Stranglehold’s second level has got to be of the biggest second level fumbles in gaming history.

Level 1 is a brisk and impactful introduction to the game’s systems; you slip across tables, slide down handrails, and dive through the air in a slow-motion bullet-ballet. As expected. In Level 2, “Destroy 16 drug stations” is preceded by “Destroy 10 drug stations” and followed by “Plant x amount of C4 charges” (I can’t remember exactly but it’s too many). I’ll experientially translate it for you: “Stop giving us your time”. This game takes maybe 6 hours to complete, yet it feels like 5 1/2 are spent in the second mission. Historians have long been baffled by the inclusion of a helicopter turret section, and as to why it isn’t the end of the level.

Stranglehold gets back on the rails in the subsequent mega restaurant area, and the rest of the game (mostly) flies by, but I’m astounded I had the patience to push through the docks level as a kid or now.

Goddamn it, Stranglehold! You're a renegade cop, but you get the job done!

What a strange game. Less in terms of gameplay or subject matter, but in the fact that this has a legacy. There's just something about Stranglehold that made people gravitate to it for one reason or another. I remember this thing consistently placing on those turn-of-the-decade top ten lists; all of those early YouTube videos where they loop trailer footage in the background while talking at length about their favorite hidden, budget-friendly gems that everyone needs to try. Things were different in a pre-Xbox Live Arcade world, I suppose. Pulling this out of the Walmart bargain bin for ten bucks probably would have felt like the steal it was back in 2007. That is much less the case today.

GOG proudly advertises that this runs on Windows 10. This is a lie. Well, it runs, but it runs badly. The game consistently, quietly died behind a loading screen every single time I tried getting into Chapter 2 until I installed GOG Galaxy. Playing it through that got me all the way to the true final boss, Lok. Lok is some random henchman with a life bar and an MG42. Lok should be pretty trivial to beat, and I imagine that's the case for the console players. The problem with Lok is that his arena is completely destructible, and there's nothing that Lok loves more than using his gun as the bullet hose that it is. These things together aren't a problem until you realize that the game can't de-render all of the broken scenery fast enough, and it panics and kills the process once it has too much debris to keep track of. I think that's what's happening, at least. I downloaded a 100% save file off of a sketchy website to try to skip over it, but that somehow didn't end up unlocking anything. This marks Stranglehold as the first game I've seen that can arbitrarily decide to ignore your new save file even with the old one gone and cloud syncing disabled. I've also seen zero people complaining about these problems and thus zero people suggesting any fixes, which suggests to me that my computer might be haunted.

That said, I don't feel like I've missed out on all that much by being forced to stop at the end of Chapter 3. Mechanically, it's a less interesting, clunkier Max Payne. That's definitely not a bad game to be inspired by (especially since Max Payne was itself pulling from John Woo's filmography), but it's just nowhere near as fun or as visceral as the first two Max Payne games were. And half a decade prior to Stranglehold, to boot! "Blow up 14 meth labs to proceed"? Give me a break. Let me walk forward and shoot people! Hell, give me another five minute turret section if you really want to shake things up. The heavy-on-the-sepia, bloomy filter when you activate the fittingly-named Tequila Time looks less cool and more like I'm wearing beer goggles. The game's got a personality, which is more than you can say for most of what came out during the seventh generation, but it's nowhere near enough to salvage what's ultimately a pretty middling experience.

It would have been smarter to emulate this. RPCS3 can probably squeeze more stability out of Stranglehold than the PC port proper can muster, and at least that one comes with a copy of Hard Boiled.

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."

With that quote from Woo's Hard Boiled first comes with me admitting that I kind of screwed myself on this playthrough by trying to be the guy with the big dick and playing it on hard mode for the first time (last time I played this was about a decade ago) which just isn't meant for this kind of game. This opinion of mine would be different if the cover system worked and if the controls were programmed to control a human and not a tank. Unfortunately neither of those things are true and I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly have fun playing this on hard. Especially since getting through levels is more based on luck and not skill. Just a couple of bullets and you're dead. Enemies just keep on coming and coming; spraying bullets with no end in sight. In a 2D/side-scroller shooter this is fine. In a 3D shooter where you are primarily planted to the ground (even with all the diving and whatnot) it is not. No strategy, just luck.

Playing on this mode, about the first 40% of the game is fun, the next 50% was just about the most miserable I've ever been playing a game before giving up on the last 10% and switching the mode from hard to easy. That's when the game became fun again (though I probably should’ve switched the mode to medium being easy is a bit too easy) and truly captured the feeling of the quote listed at the top of this review. You should not be hiding in cover for more than a few seconds in this game. You should be out there dipping and diving and sliding all over the damn place with a gun in each hand blasting away enemies and the environment. When you are truly feeling the power of a gun in each hand is when the game is at its best.

I still remember the Best Buy close to my house, back when this was released, set up a station where you could literally play the entire game right there. I think this was the first game that made me realize the big step up graphically from the PS2 to the PS3 with all those destructible environments. Definitely thought this was the greatest game ever made based on that first level. Never played the entire game through until now and when I wasn’t dying from the millions of bullets being shot simultaneously at my head on hard mode I was dying of boredom since there is literally no variety whatsoever here. Just point and shoot. At least it's short. If this wasn’t helmed/influenced by John Woo’s style this would probably be a 2/5 but luckily it is and that’s probably why the story works more than usual (comes with all of Woo’s flourishes, though definitely not as memorable as his films) and probably why we have both destructible environments and hilarious things like a live jazz band playing in the middle of a room as you and the enemies engage in a shootout.

Who would’ve thought that John Woo would ever develop a video game, let alone one that’s a sequel to Hard Boiled where you get to play as Chow Yun-Fat? On that merit alone it’s hard for me to completely hate this for the lack of variety and for the overall presentation (the destructible environments are cool, having the sound go out multiple times having me to restart the disc is not). Only major issue I have here is with the controls that are mostly garbage and really bring the game down. Unbelievably stiff when it comes to movement and aiming and when precise aiming is sometimes required you can expect a controller to be flying out my window. Would pay hard cash for a remaster because there is a damn fine game in here. As is, it’s just fine yet a very cool relic in Woo’s career. Something I’ll replay in a couple years and be faced with a PTSD breakdown for all the horrors I endured by playing this on hard mode.

Despite the fact that Stranglehold's campaign is barely 3 hours, I just cannot finish it.

Midway was a very dear publisher to me, they made and published creative and fun games like no other company (well, maybe THQ). Stranglehold is not a fun game, I would even say that it is not that creative either.

This is the sequel of Hard Boiled, a John Woo film that seemingly everyone loves, despite the fact that John Woo's career almost ended 2 times before. He is not that good of a director and his style ages like milk.

His over the top action style is the core of the gameplay here. It almost feels like a railshooter, because you need to interact with the environment and also react quickly to enemies in order to gain style points, and the more you do this, you fill up a meter that let you do some "crazy" things like heal yourself and infinite ammo.

It is essentially an arcade game, but what makes this game really irritating are:
1. The camera is too close to your character, sometimes even basic navigation is chaotic.

2. The bosses are laughable. They are bullet sponges and they have very idiotic gimmicks that will make you suffer.

3. After the second chapter, the game becomes a gimmick festival, and you need to survive through waves of enemies while protecting a jazz band, avoid laser traps and etc. It sounds fun, but it is not at all.

I really wanted to like this game, but I just cannot. I am nearly at the end but the whole gameplay is just so bad.

“I made like Chow Yun-Fat” - Some random guy with a trenchcoat

A Max Payne-inspired John Woo game seems like a neat idea at first, but in execution it isn’t the best. The combat and movement systems are the true successor to the mechanics Max Payne showed back in the day, with a lot of options to make use of. You can wall-jump, walk and slide through railings, ride a cart while shooting everybody, slide over tables and not only you can lay on the ground as long as you want (in a more intuitive way than any Max Payne game by holding the same key, may I add), you can also roll on the floor. There’s a ton of stuff to work with in enemy encounters. The problems I see here are two: 1- Half of these mechanics aren’t even useful most of the time, and the level design, consisting mostly of enclosed and/or full of props spaces, doesn’t give way to play with and test them. And 2- The game swarms you with enemies non-stop.

This last problem is the most harmful because it’s sooooo constant it turns the game boring and even frustrating. Which, you know, is what happens when a game swarms you with enemies… even more if they’re walking bullet-sponges… which they also are… Every firefight feels like an endless survival for your life, there’s barely any time to think and when you think to yourself “is it over?”, five or more enemies show up from literally nowhere to destroy you. Thankfully they do not drain your health as fast as some other games, but I dunno, you fight like 50 or more enemies per encounter and like 3 to 6 enemies, if not more, at the same time. It’s just tiring to play after some time. And then, the game dares to throw you its god-awful boss battles that are just spamming one of the four skills you have. And for the Vlad boss fight, it’s not even clear which one of the skills you should use, so not only is it tiring, but also suffers from a lot of trial and error. I mean, if I were to play one of the first four chapters of this game for like twenty minutes or so once in a while, I might have fun. And I do have fun with it! but this game is just tiring to finish, because it starts throwing more tanky enemies with more powerful weapons and more health at you. Sure, you can use the skills you have, but using a ten seconds god mode and infinite ammo trick isn’t my definition of entertaining.

Visually this game is very reminiscent of the films John Woo used to make (because he DIDN’T make a new movie, right?), the environment is extremely destructible, everything around you can be blown up, and it is pretty awesome to see wood breaking and glass shattering while you’re doing every kind of crazy stunts in slow-mo. The levels themselves are pretty small though, so certain movements like wall-jumping and walking over railings are rather clunky sometimes and they might even get you killed if you don't have enough health or are not careful enough. This game has one of the truest “John Woo-like” mechanics ever made, and that’s the main reason I gave this game this rating, but none of its elements come together to make a game that works properly, exceeding in bs and clunkiness to a point where it becomes just frustrating to play.

John Woo's Hard Boiled is a phenomenal action film with masterfully choreographed action sequences, engaging and fun characters, and a unique dreamlike atmosphere. The idea of making a video game sequel to it, then, sounds ridiculous only on a surface level. All of these elements, at least in theory, threaten to make something that's at least interesting. That's exactly where Stranglehold comes in, the self-purported sequel to the seminal action film, developed by Midway Chicago with Woo's blessing and involvement. Does the American developer do the Hong Kong film justice? I don't think so, but that doesn't mean it's entirely worthless either.

Stranglehold's biggest boon is the game design, which allows you to do all kinds of cool moves. Diving, flipping, and even carting around the levels is fun on a primal level and for the most part the level design accommodates for that. It typically doesn't restrict you without some sort of point (there's an entire boss fight where they force you to work around a constrained arena, which is fun) and it's surprisingly challenging. Tequila Time (which is just a fancy name for bullet time), isn't just a get out of jail free card for damage, but an actual mechanic that must be learned. Treating it like a gimmick will result in death more often than not. The special moves are also quite fun, whether it be a berserk mode, a Sniper Elite-style instakill sniper mode, or a screen-clearing bullet dance. The gameplay isn't really anything special, by this point two Max Payne games had released and none of the concepts Stranglehold introduces feel fresh or unique, but they are largely well executed and its hard to complain too much when I'm sliding towards a group of enemies on a food cart. Like other reviewers have mentioned, the game's second level has to be one of the worst pacing killers in gaming history. The first level begins as the perfect tutorial, only for the second level to turn into an extremely tedious, overly long and poorly designed hunt for drug tables that of course, culminates in an overly long, unchallenging, and dull turret section. It's everything that the 7th generation of gaming is often unfairly stereotyped as, brought together into one level. Thankfully after that the rest of the game is largely smooth sailing, but it still suffers from flaws such as difficulty spikes and bullet-sponge boss fights that are largely uninteresting. Nevertheless, it does at least generally capture what it would be like to play through a John Woo film, and it deserves some commendation for that.

While Stranglehold is often quite fun, that's not what makes it a disappointing sequel to Hard Boiled. Rather, Stranglehold on a narrative level feels entirely disconnected from it. That's not to say the game needed to be a direct sequel to the film, but rather that it should have had anything to do with it at all. While you do indeed play as Inspector Tequila and the main antagonist is the father of the film's antagonist, that's where the similarities end. Stranglehold's scenario feels like you could have thrown any character ensemble in and it would be the exact same, just with Chow Yun-fat at the lead. There's none of the fun character dynamics or memorable heroes and villains of the original film and everything feels particularly stock. Viewed on its own terms, it's not exactly exciting either, feeling like any generic action film with no memorable characters, narrative stakes, or creative scenario writing. Yung Gi is sort of a fun character, and Tequila occasionally has some funny quips, but it doesn't carry any of what made Hard Boiled not just fun, but narratively gripping.

The presentation is sort of hit or miss, carrying many appealing aspects but once again failing to capture the atmosphere of Hard Boiled. Hard Boiled was a dreamlike, jazz-infused, diffused vision of Hong Kong which Stranglehold completely fails to capture without offering up a unique atmosphere of its own. It feels disappointingly contemporary, not offering any unique elements of the late-2000s. In essence, it lacks atmosphere, but that doesn't mean it always looks totally uninspired. The casino level has some fairly nice art direction across the board but for the most part the rest of the game is mostly generic aesthetically. Grey corridors, bloom-laced beaches, none of which look bad necessarily but fail to make an impression. Graphically speaking I feel Stranglehold is simultaneously quite impressive while also looking very behind the curve. The game looks very flat, and that's because the lighting is quite poor. Areas simply lack proper shadowing and look washed out and lifeless. Facial animation is actually very expressive, but character faces themselves look like potatoes more often than not. Texture quality is often absurdly low and this can really stand out when its stretched across a large wall. I do want to give Stranglehold some slack however, and that's because of its extensive destruction system which allows you to blow every single part of its environments to smithereens. This necessitates environments being fairly detailed, and watching it all fall apart is exciting. It's impressive just how extensive it is and is the closest the game comes to feeling like Hard Boiled. Due to being developed primarily for systems with less than a gigabyte of RAM, I find it somewhat excusable that Midway had to pair back visual fidelity in order to achieve this. Stranglehold certainly isn't a looker, but I'll give it some slack for it's impressive destruction system.

What I don't find excusable is its lackluster PC port. The game only offers you two adjustable graphical options, both being simple toggles for dynamic shadows and decals. The lack of proper visual options or scalability means that toning down visual settings for older computers would result in minimal performance gains, while also meaning you can't crank the visuals up much further than the console versions on more powerful computers. The lack of any anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering at all means the game often looks blurry and shimmery without forcing it externally. Hell, the PC port doesn't even properly support widescreen resolutions without a mod, which should tell you all you need to know about its quality. The only good thing is that the framerate is uncapped, which is actually pretty nice, especially when most Unreal Engine 3 games were capped at 62 FPS by default. All of these issues can be fixed fairly easily with mods, but shouldn't have been problems to begin with.

The soundtrack left me wanting as well. Hard Boiled's original score was dominated by jazz and drum machines, and outside of small homages, Stranglehold's score is mostly made up of extremely generic 2000s action game music. I struggle to even describe it because it is fairly generic and unimpressive, failing to build an atmosphere or push the player forwards. The main theme is nice with its Asian flutes and vocals, but that's about all that stood out to me. A huge disappointment considering how important music was to that original film's presentation and characters.

If I'm to be completely forward, Stranglehold is not a good sequel to Hard Boiled. It doesn't understand what made that original film tick in terms of writing, atmosphere, or presentation, seemingly thinking that the film was defined solely by its action. As a standalone third-person shooter though, it's pretty enjoyable in its own right. Aside from a terrible second level, the gameplay might not be special but it is very entertaining and the game is short enough to where it doesn't quite overstay its welcome. The amount of cool moves you can do while tearing everything to shreds in the game's mostly solid levels is well worth the $10 price of admission, especially for fans of John Woo's filmography and style of direction. However, the game lacks atmosphere, its soundtrack is bland, the story is drag-and-drop generic, and it's presentation is somewhat understandably lackluster given its technological goals. It's a fun distraction for a few hours, but it isn't exactly a hidden gem either.

This game is like a nice fuzzy blanket. Dusted off my Xbox 360 that still surprisingly works and popped in this bad boy. I beat the first Max Payne recently and I just can't help but get a kick out of this specific pipeline: Hard Boiled influenced Max Payne, which then resulted in Strangehold, a video game sequel to Hard Boiled, that was definitely influenced by Max Payne. Love it.

It's barely worth even mentioning that Stranglehold hasn't totally aged gracefully; video games from previous console generations rarely do, we really can ease up on mentioning that when talking about older games. That includes myself, I need to get better at it. But yeah, jumping and bouncing around as Chow Yun Fat just blowing the everloving shit out of bad guys, the environment, and everything in between, is so fucking fun.

Build up your "Tequila Bomb" powerups and snipe a dude in the nuts from afar, unleash the barrage attack with dual wielding submachine guns on a squad of goons, or do the ultra slo-mo spin attack that kills all enemies on screen like a Contra special attack. The fact that Max Payne 3 came out 5 years later than this (which obviously, plays/looks/feels incredible) is a sign of how ahead this game was in 2007. Everything around you breaks, shatters and explodes in over-the-top John Woo style violence, blood splatters, bodies fly, bullets are always in the chamber as you never have to reload, ever. Brilliant!

Not a perfect game, the difficulty ramps up quite a bit near the end as it throws so many dudes at you at every angle, and it gets a little much at times (also the bullet-sponge bosses don't really do much for me). But holy hell, as a John Woo/Chow Yun Fat diehard fan I ain't rating this anything lower than 4 stars. A must-play if you're into either of them.

If you're still reading: Some personal suggestions if you love this game and are looking to check out other movies by Woo or starring Chow Yun Fat that aren't Hard Boiled. The following are must-watches:
- The Killer
- A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2
- Bullet In The Head
- Once A Thief
- Full Contact

Starts off with a bang then immediately devolves into snoozetown in the second level as you try to thwart what seems to be the biggest drug operation ever (destroy 16 more drug tables chief) and then never recovers. Core mechanics are fun even if they don't seem to gel best with mouse+kb, common comparison is Max Payne but this could never reach the same level of artistry what with complete lack of interesting story or motives or atmosphere or level design or... Worth a play still but probably one of the longest feeling short games out there.

Solid, fun shooter with fantastic shooting mechanics, but ultimately held down by a sub par engine, awful bosses, and some levels that are just completely awful.

I'm a huge John Woo fan as well as Max Payne fan, with the entire A Better Tomorrow series being in my favorites along with Hard Boiled. I came into this expecting something that plays akin to Woo films, and for the most part, they do. The shooting itself is fantastic and snappy, but the interactions such as jumping on rails etc feel really spacey and unresponsive. The bosses, all of them, are awful, and a terrible edition to the game no matter how you look at it. I really have no clue why they felt the need to shove them into the game, but here we are.

If you're a fan of Woo or Max Payne, this game is sure to entertain you.

This game is such a mixed bag. It has a fantastic destructible environment with great quality at first, but slowly descends as levels go on. The game has entirely been designed around it and they really don't show it off in later levels. The story is interesting enough at first and feels like a Hong Kong action movie until it doesn't, and after the climax the rest of the story is totally rushed. The music is mediocre for the most part with a few tracks that stick out and the shooting feels both really good and bad. The game's bosses are terrible almost universally, not really requiring much gimmicks other than shoot them a bunch. I played on the hardest difficulty and while the actual game felt fair, the bosses simply didn't and were absolute bullet sponges. Overall a mediocre game with some really good moments and really captures that feel of an action movie, but there isn't enough to carry it fully through to the end to be an enjoyable experience, especially with how short it is with not much to unlock or reasons to play it again.

Chow Yun-Fat go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A take on the max Payne formula (which was inspired by John Woo movies) Stranglehold is a lot of kinetic and crazy along with being a near perfect replication of Woo’s action set pieces.

Difficulty balancing sucks ass thought, so I’d recommend to start immediately on hard if you wanna get a challenge from the start.

We took Midway for granted, we really did.

While this didn't remind me why games are great quite as much as Chicago studio's previous game Psi-Ops; it is nonetheless a rip-roaring good time that put spectacle and action movie power fantasy before all else. The rag doll physics, the destructible uhhhh everything, the bullet time - it's everything you'd want from a 'be in the movie' type of shooter.

For the most part, the game's simplicity is tremendously charming. There isn't much to the gameplay but the levels are well designed enough, with enough contraptions to send your enemies flying through, that you won't really care.

Even with a relatively short run-time, the boredom does start to set in in the final third as bullet spongey enemies and a lack of fresh objectives take their toll.

If you've ever watched Hard Boiled or any of Chow Yun-fat's classic action thrillers, this is basically that but in video game form. There's tons of slow motion bullet time to hammer home just how badass you are as you pick off waves of thugs, and there are tons of banisters and chandeliers for you to do cool trick shots off of. There's even a level where you can belly flop onto a moving cart to replicate the classic scene from Hard Boiled while mowing down your foes. Anyways, this is a short but sweet hidden gem and is most definitely not perfect (boss fights can be pretty easily cheesed, enemies can be a bit stubborn to die at times, physics can be a bit strange, etc), but it's classic distilled John Woo with over the top violence and tons of guns and explosions, and if you're a fan of goofy and wild gun fu, this is absolutely a must play.

Falls victim of the early-new gen console control setting abomination, trust me, you have better dexterity by putting yourself to knitting under influence than doing a dive-while-shooting here and guess what? I've beaten this mother like 5 times. It's a sugar rushed Max Payne with a claustrophobic alcohol-poisoned juggling of eccentric and absurdly overboard gunplay, boss fights that sponge-bullets like it's feathers and duct-taped to mindless power meters for a redbull fuelled assembly line of henchmen like a ludicrous weaponholic wetdream. I've round up all my ridiculously demanding power-meter just to shoot dudes in the groin simply for the hilariously dramatic death animation, and the game expects you to multitask the humanely possible mayhem to re-fill these wonders. You must drop chandeliers WHILE moving WHILE jumping on air, and that's so absurdly convoluted for a newfound player but it sounds exactly like a John Woo'ism alright. The Killer is my go-to mindless testosterone action film by default, but this is a childish catnip for fever-dreamy exaggeration in the best, evidently broken and absurdly overkill fashion. Guilty pleasure.

Reprising the role, Chow Yun-fat is Inspector Tequila and he rocks. The plot is nothing special (pretty funny though). The chief of police or whatever he is comes very, very close to saying "give me your gun and your badge".
The game features bullet time and a style meter which fills up your Cop Mana which is needed to unleash Tequila's powers on the poor goons gunning for you. Pretty cool.
I gotta say, the game looks nice for it's age. The visuals are clean and the character models are fairly expressive when you're shooting them in the eye or crotch.
The first two and very last levels drag this game down pretty bad since there are only seven levels total. The game hits a good stride in the middle with cool set pieces and nicely detailed interiors which are impressively destructible, especially the penthouse level. The second mission sucks hard, I mean damn.
Anyway, I would like to give this game a higher rating basically for it's engine alone, but it can get too repetitive. Sure, it's all about guns, but gunning down wave after wave of guys can only hold my attention for so long without something else going on.
Decent fun, OK PC port from GOG. Worth it to go back to? Only if it's really cheap.

When I first heard of this game I immediately thought of the Ted Nugent song which if you hadn't listened to the song before is a guitar-driven track with a real "I'm gonna kick some ass" feel to it which strangely enough fits this game. I am a big fan of the action movie genre and a HUGE fan of John Woo's work with "Hard Boiled" being one of my favorite movies ever so I was very eager to play this game because it was a sequel to that film. In the gameplay aspect, it fires on all cylinders it's such a balls-to-wall kind of game that I wish we got from a Max Payne game (Max Payne 3 is kind of close) the movement is so slick and satisfying and I love all the things you can do in a stage with my favorite being able to ride on those carts also the tequila bombs are cool. Story-wise though it doesn't strike me in any way which is strange because it's John Woo but whatever you don't play stranglehold for the plot. I wanna give a shoutout to this game for having one of my favorite levels in a video game which is that part where you fight these guys while a jazz band is forced to still play and you have to protect them it's so cool. Though the game is extremely jank and that fov is so ugly.