John Woo present's

2007/09/28

The disappearance of a narcotics officer has the Hong Kong Police concerned. When an anonymous informant calls Captain Ed Lee and requests a meeting, he and Inspector Tequila realize that this must be a trap. Against his superior officer’s orders, Tequila sets off alone to the meeting point and gets caught in the stranglehold of the two rival drug mafiosi, James Wong and Yung Gi.

After a short introduction, you assume control of the Inspector and, in the third person perspective, steer the cop through a run-down part of Hong Kong. His two most faithful friends, the enforcer pistols, are at his side. Apart from these two beauties, Stranglehold comes up with an impressive arsenal of weapons. It has everything from the two golden pistols to M5’s and M4’s. Not even a rocket launcher has been left out this game.

Stranglehold spares us a tedious tutorial and sends us right into battle. The operating instructions are explained in the course of the game by means of information boxes. If you are already familiar with Max Payne, you will quickly get used to Stranglehold’s controls. Use the WASD buttons to make the Inspector run, and use the mouse to take a look around. Pushing the space bar will cause the Inspector to interact with flashing objects. This enables Tequila to slide down banisters, swish around on a service trolley, climb over huge dinosaur skeletons or dangle from chandeliers. Since the game appeared under the banner “John Woo Presents”, a slow motion mode (called Tequila Time) is naturally included, which can be activated by right-clicking the mouse.

You can send your opponents to kingdom come (and collect some style points along the way) by using a clever combination of Tequila Time and object interaction. It is not only important how you get rid of the opponent, but also how many opponents you shoot in a row. These style points are added to the Tequila Bomb meter, which brings us to another one of Stranglehold’s special features.

Although the save points in Stranglehold are fairly distributed, and there are enough medi-packs lying around, we were, often more excited about the Tequila Bombs, which are one of Stanglehold’s nice features. Tequila Bombs are special abilities that can, as previously mentioned, be boosted by collecting style points or the paper birds that are lying about. Depending on the ability, each Tequila Bomb requires a different number of style points.

The first of four special abilities is the health boost. If enough style points have been raked in, you can give yourself a health boost in the middle of battle by pressing the specified button. The number of health points you receive depends on how full your Tequila Bomb meter is. This function bailed us out of the more difficult parts of the game on more than one occasion.

The second ability is the precision shot. With the help of the precision shot (assuming that you have accumulated enough points) you can get close to your enemies, pull the trigger, let the camera follow the bullet, and hit them with such precision that it causes immediate death.

The third function is called “drumfire”, but “barrage” would have been a more appropriate title. This function allows Tequila to fire his current fully loaded weapon at his opponent with almost double the speed, without reloading. This is a particularly useful feature when surrounded by many opponents.

The fourth and final Tequila Bomb ability is the Spin Attack. Selecting this ability allows you to kill all opponents in your vicinity immediately. In a cinematic depiction, Tequila revolves on his own axis and fires from all his cylinders with his current weapon of choice. Naturally, in the typical John Woo style, the soaring pigeons had to be included.

Stranglehold is a fireworks display of action. The levels, which can be destroyed almost entirely, make the course of the game unique and fun. With each attempt, we discovered new ways to effectively kill our opponents because the objects at all levels, which can also be almost entirely destroyed, can be put to good use (misuse) as weapons. If you for example, fire at a neon display, it will detach from its wall bracket and bury the opponent who happens to be standing directly under it. This unique interactive ability runs through the entire course of the game, but not always to your advantage. It could happen that the slab you have chosen for cover is pulverised by a barrage from one of your adversary’s larger weapons.

Apart from the fantastic possibilities that the Massive D technology (destructible levels) offers, Stranglehold offers some other exciting possibilities. For example, the Mexican standoffs, made famous by John Woo movies, can also be found in this game.

For those who don’t know what a Mexican standoff is: It consists of a group of three, needless to say, armed men aiming at each other. Two are usually partners in this trio. The one who doesn’t belong to this partnership (for the most part, the hero or main protagonist) kills the other two in one fell swoop.

Stranglehold contains these Mexican standoffs as well. Using keys A and D, you can avoid approaching bullets. With the mouse you can focus on the opponent and then fire at the right moment. It is a good idea, but the game is totally overridden with these standoffs. It is fun the first three or four times, but quickly gets tiring. All the above-mentioned, action-packed, innovative ideas are simply used too often in the game to hold your interest. Stranglehold has a lot of wasted potential.

Stranglehold lets you travel to many exciting places. You go from the run-down Bronx in Hong Kong to a fishing port, then to Chicago where you have to pass through an office building and fight your way up – floor by floor. Then the program takes you to the museum where the story takes a dramatic turn. Then you journey back to Asia.

All settings are depicted beautifully thanks to the Unreal 3 Engine. The textures appear a bit sloppy in places, which partly robs the fantastic interim sequences of their charm. For example, a crashed helicopter that Tequila passes looks more like a sorry heap of pixels that hails from the time of Quake 1.

It was repeatedly reported that Stranglehold would be delivered with an awesome multiplayer mode. We would have been happy to take part in these online battles, but unfortunately only about one game is hosted per hour. Therefore, we cannot comment on Stranglehold’s multiplayer mode. We will keep an eye on this, and if there is any action on the servers, we’ll add a report on it.