It has it's (big) issues, but Stranglehold still is a twitchy, fast-paced game for gamers who want an adrenaline rush!
Let me put it simple, if you like John Woo, you'll love this game.Stranglehold (or John Woo's Stranglehold) simply couldn't be done better. Everything you find from the movies you will find here, I swear. The Unreal 3 engine, which is still a strong force today, powers this game, making the experience all the more visceral and amazing.
Stranglehold's story is quite confusing. But I will put it simple right here: the Dragon Claw, a very powerful mafia organization located in Hong-Kong, is on the edge of falling down by a new mafia gang. James Wong, the mob-boss of Dragon Claw, calls on a policeman named 'Tequilla' Yuen to find his daughter and granddaughter who were kidnapped by this new organization. The organization holds these people hostage and proposes the following: quit with your gang, and let us do our thing. Only then you will get your daughter and granddaughter back. Tequilla agrees because the two hostages are his wife and daughter. On your crusade of death and destruction in this game you will mostly recieve the cliché plot turns and twists which I won't spoil for you. The fact that a story this complex doesn't help to make us care or remember about the characters.
On the graphical area is JW's Stranglehold amazing. Today Stranglehold is still a stunning game. Every wrinkle on the face to smoke of cigarettes is very detailed. In the so called 'Tequilla-Time', one of the five powers you have in the game, you can see everything quite clear. I think that Stranglehold make the best or is one of the best games that uses the Unreal 3 engine. You can't compare it to Crysis or Metal Gear Solid 4, obviously, but the amount of tiny details can still manage to baffle you.
The gameplay in Stranglehold is as stylish as you can get without really involving the developers of the Devil May Cry series. You jump on the walls, jump on carts, jump on poles, on giant lamps etc etc... All of these examples or most of these examples will trigger the 'Tequilla-Time', which is basically the 'bullet-time' from Metal Gear Solid 2, the slow-motion time of Enter the Matrix or Max Payne or of course the 'Reflex-Time' found in F.E.A.R. (see my review). It seems that a lot of developers rip off this particular game mechanic but it really works in this game. So, when you have jumped on a certain object, one of my examples above, this will trigger the mode and then you gloriusly shoot you're enemies to smithereens. And that's really are there is to it, you just shoot shoot shoot. Everything goes quite fast in Stranglehold so it basically is over before you know it. The only things that can stand in your way are mini-puzzles like breaking a wall or traverse a certain parcour in a nifty amount of time but these won't bother you... mostly.
When enemy's melee you, you will have a high chance that you will die immediately, which is frustrating. So the message is to keep running. Dying isn't simple then. You can also get help by picking up medikits scattered around the rooms. Mostly you will get back you 100% health.
I was talking about powerups a minute ago. Yes, it seems the developers knew they wouldn't get away with just a game mechanic that slows everyone and everything down. During the coarse of the game, you will unlock four more powers. A short healing boost, a sniper mode that lets you kill an enemy nearly instantly. (very handy) A barrage attack that gives you unlimited ammo for a certain amount of time. The final power gives you the oppertunity to fully clear out the room for you but the amount of energy you need to spend on this power and the fact that it doesn't even work sometimes makes this very worthless. It is nice to see it in action once but I can assure you you won't use it many times again, since the other powers are much more effective.
The voice acting is confusing as hell and the characters sound either extremely stiff or just plain overacting. I begged for a subtitle option in the game but unfortunatly this wasn't available, so I was stuck with cutscenes I couldn't understand most of the time. You will quickly forget about this, due to the mindless action and big explosions. It really is a pity because it would've given the game so much more depth.
Stranglehold really just involves gunfire, over the top stylish moves and explosions at just about every corner of your screen. Each of these examples have a small minigame attached that grant you stars. At the end of the level you can purchase extra's with these particular stars, this motivates you to really pull of the nicest moves you can possibly do in the game. The extra's involve concept art, video's and multiplayer skins. It will take about three playthrough's through the game to get all the extra's, which grant many hours of extra gameplay, if you really like the game.
There are four difficulty levels for even the weakest of players. People who are veterans in third-person action games will even find Hard (the third difficulty) a bit easy. I thought it was easy. The fourth is a real piece of work. Online is dead but doesn't affect my points.
Did John Woo pulled it off to make a game based on his movies? Mostly. Is this a great game? No, it's not. Stranglehold is fun at the times, really, but some of the design choices like the final level and the fact that the four power-ups are a bit unbalanced can convince some gamers to stay away from this game. I liked it, Stranglehold is worth something, but there certainly are better action games around.
TOTAL SCORE: 77,5%