Stranglehold Review (PS3)

Got You In A Stranglehold Baby

Much like the Ted Nugent song of the same name, Stranglehold makes you feel like a total badass. The sequel to John Woo action flick Hard Boiled features Chow Yun-Fat reprising his role as Detective Tequila. Stranglehold is a lot of fun.

Hard Boiled is one of my favourite movies. The action scenes run for the majority of the movie, with Chow Yun-Fat sliding down banisters whilst dual-wielding hand guns as he chases down and puts an end to the bad guys. The game feels so similar, but so much more refined.

Whether you’re sprinting across banisters, gliding along on a trolley, swinging from a chandelier or zooming down a zip line you will be killing bad guys. Strangleholds choreography is beautiful and a little insane. Tequila Time lets you slow the game down so you can precisely pinpoint your shots, placing your bullets perfectly between the eyes of an enemy, or directly in between their testicles. This does make for some hilariously brutal animations, and each one looks more painful than the last.

There are many different types of special moves in the game, including ‘Barrage’ in which you repeatedly fire your equipped weapon until nearly everything has been flattened. The games destructible buildings and environments really add to the joy of this, and crushing your enemies beneath landslides is unbelievably enjoyable. There is a reasonable assortment of weapons too, which make for interesting kills, especially when you score a headshot with a rocket launcher.

The story is rather forgettable, and that’s absolutely fine with me as the gameplay is the complete opposite. I liken Stranglehold to the Max Payne series, however with a lot more of the focus pushing gameplay rather than story. Stranglehold harkens back to the days of Doom & Duke Nukem where story was simply an afterthought to an amazing game, in fact I can’t help but feel this game wasn’t even a Hard Boiled sequel until way into development, as the majority of it was built using the Psi-Ops engine, and would’ve potentially been a sequel to that instead.

During gameplay you earn style points for your kills, these are rated out of 5 stars and with these style points you can unlock behind the scenes clips of the development as well as different outfits for the online multiplayer – which sadly I have never been a part of due to my lateness of buying this game. You spend your style points in the shop part of the game, where John Woo, reprising his bartender role from Hard Boiled, will sell them to you and give you a friendly bit of conversation about your choices.

Unfortunately this game has its blemishes, which include the dated graphics. The main issue is that by trying to be more than a one-trick pony it adds some generic missions to it’s saddle. A chopper gunner level is the stand out here, and really adds a lot of negativity to the game for me. Some of the mechanics are a little gimmicky and don’t work too well, such as the Mexican stand-off mechanic which just ends up being a really difficult version of Enter the Matrix bullet dodging.

Overall this game has a lot going for it and is one of my favourite hidden gems of the last generation. It’s possibly the only game I’ve played that let’s you shoot the terracotta army to pieces and one of the few games which really makes me feel as if I’m in a huge police shoot out. I do have doubts about the making of a potential stranglehold movie, but if it happens you can bet your socks ill be watching it on release.