John Woo's 'Stranglehold' a stylish, fun shooter

• By MILES THORPE
• 2theadvocate.com staff
• Published: Dec 12, 2007

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Each year more big names and more big money are being put into the development of video games. This year the XBOX 360 and PC were introduced to a video game from the vision of John Woo.

“John Woo Presents: Stranglehold” is very much a Hong Kong-inspired action shooter game. The signature Woo elements exist in this game in spades, and that’s probably its saving grace as well.

The slow-motion jumping, the dual-wielding pistols, the angry out-of-control cop. Yep, this is classic John Woo.

You play the game as tough cop Tequila, a man not deterred by flying bullets. Hong Kong action star Chow Yun-Fat gives his likeness to the character, as well as all the spoken dialogue for him.

With several other titles on the market right now, this is the only game that is oozing with style when it comes to combat. Everything you do while shooting bad guys is graded by the game. The more ‘cool’ the maneuver you do, the more style points you are awarded while playing. By ‘cool’ I mean doing things like jumping sideways over a table while using the shotgun to blast a bad guy through a window.

Shooting the vile drug runners and crooks isn’t the only way to take them down either. In several areas there are objects you can shoot that will break and fall, crush, or otherwise maim the hostiles in the area. Small glints of light help clue you in to possible objects that you can use to your advantage. After all, you get more style points for shooting the neon sign above the enemy gunman and have it crash down on him over just shooting him the usual way.

As you play and earn style points you gain special weapon abilities for each weapon. You charge up the style meter by doing fancy gunplay like I mentioned before, and then you can use the very powerful weapon styles. The shotgun, for example, can be used in an automatic firing cannon mode, all the while not consuming any ammo in true Woo style, which lasts for several seconds allowing you to get out of a sticky situation.

This leads me to the mature content rating. It is excessively violent in many areas. This is also a bit of a low point for me, while I do enjoy the unrestricted reign of bullets into bad guys, a few scenes with cutting in the game had me cringe and made me think “did I really need to see that?”

The graphics for the game really shine, thanks to the Unreal engine driving it. Blow up a shack with a drug lab inside and watch the particles fly! The explosions are really well done in this game. Almost everything you shoot causes something to fly through the air, such as paper, sparks, glass or bad guys, if you catch them just right. The slow motion isn’t just a gimmick either, with several spots in the game having you perform almost Matrix-ish maneuvers to avoid incoming bullets.

The voice acting was OK at best. Most of the time the lines came across as flat, as if the actor doing the lines really didn’t care. This also applied to your character voiced by Chow Yun-Fat. This isn’t really a low point. There have only been a very small amount of games that could deliver emotion through video game dialogue.

“Stranglehold” gets thumbs up in my book. While it doesn’t have a very intriguing plot or a very good inventory system, it does have one big F-word in it. Fun. This is one of those games that I want to go back into a level I have already completed just to watch the game in motion. Even though “Stranglehold” seems a bit short, it’s cool, hip and definitely worth a look.