For the uninformed, Stranglehold is a video game sequel to the 1992 John Woo Hong Kong action flick, Hard Boiled. For its time, it was one of the finest and most bombastic action movies, though it only really made cult status. The movie told the story of Inspector Tequila, a “hard boiled” Hong Kong cop who goes out to destroy the crime ring that was responsible for the death of his partner. While the premise was there for your typical rogue cop flick, the characters and story had much more to it than just big explosions and egotistic “heroes” - though we won't complain about big explosions.
Still, to call Stranglehold hold a direct sequel would probably be stretching it. In reality, it is more of a follow-up and reprisal of the movie’s characters. The plot premise was basic, as Inspector Tequila's family has been kidnapped by the Asian triads and they’ve put him into service for them. Being the robust “cleaner” that he is, the triads have sent him off to clean out the opposing Russian mafia. Common sense says that he’ll eventually end up going against the triads but we’ll just have to wait and see. Furthermore, we’re confident that the premise will be fleshed out more, as it is John Woo who has a major role in the production of this game.
In terms of the gameplay, Stranglehold at a glance may seem like your any other third person shooter with some “bullet-time” tacked on for good measure. But after the time we spent with the game, we came away with the belief that Stranglehold will do enough to set itself apart. Sure enough, if you think that you’re tired of shooters where you’re primarily of clearing rooms in slow motion, then this game probably won’t be for you. On the flipside, if you’re tired of the empty promise of open ended gameplay and mind-bending choice, you just might find what you want right here.
Lots of guns, lots of blazing. Love it!
Simply put, Stranglehold is pure action at its fastest and most furious. From the three “levels” that we played, it was clean out one room and move onto the next. Before you roll your eyes, know this. Enemies will be coming thick and fast from just about every direction. And even though our build was still an early one, these weren’t your typical dumb mugs. They were not only relentless but actually had the sense to fire from behind cover.
At least the game gave us a fair bit of firepower and abilities to take on the seemingly endless waves. Among the dual pistols, assault rifles, SMG’s and even rocket launcher, we were particularly impressed by the effectiveness of the shotgun. For an early build, the controls were quite stable and so far, well tuned. While it was obvious that some more tuning was due, the signs were pointing in the right direction. As well as the weapons and “Tequila Time” (i.e. slow mo), you had three abilities at your disposal.
These abilities were represented by a circular meter at the bottom left of the screen. As you killed enemies, the meter would fill and gradually you had access to another ability. The first was “precision aiming”, which basically slowed down things and zoomed to a third person view. From there, if you hit an enemy, they’d be down for the count in one hit. It was quite fascinating how you could thread needles through curtains or how you were never guaranteed a hit. The second was “barrage”, which basically blew the ammo limit out the window and allowed you to go nuts with your current weapon (rocket launcher excluded). Thirdly, “Tequila bomb” cleared anything in a 360-degree range. Quite handy if you’re completely surrounded.
Now we get to the slow motion. Creatively titled “Tequila time”, we’re sure that a lot of you out there are thinking, “again with the slow mo?”. While we can’t quite put our finger on to why, this feature seemed to suit Stranglehold quite well and actually was quite fun to use. The game seemed to be very well tuned and allowed for some crazy maneuvers while in the slowed state. Part of the reason that we think it worked well was that it was a super convenient method for eliminating masses of enemies, or to just play around with the in-game physics. It may devolve into an entirely derivative feature, but from what we saw, it suited the game quite well.
Probably the most interesting feature in the game was the interactivity with the environment. The left trigger basically controlled your “dive”. While moving in that direction, pressing the left trigger would send Inspector Tequila diving off forward, backwards or to the side. While holding the trigger on the ground after a dive, you could roll left and right. This was surprisingly handy when put into practice. For example, we dove behind a slate, then rolled to the left to take one enemy out and then to the right to take out the other.
Whoa, that was CLOSE!
Furthermore, the trigger will allow you to jump off walls, climb up structures that were giving off the flashing alert (including dinosaur skeletons) and riding across corridors on top of trolleys. It was during these sequences that the game was at its best, because it opened up a whole new avenue of potential for getting rid of enemies. What’s more, the game was well tuned and adequate at handling these sequences with the amount of control it gave you over your movements. Finally, low-lying structures and fixtures didn’t require the press of a button in order for you to slide across the top of them, hence leaving your movement unimpeded.
As the final build of Stranglehold approaches, we really hope that the game is able to build upon its strengths. The control you have over Tequila was well tuned and a lot of the actions were very intuitive and fun to pull off. There are still things that we haven’t seen, such as the touted “stand-offs”, boss fights and even more potential actions and interactions. While the developers themselves have admitted, you will get hit a lot and health packs have been generously spread about, the truth is, the game is trying to balance out the sheer amount of enemies that you’ll face. However, more than just the two weapon slots would be greatly appreciated, particularly in a game of this kind. Seriously, where on Earth is it written that a shooter can only have two weapon slots? What happened to the good ol’ days of massive arsenals?
Graphically, the game is holding up reasonably well, especially for the earliness of the build. The most impressive part of the game was obviously the damage model. Anything that wasn’t a wall could be destroyed or shattered with quite devastating results. You’d walk into a nice clean room, only to leave it completely trashed and run over. The character models seemed to need a bit more work as well, though it was mainly to smooth out the edges.
As we’ve mentioned, the strengths of Stranglehold lie in the potential for interaction, the control that players have over Inspector Tequila and the premise put forward by the pedigree of production. There were many, many ways for the player to go about their business, even though the game itself was relatively linear. The worst thing that could happen to the game would be to rest on these things and pump out a derivative shooter. However, from what we’ve seen, our concerns rest a little easier.
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