With non-Wii next-gen games costing sixty dollars apiece many gamers have been looking at this holiday’s deluge of titles wondering which would be launch pickups and which would have to wait due to budget constraints. Originally I was on the fence about which way Jon Woo’s Stranglehold was going to fall but now it’s definitely looking to be of the former category. Find out why after the jump.



Stranglehold is a sequel to Jon Woo’s action movie Hard Boiled, however it isn’t just a game based on a licensed IP, it really does feel more like a movie sequel. This is due in no small part to the way Midway implemented game play. Firstly, the protagonist Agent Tequila can easily dive, slide and run on and around objects in the environment. Combine this with his ability to slow down time ala F.E.A.R. and you’ll have plenty of cool bullet-time action sequences. The environment itself is another factor; it’s chocked full of objects that be shot down, exploded and generally blown away by the force of your firearms. In a hectic firefight this can add a lot to the fast-paced nature of the game as items all around you are being destroyed by incoming bullets.

Another element that gave me a momentary flashback to Red Dead Revolver are the standoffs, in which you dodge left and right to avoid slow motion incoming bullets while firing at a bunch of enemies that have you surrounded. As in regular combat you can also fire at objects in the environment to take out these opponents in more stylish ways: such as dropping a sign or air conditioner on their head or exploding a nearby kerosene tank. All these fits of action are strung together by near-seamless cut scenes. These serve to deliver the game’s narrative and set up the next batch of conflict. The game also helps maintain the constant action and over-the-top-ness by not forcing you to reload. Instead you’ll simply have a certain amount of bullets you can carry and just keep firing until this pool runs out (though that’s rather hard since ammo is all over the place, mostly from downed foes). While this may make game play seem simplistic it actually does a good job of maintaining an action movie feel (how many times have action heroes suffered from an infinite cartridge syndrome).

The game also features four ‘Tequila Bomb’ abilities that are mapped to the D-Pad, all of which feel like they were pulled right out of an action movie. The health ability heals a small amount of Tequila’s health bar, making it useful if there aren’t any health packs around. This ability feels a lot like an action hero getting his second wind. The precision aim ability gives zooming in a nice touch of flair. Along with slightly magnifying your field of vision it also slows everything down like Tequila Time and when you fire gives a nice trailed scene of the bullet shooting towards the thug and precisely hitting the specified point. Maybe it’s due to immaturity but I took great joy in using this to groin-shot people. The other two abilities, barrage and roundhouse kick, weren’t available in the demo but their names’ give a pretty good idea as to what their function will be.

Another thing that slowly became evident to me was how Stranglehold’s game play is almost exactly opposite that of fellow third-person shooter Gears of War. Where in Gears you have to be cautious and utilize cover Stranglehold rewards stylish kills. In fact these stylish kills power up your Tequila Bomb Gauge with Tequila Bomb Energy, which powers your Tequila Bomb abilities (see the correlation). You certainly can go slower and stick to cover but doing so removes a good bit of the visceral thrill present in so much of the game’s combat. Whereas in Gears you couldn’t take a more straightforward approach without being gunned down by angry locust. This was a nice move on Midway’s part so that more cautious, less headstrong inclined players can still play through the way they want.

By maintaining consistent flavor through all of its elements Stranglehold looks to be a solid interactive action movie experience. The PS3 version subtly expresses this a bit further by providing Hard Boiled on the same disk, giving gamers the ability to become more familiar with the universe’s characters and thereby raising familiarity and concern for dual-wielding Agent Tequila. All-in-all this title certainly has the makings of a fast paced good time when it hits stores later this month.