When the king of Chinese action cinema comes to you and wants to be involved in the creation of a video game you don’t say no. Midway must have known what this partnership would mean and they shook hands some time ago with cinematic genius John Woo. What started out as a tech demo showing off some cool destruction elements at last year’s E3 transformed into one of the best-looking, most fun games I have played on the Xbox 360. Stranglehold is basically the movie John Woo fans have wanted for twenty years, a living sequel to maybe his best work, Hard Boiled. Chow-Yun Fat returns as inspector Tequila as do all the elements of John Woo films. The over the top action and under the surface drama that unfolds during Stranglehold have many signs of it’s famed director. It may be the single game with the most outside influence overall in stores today. Without this partnership Stranglehold would probably have been just another Max Payne clone with good graphics and some cool features. Luckily Stranglehold goes beyond that comparison on so many levels it ends up being one hell of a shooter and the first of a number of 360 hits to come out over the next four months.
The story puts you in the shoes of inspector Tequila and puts him in charge of finding his kidnapped daughter and chasing down a cop killer. Stranglehold uses CG movies to tell the story and cuts away from the action throughout the gameplay. There are a couple different gangs you must fight off and each one takes place in a different part of the globe; taking Tequila from the Chinese slums to the high-rises of Chicago. Each level consists of a few objectives, an onslaught of bad guys, and then a boss fight at the end. Each bad guy can go down a number of ways as well. Not only can they be shot but many things in the environment can be manipulated to kill the enemy. For example gas tanks can be blown up, signs can be dropped down, and entire walkways can be demolished giving way to a huge variety in gameplay. It was nice to see a game go back to the old-school type of outline where each level is the same only different. What I mean is that Stranglehold felt like I was playing a new version of a Sega Genesis side-scroller which consisted of 10 or so hours of continuous, fun gameplay. Each level has a very unique feel to it, my personal favorite was the one level that took place in the rain; whoa that looks good. Taking the idea of “destructible environments” to a whole new altitude this game actually prides itself on being the most “destructible game from this next-generation”. Everything, and I mean everything, can be torn apart. Taking another cue from the John Woo style of cinema bullet holes rip through plaster and wood with ease causing walls, doors, and entire buildings to crumble with a few blasts of your weapon.
There is actually a monetary counter (one you can get an achievement for) keeping track of the costs to the government thanks to your insane amounts of destruction. Specifically I found myself wasting ammo just trying to shred some things to bits, especially in the museum level where everything is made of ancient bones. This may not be that fun if a couple pistols and a shotgun were the only things at Tequila’s disposal but luckily the developers of Stranglehold have included a slew of different weapons; most of which can be wielded one or two at a time. Starting off with a couple Beretta pistols, PDW guns, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and finishing off with some grenades gamers will tear through most of the levels never letting go of the fire button on their 360 controller. The controls in this game are so simple you will be picking off gangsters twenty minutes into play. One button shoots, one reloads, one throws grenades, one button dives, one starts “Tequila time” manually, and the d-pad performs special moves. “Tequila time” is very similar (maybe exactly the same) to the now much used slow-down move made famous in the Matrix movies and used in games such as Max Payne, etc. You have a small, refillable, bar at the top of the screen above your health bar, which represents available “Tequila time” and it is used when diving, or activating it manually. Once your character has entered this special mode everything slows down and the killing becomes much more easier. It is also activated when riding on food carts, running down banners, swinging from chandeliers, or doing a number of other cool activities.
Another aspect of Stranglehold that is definitely the work of John Woo is the three (four counting health) special moves that Tequila can perform after building up a meter based on unique kills carried out. The first of these is called “precision aiming” and it is easily the coolest of them all. By pressing the correct direction on the d-pad the camera will zoom into a scope only and you can fire a one-shot one-kill bullet aiming anywhere on an enemies body; the bad guy will fall dependent on where he is shot which makes for some really cool kills. The other two are similar in that one of them gives you ten seconds of unlimited ammo and killing time while the other releases some white doves (uh Woo anyone?) and then puts you into an ultimate killing spin wiping out all enemies on screen at that time. The last little unique quirk you will notice during the game is that when coming up on 4 or 5 enemies the game will switch over to a quick cut-scene then Tequila is ready to do battle; time is slowed down, the camera zooms in, and a scene right out of the Matrix unfolds as you dodge bullets and fire back very reminiscent of something from the period of western movies.
