John Woo Presents Stranglehold for Xbox 360

John Woo Presents Stranglehold goes into the interesting genre of video-game movies that aren't straight adaptations and is actually a nifty piece of work. Even though it only took me a paltry six hours to run through the game and it offers little replay value- it's an entertaining game and worth renting.

Graphics – Sometimes it looks like an Xbox game other times it's definitely 360.

Stranglehold sometimes looks drop dead gorgeous and those are mostly the trailers/clips you'll see on the internet- but some levels look plain horrible and as if they were designed for the original Xbox (this might even be true given this game's huge production time). Because of that, on one hand, you've got great looking FMVs, but then on the other you've got bad looking ones with little attention to textures and effects. That said, production values are rather mixed, and while occasionally the graphical inconsistencies can be excused, sometimes they are painful to look at.

Despite the mixed graphics, one cool feature of this game is that there is a ton of destructible stuff. Even if some of it looks plain horrible, walls, tables, wooden chairs, watermelons, crates, glasses, etc., can all be blown to bits. So think of levels as mini-sandboxes with lots of stuff and by the time you're done, everything will be smashed into the little pieces in the style that Hard Boiled is legendary for.

The problem with the graphics though can be the occasional lag. Often enemies spawn off camera and at times there can be so much destroyed debris that the game starts to hiccup until you've killed the enemies. Sometimes it gets so bad that you can barely play the game, but this is rare.

Gameplay – Max Payne with Some Extra Stuff

The gameplay is a straight rip of Max Payne's bullet time except the bullet time is referred to as Tequila Time (hells yea) and operates the same way. If you dodge, dive or do anything while aiming at an enemy you go into slow-mo, where you can aim better and get off more shots. Killing folks in slow-mo with flair (as in diving onto a cart or sliding down a banister) gives you style points which rack up your special meter.

This special meter gives you four options. You can spend it on health (and sometimes when you can't find a med pack you might do this), or three other powers. The first is precision aiming, which is basically a slow-mo sniper mode where you will zoom in on one character and get a chance to do a head shot or some other grisly kill. The second power is Barrage- which lets you go invincible for a short period of time and have unlimited ammo. This is easily the best special of the game and you'll be using it to make quick work of the bosses. Finally, there's the signature spin and shoot move that lets you clear the room of all regular bad guys. If the game is lagging, this is basically what to use. For the most part though, while it looks really freaking cool, the spin move is a waste of your special meter.

Gameplay is very straightforward. You take cover when you can behind pillars and other stuff, but for the most part your cover will get blown to bits after a few seconds, keeping you moving. AI unfortunately is of the stupid kind (same as Max Payne) where you can camp behind stuff and wait for them to show up in front of you, hit slow mo and take them down. This was my strategy for a majority of the game. Running into situations headfirst will often will get you killed, so the game does seem to emphasize the whole taking cover and picking guys off type of pacing.

Finally there's one more thing- the showdown minigame. Occasionally you'll run into an unskippable cut scene where you'll be surrounded by enemies with guns pointed at you and you'll go into a bullet-time mode where you have to take them all out as quickly as possible one at a time, while dodging bullets by using the analog stick. This kooky matrix mode is kind of fun initially but near the end when you have to take out 8-9 guys with pinpoint accuracy (or risk repeating the cut scene over and over) it can start to become a bit more annoying. Still, it is a welcome feature and fulfills the whole John Woo theme.

As for bosses and such- the game's got plenty of showdowns that are rather enjoyable. Strategies aren't anything to write about though. Most of the bosses strangely remind me of fighting Ocelot in MGS- where essentially you wait for an opening, unleash everything you've got and then dodge, rinse and repeat.

Storyline – Hard Boiled 2

It's been said that if this game was a success that John Woo would go ahead and make Stranglehold into Hard Boiled 2. If he did he's have one darned awful movie neck deep with cliches. Imagine every HK action flick you've seen, grab every "you killed my brother", "you've kidnapped my wife", "my best friend betrayed me" line and mesh them all into one ugly mess and you've got Stranglehold. For a video game, this is totally acceptable since we're more interested in killing stuff, but if this had been one long 2 hour film, I might have tossed it out the window.

Extras – Unlock some multiplayer stuff and art work and blah blah.

Beat the game and like most action games that don't have any replayability, you'll have the chance to use your style points to unlock some artwork, a few making of videos and some skins for multiplayer. Nothing really good here though because the artwork is nothing to run home too and the "making of…" videos are kind of cheaply put together. You won't be playing the multiplayer much either so unlocking skins isn't really a welcome bonus. Finally after beating the game once you can easily unlock half the extras if not all of them, which makes me wonder why you even have to unlock them.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is boring- you'll hit it up for a few moments, realize that it's basically playing the game with other people and doing the same stuff, and you'll put it away and go to Halo 3. Simple as that.

Music, Voice acting and SFX

SFX are bloody good and the music- well as with most video game music- unmemorable. Still, the SFX for the gun explosions are just about classic and made well enough they are worth giving thumbs up to. The voice acting is amusing- it's the crappy HK English that reeks of dub but isn't. It's too bad there wasn't an original Cantonese voice track to make the experience authentic but it'll do.

Conclusion

Stranglehold is one of those you should rent and play it games. It is every bit as fun as Max Payne was when it first came out and has a few extra special powers to make things cooler. Unfortunately though, that's just it, the Max Payne comparison is dead on. This game doesn't pull any extra punches, and if you've been playing Max Payne, you won't be getting anything more other than a John Woo story and some more destructables. It's a game that reminds me too much of an older game and has little more to offer than some updated graphics. That's why in the end, you don't want to spill $60 for this game. Better to rent it for a week, spend an even hour a day doing it, and find yourself done by the end of the week. While there is a "hard boiled" mode for you challenge freaks, it doesn't make the gameplay any different. I gave it a spin, and the only challenge that cries out is that you've got to be more accurate and more careful than usual, which almost takes out some of the fun of running in like a madman on normal.

Bottom line, rent it, enjoy it, and then send it back.