Game Overview
Stranglehold is the sequel to John Woo's 1992 action film "Hard Boiled" also starring Chow Yun-Fat, however, and quite obviously, rather than the sequel be on the big screen it's released as a video game, showing just how influential and massive the gaming industry has become over the years.

You will play the part of Inspector Tequila played by Chow Yun-Fat, the basics are pretty basic to be honest, run around firing non stop, rarely having to reload due to the mass amount of ammo left about! Henchman will run at you left right and centre, it's your job to kill them all and save the girl! The usual kind of storyline for a Action movie/game.

The "novelty" factor that Stranglehold possesses are "Tequila bombs", these are gained by getting style points, style points are earned by diving in slow-mo (Tequila Time, bullet time from Max Payne) and killing baddies or sliding down banisters and popping a couple of enemies in the head. Your style points will increase and the more you have the cooler the Tequila Bomb available to you is, another way to get quick style points is to collect "paper cranes" dotted about the levels as collectables. There are 4 Tequila Bombs available, Health increase, Precision aim (wherever you shoot a bad guy they react a bit differently which is pretty cool lots of blood too!), Barrage and Spin attack. All of them activate a cool movie sequence of Inspector Tequila smoothly changing a gun clip or pumping a shotgun, all in slow-mo and all super cool. Unfortunately though, this we see as a way of trying to vary the gameplay, it manages it for the first level or two but then it starts getting a bit repetitive along with the gameplay.

As mentioned, the single player gameplay does get a little bit repetitive after a while, the game seems to rotate between, level start, run around for a bit with nothing to do, fend of a huge amount of enemies, run around doing nothing for a bit longer, fend of another bunch of enemies then exit to cut scene and end of the level and repeat with the occasional boss thrown in. There is a level in a Helicopter where you are required to shoot missiles out of the air and kill people on boats but unfortunately it feels a little bit tacked on and pointless.

You'll breeze through the single player quite quickly picking up a good array of achievements along the way, there isn't much scope for replaying the single player through again unfortunately, no matter how cool it is sliding over tables and diving in slow motion, luckily though, if you have a craving for some fast paced action, online offers you everything single player does, so if its sliding down the skeleton of a dinosaur or just unloading clip after clip after clip that you want, you are bound to find it in multiplayer. Games do often get decided by who can get the Tequila Bomb meter filled first and unleash the spin attack, so you do need to be quick.

Our Conclusions
Lots of hype about Stranglehold, not a bad storyline but nothing we haven't seen before, it’s a cross between Max Payne (the game) and Rush Hour (the movie). Loads of inane violence and action which gets a little tedious after a while, few novelty points to the game which try hard to distract you from the fact you are doing the same thing over and over again but unfortunately it doesn't work. The game isn't awful, far from it but probably a hire game only.

Overall Score: 7/10

Thanks to Midway and Indigo Pearl