John Woo Presents Stranglehold Review - Xbox 360

Do you like to shoot people and/or inanimate objects? Does your trigger finger itch no matter how much Neosporin you apply? Is “bang” your favorite four-letter word? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may fall in love with Stranglehold.

Contrary to initial hypotheses, the game is not based on Ted Nugent's eight-minute guitar riff of the same name -- though, of course, The Nuge also fancies firearms. Rather, it’s a spiritual sequel to the influential John Woo-directed, Chow Yun-Fat-starring shoot ‘em up film Hardboiled. Not since Goonies II on the NES have we seen digital follow up cinematic.

Mediocre Matinee

The relationship to motion pictures is valid in more ways than one, as Stranglehold is very much the gaming equivalent of a popcorn flick. It features plenty of adrenalized gunplay -- as bodies, boxes, bananas and buildings scatter every which way. But at the same time, it's lacking in any finesse or refinement. 

Inspector Tequila is back on the case. What case, you ask? Why, killing anything that moves, of course! The plot could be written on a cough-drop wrapper, but luckily the gameplay has a little more staying power. John Woo trademarks such as diving and sliding down railings while busting caps are represented, and result in both visceral thrills and beneficial style points. You've done many of these in titles like Max Payne and Dead to Rights, but next-gen processing power allows the deadly dance to play out on a stage as interactive as real life.

Gun Jam

The problem with Stranglehold is there isn't much substance to facilitate these moves. Levels are just shooting galleries with paper-thin missions attached - blow up drug tables or bomb drug boats. Enemies respawn a virtual arm's length away, alternating from drooling idiots to dead-eyed sharpshooters. As such, Tequila's cool moves like precision targeting or near-invulnerable frenzies end wallowing in the mud hole of repetitiveness with these other elements, rather than pulling the game out of the muck.

Complaints further pile up when you take into account Stranglehold's loose aiming, slide-happy movement and choppy camera. But, like watching Bad Boys II or Predator, you'll often be having too much fun to really let the negatives drag you down. Shooting people is fun, and Tequila has a lot of creative ways to do it. Barring that, shooting watermelons or exploding barrels isn't a bad hobby, either. A close-up of your 9mm slug meeting enemy testicles does a lot to make up for the fact that the gun you fired it out of doesn't feel 100% "authentic."

Old-School

A lot of the content of Stranglehold may follow John Woo's style, but it's gotten a little old. Likewise, the game's graphics and sound lag behind the current standards. Ugly real-time shadows and bad coloring serve to ruin decent character models, while the red stuff on Tequila's clothing looks more like glossy nail polish than blood. The environments, however, look top-of-the-line -- especially satisfying when you take into account how much crap you can shoot up. The voiceover work is adequate, but the option to view captions of Chow Yun-Fat's "English" would've been nice.

One of the main production-quality issues can't be helped: For gunplay to be truly satisfying, it needs to be cinematic. In an over-the-shoulder third-person game, that doesn't equate to intuitive viewing. Stranglehold uses bullet-time firing and multiple-adversary standoff sequences to attempt to inject the much-needed element, but it's not quite enough. You become desensitized to the body count in Stranglehold even more than in Hardboiled, the classic film it's modeled after. When it's kill kill kill, the 45th guy whose life you ended means even less than the 44th.

Mindless Fun

Stranglehold sits alongside Double Dragon and Dynasty Warriors as the type of digital entertainment you'll like despite its numerous flaws. For every knock on the AI or short length or why-bother multiplayer, there's always the inherent joy of shooting someone in the face. That's why you're playing Stranglehold, and that's what it does well. You didn't really expect this to be the next Metal Gear Solid or Zelda anyway, did you?

Review by: Justin Leeper
Video Produced by: Mark Fahey