“Face Off against the Triads with style.”

John Woo has shaped cult cinema for years now. First making his big splash with the film A Better Tomorrow in 1986, Woo would be launched to a new tier of success (along with star Chow Yun Fat) within the Hong Kong movie making industry. Woo’s style was a ballet of violence and embodied the perfect combination of pirouettes and pistols. But to a greater extent, Woo’s films would fuse the popular chop-socky pictures of China with the six-shooter Westerns of golden era Hollywood. The result of which still affects cinema in a major way today: leaving future celluloid heroes standing waste deep in a pile of smoking bullet casings with exhausted trigger fingers – a dangling cigarette jutting from a face made of stone.

Fast-forward to the year 2007 and Woo has just delivered his next contribution to pop culture in the form of Midway’s newest release - Stranglehold. The new XBOX 360 entry puts you in the shoes Detective Tequila, the trigger-happy cop portrayed by the legendary Chow Yun Fat (who is beautifully rendered here). Tequila was first introduced to audiences in the director’s 1992 gem, Hard Boiled. This game, not unlike that influential film, follows Woo’s trademark of dual handed 9mm massacres and downpours of shattered glass folded together into a slow motion opera of violence. The raging battles will lead you from the underbelly of Hong Kong to the tattered streets of Chicago. The director’s signature style is invariably singed to the action of this game. And while this is the reason for most of Stranglehold’s more thrilling moments, it also leaves it teetering on cliché.

The game begins with Tequila uncovering the murder of one of his comrades, presumably committed by one of the Triad gangs that litter the streets of impoverished Hong Kong. The hunt for the perpetrator eventually ensues and our man Tequila will have to investigate in order to learn the truth. Investigate as defined by John Woo that is. Which actually means reading people their last rights instead of their Mirandas, and killing enough bad guys to populate Sandusky, Ohio. Eventually you’ll discover that some people very close to you have been kidnapped – making the plot not so much thicken as lengthen.

A story of this kind has been well tread and, while at times becoming mildly intriguing, offers up little more than opportunities for Chow Yun fat to pull off some aerobatic fragging. While the yarn tends to be pretty thin, let’s not forget that this is an action game being adapted from the work of the same man who gave us Broken Arrow. Tigerhill Entertainment wasn’t trying to modify a David Lynch piece here after all. And while fans of Woo’s earlier work shouldn’t expect the same depth in Stranglehold, the content doesn’t stray too far into the shallow end.

The gameplay can easily be compared to Max Payne, simply because Payne (like many of the other games from the last 10 years) used Woo’s films as a blueprint for all that’s cool in modern gaming culture. The layout for the controller has been well thought out and responds accordingly. The two buttons you’ll be focusing most of your attention on will be the right and left triggers. The right one will send that hammer flying back and dish out that wall of bullets you’ll be putting up in front of countless waves of narrow eyed goons. The left trigger will send you diving head long over a variety of destructible environments, as well as allowing you to interact with particular rails, trolleys and chandeliers; adding some extra panache to your onslaught. Certain measures have been taken to make controlling our Cantonese-speaking hero relatively easier. You will automatically slide over all variety of counters and tabletops without so much as a button press.

The camera follows a stock third-person perspective, which is a good match for the past pace action. However, problems can arise while in the crouching position, mainly due to its inability to make Tequila transparent enough to spot the oncoming enemies. Tapping the left bumper initiates your cover, which comes in handy when the firefights jump up a notch, and the left bumper will send you into “Tequila Time”. Tequila Time is the same mechanic that we’ve seen in Max Payne, The Matrix Game, and countless others. It encapsulates you in a slow motion focus mode that will enable you to splatter your foes before they can get the upper hand on you. In most instances diving will automatically trigger Tequila Time when surrounded by enemies, so using the bumper isn’t necessary in most situations. However, it can come in handy when you are behind cover and preparing to storm into a Tea House hallway swarming with baddies.

The one really nice addition to this game is the inclusion of the “Tequila Bombs”. As you progress, you’ll collect some tools that’ll help our hardened cop become damn near indestructible. These secret weapons come in the form of health / Precision Aim / Barrage / and Spin Attack. Hitting the D-pad will help you pull off all those logic defying scenarios from the action movies you grew up with. Health will stitch you up, Precision aim will make long distance head shots a cinch (or if you are feeling a little more malicious…crotch shots), Barrage will give you a dose of temporary invincibility and Spin Attack will have Tequila commence a spinning ring of gunfire that’s definitely more Yin than Yang. When used to their full advantages, these moves will make you feel just like the well-dressed, grossly underpaid Chinese supercop you always wanted to be.

Tigerhill Entertainment did a nice job with the presentation for this game. The graphics look quite good, especially when playing on a Hi-Def television. The character models are pretty clean, with Chow Yun Fats looking just how you remembered him. The one stand out feature of this game is the highly destructible environments. It seems as though every object you come across can be blown to bits by any of the guns that you have at your disposal. So once bullets start flying in the crowded outdoor market, artifact-ridden museum or the bright Casino lights, you’ll see that interior decorating bill start to skyrocket. The nice part about this is that it isn’t just a gimmick, but something that sways gameplay.

The first time you take shelter behind a nice cozy column, only to observe it being completely eroded by gunfire, you’ll realize that this game is designed to keep you in the tussle. But remember, the new physics can also work to your advantage. See that sign hanging above the gold-toothed punk up on the scaffolding? Send a round into its base and watch that neon-lit beauty take him out head first…along with his partner below. Did you notice the propane tank sitting on the chop block next to the felon with the Uzi? Well, take a shot and watch the explosion send him flying through the air. Aiming at interactive targets will make things easier for you while marching through the game, so it pays to keep your head on a swivel and see what’s around. You also have the ability to use railings, pushcarts, winding dragon statues and fallen telephone polls to put you in a more favorable position. Approach any of these parts of the environment and hit the left trigger to slide, swing or roll your way into the action.

Stranglehold’s positives and negatives stem from the very same source. The game is satisfying for the very same reasons that make it lack substance. Like the movies that inspired it, this is a popcorn experience. It’s explosions, violence and smarmy one-liners. It never derails from this fact and doesn’t offer much in the way of depth. An addition like the game’s multiplayer (which really just includes an assortment of deathmatches) really just extends an experience that doesn’t need to be extended. The Mexican standoff mini-game, which has you take out enemies in slow-mo while dodging their oncoming bullets, offers a little break from the mayhem; but does little in the way of creating variety. That being said, this is a good and enjoyable game. Fans of the shooter genre will be quite happy with the 8 or so hours they get out of Stranglehold’s single player, and the game makes itself available to busy gamers who lack the time or will of sitting through a 100+ hour RPG. So, in the end Stranglehold turned out to be what it set out to become. It’s John Woo. But it’s also Michael Bay, Tony Scott and the Wachowskis. A lot of shine, but oh so little substance.

Tags: John-Woo, Midway-Games, Stranglehold

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