXTRAS
The game comes with a few basic screenshots of discarded levels (Levels that didn’t make the final game), which is kinda lame. It would have been nice to walk around in these discarded levels, but at least they included something. For a 13GB install, I kind of expected some behind-the-scenes videos, or at least a cinematic credits roll. Yeah, the extras kinda suck.

MISCELLANEOUS
It bothers me that no matter how often I leave my useless pistol in the middle of a level, I always start the next scene with a new one.

It bothers me that when I use Precision Shot, the shot is fired from the pistol, even if I don’t have one at the time.

It bothers me that the Golden weapons don’t take compatible ammo from their non-golden counterparts (i.e. the Golden Pistol doesn’t take pistol ammo).

The game runs smoothly in 1280×1024, medium graphics, on my year-old system running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1; even though I didn’t bother to disable the other five monitors.

The picture I included above in this article is actual in-game footage. That’s what it looks like while you’re playing. Wow, games have come a long way.

SUMMARY
The pros far outweigh the cons of this game. I give it a 95% rating and 5000 arbitrary “Cool Points”, which I specifically designed to mean nothing.