John Woo Presents : Stranglehold

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Game information:


Developed by Midway Amusement Games and Tiger Hill Entertainment
Published by Midway Home Entertainment Inc.
Platform : Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Microsoft Windows
Genre : Action & Adventure and Shooter
Age Rating : 18+
Players: 1
Additional Contents Provided : None
Release date - Xbox 360 : (NA) September 7 2007, (EU) September 14 2007, (AUS) September 20 2007
Release date - Microsoft Windows : (NA) September 18 2007, (EU) September 18 2007
Release date - PlayStation 3 : (NA) October 29 2007 (AUS) November 22, 2007 (EU) November 30, 2007

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Synopsis

Honor is his code. Vengeance is his mission. Bloodshed is his only option. Take on the role of Inspector Tequila from John Woos influential action film, Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun-Fat. Engage your enemies with intense cinematic gun battles and cause massive environmental damage in real-time or revolutionary slow-motion Tequila Time. - The Only Authentic John Woo Experience - The Most Destructible Environments Ever Created - Intense Cinematic Gun Battles - Three unique Tequila Bomb moves: Precision Aim, Barrage, and Spin Attack - Seven exciting levels taking you from Hong Kong to Chicago - Online Multiplayer Mode with all the Massive D, Interactions, & Tequila Bombs from the single player experience.

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Gameplay:

In the game Stranglehold, you play as Inspector Tequila in a 3rd person shooter trying to bring down gangs that have taken the life of one of your colleagues. You first start off in a Kowloon market, killing triads to progress to finding your colleague. But when all the triads have been killed off Tequila realizes that his colleague has been deceased with a bullet hole through his badge. In the game, there are various triad gangs that you must fight. There are also triad bosses which are pretty hard to kill. A neat feature in this game is Tequila time. Tequila time activates when you press LT/L2 which will automatically put you in a diving stance and put the game in slow-motion so that you can pick enemies off with precision and accuracy. There are various different tequila times which include Regular Tequila time (Diving), Precision Aim (pick a certain place on the enemy and shoot), Spin Attack (Spin around if you are surrounded by enemies and it will kill all enemies around you) and the barrage (which makes your weapon more powerful and deadly and gives you unlimited ammo for a short period of time. This feature works really well and never fails and adds a certain excitement and thrill to the game. There are various weapons that are in the game, these include shotguns, pistols and sniper rifles to aid you in your battles against the triad forces. There are also stars in the game that can be obtained by killing several enemies at once. Once you have enough stars Inspector Tequila does more damage with his guns to enemies. In the game, there are collectibles throughout your journey that are hidden around in different environments. These are origami swans or origami cranes. There are 250 hidden in the game and once all are found an achievement will be unlocked. Also the fact that you can use environmental objects to assist you such as using ziplines, sliding down banisters and swinging from chandeliers to kill your triad enemies.

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Graphics:

The graphics in this game are quite decent however sometimes the screen flickers for no reason. This game also has HD compatible so it obviously looks better in HD. The character faces are not cartoony but they're not realistic, somewhere in between is where I would say. Tequila time and other special effects all work really well and there is no problem with that. Other gamers have experience that when they go into tequila time they're game freezes, personally I have never had this problem and it works perfectly fine. The gun bullets and the look of them look realistic and looks like those in the real world which is great. Picking up a gun and knowing what you're using is always a good feeling because you know how much damage you're dealing.

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Controls:

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This game is a good game and based off the Hong Kong action movie 'Hard Boiled' by John Woo which means a lot has gone into this game to re-create it 15 years later. The campaign is also really thorough and will have you playing for days. The best thing about this game is that it has multiplayer features. These features work really well and you play in similar environments to the campaign so that you're familiar with the where to go. The players in multiplayer love camping in corners, so you might want to watch them dark corners before recklessly jumping around them.

Overall, I would highly recommend this game to anyone that is looking for a different experience to a shooter. Definitely worth the money and great for those who want to be on the edge of their seats making Tequila dive around everywhere.

Game Rating: 8.5/10 (Great game, decent graphics and really thorough story line)