Stranglehold (PS3)
Many video games try to capture the feeling of being in an action movie, but very rarely do they have someone who created one involved in its production, let alone someone as influential as famed Hong Kong action director John Woo. Rather than some tongue-in-cheek tribute, Stranglehold is produced in earnest by a director who loves one-liners, over-the-top action setpieces, and constant use of slow-motion and standoffs, the team at Midway happy to work with him to help his style come to life in virtual form.
Positioned as a sequel to John Woo’s 1992 movie Hard Boiled, Stranglehold thankfully doesn’t require any familiarity with the film to keep up with a plot mostly concerned about giving its hero license to wreak havoc across Hong Kong. Inspector Tequila, played once more by Chow Yun-fat, is looking into the murder of a policeman when he suddenly finds himself embroiled in a massive power struggle between the various gangs vying for control of the city. While he’d happily tear through them all one by on with little concern for due process or his own safety, Tequila is forced to work for the gangs as they have an old flame of his and the daughter she had with him captive. Luckily, they only want Tequila to gun down the rival gangs, making the process of rescuing the two women much more palatable for the justice-loving cop. Stranglehold’s story happily treads on the kind of cliches common to law enforcement action films, Tequila a loose cannon who disobeys his superiors and responds to their reprimands with quips, and even held at gunpoint where he’s only alive because the gang leader needs him, Tequila acts like he’s in command and entirely unafraid. He’s unflaggingly confident and hot-blooded, and considering this one-man army gets so much work done in dismantling the gangs of Hong Kong, he’s probably earned some of his ego. Unfortunately, technical issues that seem a bit common to Midway games of the time can hurt the scenes a little, sound sometimes disappearing and requiring a reset or luck to fix and the game’s lack of subtitles meaning you can’t push through the silence. However, its possible you might struggle to understand some actors even when the sound is working both do to line delivery and odd sound mixing in general.
Snappy one-liners and an unapologetic adherence to the kind of tropes usually reserved for parody give John Woo’s video game the same appeal as his film work, especially once you begin to factor in the action so pivotal to bringing it all together into something wonderfully over the top. Stranglehold is a third-person shooter where Inspector Tequila needs to make use of his movement and cover to avoid gunfire as he is repeatedly outnumbered in firefights, but his equalizer isn’t just being really good with guns. If Tequila dives through the air or interacts appropriately with some part of the environment while his crosshairs are on an enemy, the game enters Tequila Time, the screen’s color distorting to indicate time has slowed down heavily for everyone but only somewhat for the player. Free to aim and fire on enemies for as long as the short bit of slow-mo lasts, the player is encouraged to repeatedly activate this option to gain the edge against foes, the slowdown allowing for easier headshots and other quick means of clearing away the crowds of gunmen after you. Tequila Time has its limitations, the player not able to whip their aim around too wildly during it and usually only having the time to fire on a few foes accurately before the meter is drained and needs time to refill. The game doesn’t keep this option from you for too long, but using it properly rather than at every opportunity you have to activate it is vital to taking down the waves of enemies who can and will land shots on you if you are careless or left with no meter to use against them. Your guns still can do the job if need be, but it’s a much harder task than when you can use Tequila Time to your advantage, the game even giving you the option to manually activate it if you don’t want to do the dive and lack any good environmental setpieces to activate it with.
Speaking of the environments, the areas you head through in Stranglehold are excellent hosts for the firefights. On the surface they are already well designed for a shooter game, the areas involving many weaving paths and options for movement as you try to overcome the enemies stationed around the area, most areas where the big battles happen giving you the freedom to approach, take cover, or pick off separate groups depending on what you feel works best. The abundance of objects and architecture is one way the game keeps you from just abusing slo-mo as whatever activated it can’t be used to just mow down every gang member that you need to eliminate, but the environment is by no means limiting. In fact, the many locations you visit continue to dish out new ways to activate Tequila Time in extravagant fashions. Throwing yourself on a moving cart to open fire as it rolls, walking across the back of a giant dragon statue, sliding down into a group of gunman by riding a handrail… and these are just the Tequila Time options. Areas will often have destructible pieces of the environment you can use against the enemy, some as simple as exploding barrels but other things including neon signs you can shoot down to squash foes, boulders you can knock loose, and explosive lasers you can stagger your foes into. You can count on constant explosive options for clearing baddies and leaving devastation in your wake, but the enemies respond in kind with their own ridiculous maneuvers, the gang members so devoted to killing you they’ll drive speedboats through a building’s walls just for a chance to open fire on you. From museums with dinosaur skeletons to climb, casinos whose slot machines spit out coins when shot, and a dockyard you destroy ships and shacks from above with a helicopter turret, Stranglehold’s levels are packed with perfect set-ups for the insane action that makes it so captivating.
Being stylish with your kills and interacting with all these setpieces is great on its own, but there’s an in-game incentive for doing so as well, and it’s one of the smartest ways you can incentivize the player to be so daring and reckless. Health can only be recovered if you’ve earned enough style points, albeit it is the cheapest of the four Tequila Bombs. As you execute stylish kills with either Tequila Time, environmental kills, or just killing the classic way as a much lower rate of accumulation, you’ll earn energy towards special moves. If you need the health you can just keep spending this energy on topping yourself off whenever it’s required, but you can also clear out an entire room of regular gunmen if you activate the most costly Tequila Bomb: the Spin Attack. Complete with doves and dramatic light, this move definitely matches the effort needed to work up to it without burning that energy on one of the other options such as the precision aim ability good for taking out snipers or the Barrage option that lets you fire rapidly without concerns for ammo and reloading, this excellent for chewing through boss health bars. Bosses in Stranglehold can range from regular men who can take an exceptional degree of damage while destroying the environment around them to helicopters you fight with whatever weapon you’re wielding, all of them going for some distinct battle style that sets them apart. Fighting them isn’t as flashy as the regular enemies where you can use your skills freely, but they still break up the action in an interesting manner the same way the stand-offs do. Every now and again Tequila finds himself on the end of multiple barrels, the cop needing to weave around the incoming shots and fire at his foes to survive. This is a good time to take down foes with well placed headshots, but if you can’t kill everyone aiming at you, you’ll end up starting the following firefight with the survivors standing ready to shoot at you again, your advantage at dodging bullets lost.
The weapon options in Stranglehold seem almost humble compared to action movie antics that modify their use, but they all contribute to the gun ballet in their own way. Ammo and new weapons are procured either from fallen foes or items placed in the environment, the player also able to find hidden paper cranes to boost their Tequila Bomb meter if need be. The pistols are a reliable but plain option save their golden equivalent which can kill any regular enemy so long as the shot lands, but much like the rocket launcher, the game only dishes out ammo for it on rare occasion to limit its potential. Instead, you’ll likely be relying on things like the shotgun for close-quarters, grenades to flush out guys or damage them if they’re too slow, and a few different types of automatic weapons with their own uses such as long range fighting, pure bullet output, or essentially being the all-rounder weapon when it comes to damage and rate of fire. Their simplicity is likely to let them work with the unique mechanics in an easily understood way, and one of the more interesting aspects of Stranglehold is that all your attack options that work in the over-the-top story mode is also brought over to multiplayer. They are more strictly regulated so that there is some degree of power balance and the emphasis ends up being more on using the level to your advantage more than your skills, but even with their lowered frequency, the stop-and-start of slo-mo being activated by other players weakens the mode as it is far less appealing when you’re just left to wait it out and hope you aren’t the target of their Tequila Time.
THE VERDICT: John Woo’s Stranglehold captures exactly what you’d hope to see from one of his films but in video game form. The unapologetic love of action movie tropes, dramatic showdowns, and slo-mo moments with guns akimbo all crop up and are worked into the gameplay very well, a reward system for being stylish with your kills only making the gunfights already packed with opportunity for the satisfying use of environments all the more enjoyable. Explosive, action-packed, and constantly trying to give you new ways to face off with absurd amounts of gun-toting baddies, Stranglehold overcomes its small technical issues and possible repetition by being incredibly brazen with its setpieces and melding its mechanics surprisingly well into the exciting gun ballet.
And so, I give Stranglehold for PlayStation 3…
A GREAT rating. Taking John Woo’s action directing and applying it to a video game shooter works out incredibly well for Stranglehold, although much of that has to do with the proper limitation of your abilities. When you’ve got Tequila Time or a Tequila Bomb you’re an unstoppable machine of death for a brief time, but to get these and better survive the firefight requires managing your stylish actions well, something that’s made better by the fact that performing such stunts is just enjoyable on a basic level already. Shooting outside of your special modes could be made a little better if the guns had stronger roles outside of the gun ballet since they mostly boil down to heavy damage or headshot machines if you want those style points back, and the showdowns aren’t as exciting as other moments of Woo’s action style turned into a game mechanic, but Stranglehold’s high octane energy keeps things moving at such a strong pace that you’re never kept away from highlight moments for too long. Happy to be flashy and embracing the rule of cool over real world logic, Strangehold is a shooter that values the kind of moments you’d pump your fist at if you saw them in theaters, but here you’re the one executing them without being railroaded into them thanks to the levels offering up plenty of options.
Video games don’t need to chase the style of action movies to have explosive set pieces and amazing gunfights, but Stranglehold shows that taking some cues from a directorial vision can lead to a wonderful blend between cinematic action and entertaining gameplay. With you in control of the stylish action and plenty of incentive to go for it, Stranglehold elevates its simple gunplay into something worthy of the term gun ballet, there being plenty of beauty in the glorious destruction and death-dealing.