User:FrostFairBlade/sandbox/Stranglehold (video game)

Gameplay

Stranglehold is a third-person shooter game in which players control Tequila Yuen, an inspector with the Hong Kong Police Force. The game's levels are split between different locations throughout Hong Kong—such as Kowloon, Tai O, and a floating restaurant—and places in Chicago like the Chicago History Museum. Players can traverse each level by walking around, crouching, diving, and taking cover behind walls. They can also interact with the environment by running up or sliding down rails, sliding across or flipping over tables, or jumping on and riding metal push carts.

As players move through each area, they will encounter enemies. To defeat them, players can pick up and use two different types of weapons, including pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and grenades. While none of the weapons need to be reloaded, they all have limited ammunition. Players and enemies alike can use their weapons to destroy the area around them, breaking objects and tearing up walls that could be used as cover. While aiming a weapon at an opponent, players can jump or interact with a nearby object to temporarily slow down time, creating a short window for Tequila to shoot at targets easier. This ability, called Tequila Time, can be also manually activated by pressing a button. The amount of Tequila Time a player has is finite, but is replenished over time when not being used.

Players are encouraged to kill their enemies in a theatrical fashion, such as shooting while diving, sliding down rails, and hanging off of chandeliers. They can also use the environment to their advantage: destroying explosive barrels will blow up nearby enemies, and shooting gleaming spots will cause heavy objects like boulders to fall on them. Dispatching enemies this way earns players Style Points, which are used to calculate their overall performance at the end of each level. These are accumulated, and can later be spent at the game's shop to unlock additional content. In addition, earning these points fills a gauge that will progressively unlock the ability for Tequila to perform special in-game moves called Tequila Bombs. Each of the four Tequila Bombs costs a certain amount of the gauge to perform:

• Health Boost costs one-quarter of the meter, and will refill a small portion of Tequila's health bar.
• Precision Aim also uses a quarter of the gauge. When this Tequila Bomb is used, the game will go into first-person perspective, giving Tequila one chance to aim at a distant target in slow motion. When the trigger is pulled, the game's camera will follow the bullet; if it hits an enemy, they will keel over and die.
• Barrage expends one half of the meter, and will give the player several seconds of invulnerability and infinite ammunition, allowing them to blast several enemies at once with their equipped weapon.
• Spin Attack uses up three-quarters of the Tequila Bomb gauge. When activated, Tequila spins around in a circle with his currently equipped weapon, killing all enemies in the area before they can fire back. While this special move does not kill bosses in one hit, it will still decrease a significant portion of their health bar.

At certain points in a level, players will encounter scripted cinematic sequences called Standoffs. These segments emulate the Mexican standoff cinematic trope that Woo frequently uses in his films. In a Standoff, Tequila becomes surrounded by gun-carrying enemies, and must engage in a shootout with each opponent individually. While players cannot walk around during this sequence, they can twist Tequila's body left and right to dodge incoming bullets, firing their own weapon to kill each enemy. The Standoff ends when all opponents are eliminated. Occasionally, the player will encounter additional action set pieces, such as a sequence where Tequila takes control of a machine gun mounted on a police helicopter.

Plot

Setting

Stranglehold takes place eighteen years after the events of Hard Boiled. It details Inspector Tequila Yuen's quest to save his kidnapped estranged wife, Billie, and their daughter Teko. Tequila's family was abducted and held for ransom as part of a plan by Triad organization Golden Kane to take control of territory from two other rival gangs, Dragon Claw and the Imperial 9s. His journey to save them takes place in various parts of Hong Kong, including a market and slum in Kowloon, a fishing village in Tai O, and a floating restaurant owned by Golden Kane. Tequila also travels to Chicago, Illinois, where he fights a Russian mafia group allied with Golden Kane inside a fictionalized version of the Chicago History Museum, as well as a luxury penthouse owned by the leader of the Russian mob.

Characters

The protagonist of Stranglehold is Tequila Yuen, an inspector with the Hong Kong Police Force. Portrayed by Chow Yun-fat, he is a tough, yet honorable firearms expert who frequently disregards authority in order to exert justice. He often fights over police protocol with his by-the-book police chief Lee, who demands Tequila follow his orders. Tequila is assisted in his police work by undercover officer Jerry Ying, who used to be Tequila's partner before he infiltrated Dragon Claw.

In his journey to save his family, Tequila encounters several Triad members.

Story

Eighteen years after the events of Hard Boiled, three Triad organizations are fighting over territory in Hong Kong: Dragon Claw, Golden Kane, and the Imperial 9s. When the Hong Kong Police Force receive a ransom demand for a missing police officer, Inspector Tequila Yuen disobeys his police chief and heads to a Kowloon market alone to settle the ransom. After being ambushed, he finds evidence that the officer has been killed already. Following a fight at a teahouse, he is tipped off that the Imperial 9s might have killed the officer under Dragon Claw's orders.

In Tai O, Tequila tracks down Dragon Claw leader Jimmy Wong. Wong is the father of Tequila's estranged wife, Billie, with whom he has a daughter named Teko. Wong reveals Golden Kane's scheme to seize territory from the other Triads: they first framed the Imperial 9s for the officer's murder to increase police attention on their rivals. The gang then partnered with the Zakarovs—a Chicago-based Russian mafia group headed by two brothers—to kidnap Billie and Teko in America. The two are then held ransom in exchange for some of Wong's territory. Tequila promises Wong that he will help find his family. He helps the crime boss escape when Golden Kane starts attacking Dragon Claw's hideout, blowing the base up with C-4 explosives to avoid Dragon Claw's heroin operation from falling into another Triad's hands. Upset at his police chief for not disclosing Billie and Teko's kidnapping earlier, Tequila turns in his badge to investigate outside of police jurisdiction.

After a firefight at the Golden Kane-owned floating restaurant Mega, Tequila heads to the Zakarovs' Chicago penthouse with Jerry Ying, a former police partner currently working undercover as Wong's henchman. Separating from Jerry to cover more ground, Tequila works his way to the penthouse's top floor, blowing up Vladimir Zakarov with his own rocket launcher. At the Chicago History Museum, the inspector finds Golden Kane leader Yung Gi planning the ransom with the other Zakarov brother, Damon. Yung takes Teko back to Hong Kong, while Damon is killed by Tequila. A tearful reunion with Billie is cut short when Jerry murders her, confirming that Wong paid him to kill her. After shooting his former partner dead, Tequila finds a video on Jerry's cell phone revealing Wong's motives for killing his daughter: if Wong chose to endanger Teko's safety by refusing to cooperate with the Zakarovs, Billie would implicate him by leaking the names of several Dragon Claw associates in court. Tequila texts Wong with Jerry's phone, misleading the Triad leader into believing that Jerry had successfully killed the inspector.

Back in Hong Kong, Tequila approaches Yung in the gangster's office to strike a deal with him. When Yung refuses to let Teko go, Tequila shows him text messages between Wong and Jerry that prove Dragon Claw will betray him during the exchange. The two agree to a new plan: if Tequila kills Wong during the deal, then Yung will free Teko. However, Tequila shows up late to the new meeting location in Kowloon, having had to fight off Dragon Claw members to get there. As Yung is gunned down, a startled Wong escapes with Teko to his mansion.

Confronted at his estate by the inspector, Wong agrees to let Teko go, as long as she and Tequila leave Hong Kong forever. While the inspector agrees to the arrangement, Teko warns her father that it is a trap, getting shot in the arm as she is being freed. An enraged Tequila pursues Wong, killing the crime boss' bodyguard, Dapang. Armed with a high-powered sniper rifle, Wong attempts to shoot Tequila in the head. Teko manages to shove him over the balcony in time, killing him before he can pull the trigger. As father and daughter reunite, police chief Lee arrives to reinstate Tequila as inspector.

Development

Conception

Stranglehold was developed by Midway Games and Tiger Hill Entertainment. Following the release of 2004's Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, Midway was looking to make a new game based on an existing license. Studio head Mike Bilder explained that the company wanted to create new intellectual properties, stating that they were "trying not to just rest on laurels and become a sequel house." Thanks to an employee's connections, Midway was able to get in touch with John Woo about a possible video game collaboration. Woo was intrigued by the project: he had been interested in the medium after learning that games like Max Payne had been paying homage to his cinematic style, and had co-founded Tiger Hill Entertainment in May 2003 with the goal of making his own cinematic action-adventure games. Through his collaboration with Midway, Stranglehold was to be his studio's first video game title. It was also intended to be Midway's first step into developing for the seventh generation of video game consoles; the company wanted to release the game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. After Woo verbally agreed to a deal, Midway began working on the game in the summer of 2004, and the project was first announced in May 2005.

The development team for Stranglehold, led by game director Brian Eddy, was the same one that worked on Psi-Ops. This was initially a group of 30 people, that ultimately grew to 50 over the course of the game's development. Eddy states that the team's goal was to make the player feel as if they were the one directing the action in a John Woo film. To prepare for the project, the developers watched many of Woo's films, such as Hard Boiled and The Killer, to figure out how to emulate Woo's style of film making. According to Eddy, this research resulted in the team focusing on making player movement feel smooth and fluid, and building in-game environments that were destructible.

• cost $30 million to produce

https://web.archive.org/web/20071011012213/http://games.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1165/Stranglehold/

https://web.archive.org/web/20081007211306/http://blogs.ign.com/Indices/Blogs/Channels/ign/john_woo_presents_stranglehold/749071/

ShackNews - January 31, 2007

• Woo "contributed a lot of animation and cinema direction", and contributed to the writing; the dev team solicited his feedback throughout development
• Chow agreed to have the team perform a fully-body 3D scan of him in Hong Kong, and allowed them to take "a series of impromptu pictures" of various facial expressions so that the team could use them to accurately animate facial animation for his character
• Story:
  • Chow reprises his role of Tequila, a "hard boiled cop with a heart of gold" who isn't afraid to break police protocol to make sure justice is served
  • Tequila is "caught in a war brewing between two rival gangs"
• Massive D is the game's destruction system that allows almost all of the environmental objects to be destroyed
• The game uses Havok as its physics engine (this was the engine used in Psi-Ops)
• One of the primary gameplay elements is that objects can be interacted with in order to perform acrobatic stunts
  • The player knows they can interact with an object through it being highlighted for them; if they press the interact button, Tequila will perform that interaction
  • If the button is pressed but there is no highlight, then Tequila will dive instead
• Eddy: "Tequila Time will automatically come on for the player when they are interacting or diving if they have an enemy targeted."
• Players are rewarded with "style points" for killing enemies in stylish ways; these points can be exchanged for Tequila Bombs
• There is a basic melee attack if the player runs out of ammo or if they are in point blank range of an enemy (the focus is on gunfights though)

1up.com - April 14, 2006

• Interview with director Brian Eddy and senior producer Alex Offerman
• When Psi-Ops was released to critical acclaim, the dev team behind that game was rumored to be working on a sequel, but that game did not sell particularly well
• "Stranglehold is a movie-game, but it's free of one of the biggest limitations that comes with many movie-licensed titles—the forced deadline to meet the movie's release date."
  • Eddy: "We think it's the best of both worlds [...] so, we can have [Woo and Chow's] involvement and get their characters, and make this really cool adventure and really cool gameplay around just that, and we can really focus on making that fun, and not have to worry about matching the movie or something like that."
• Wanted to introduce emergent gameplay, where developers give players a bunch of tools and let them decide what to do
• Unique control scheme to make it accessible for all players - one button interaction system

GamePro issue 216 (September 2006)

• Stranglehold is a sequel to Hard Boiled
• "Woo had a hand in everything from shaping the story to improving the dramatic impact of Tequila's deadliest moves."
• Tequila can run up railings, slide across tables and serving carts, swing on chandeliers, and somersault off walls
• "Whether you're standing on a second-floor railing to rain death on gang members or turning a teahouse into an abattoir with the aid of a delivery-cart accomplice, the overriding ambition is that every moment makes the player the star of a big-budget action set piece."
• Stylish kills charge a gauge whose contents can be exchanged for Tequila Bombs
• Levels are being designed to be destructible sandboxes thanks to the Massive D destruction system
• Locations include:
  • A pastiche of Chicago museums - dinosaur skeletons, totem poles, terracotta warriors
  • Downtown Hong Kong marketplace with fruit stands
  • Russian gangster's high-rise penthouse in Chicago
  • Casino slot machines
• Game promises occasional segments where you chase after someone in a 4x4 or a boat, but the developers did not give specifics in this interview (note: these segments did not make the cut)
• Also did not elaborate on what their multiplayer modes were like
• Aim for release in Fall 2006 on PS3, with Xbox 360 and PC versions to be released later

GamePro issue 226 (July 2007)

• Players will wield machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, and grenades (other weapons like rocket launchers will appear as well)
• Slow motion is called "Tequila Time", has an auto and manual mode
  • Auto mode activates when you engage in stunts with environmental objects
  • Manual mode is there for players who want to manage it directly
• Earning style points allows you to use Tequila Bomb attacks, allowing you to kill multiple enemies at once in a cinematic fashion
• Boss fights will consist of numerous types: powerful bosses that rapidly destroy the environment around them, bosses that send out a lot of weaker henchmen while they take sniper shots at Tequila, a boss in a helicopter that Tequila has to shoot down
• Tequila will have "a basic melee combat move that he uses when he gets too close to an enemy"
• Scheduled for a "late summer release"

Development - EGM

• Eddy on the simplistic control scheme: "We want you to concentrate on the smooth-flowing gunplay action and not fumbling with controller buttons [...] We clearly highlight what you can interact with in the area, and then a single button press kicks off a cool interaction stunt, and while doing almost any interaction, you can smoothly continue to aim and fire."
• Eddy on the destructible levels: "We've made our environments multilevel so that the player is moving and fighting on the horizontal and the vertical."
• Eddy on the debris potentially hindering the player: "We came up with a system where you can go through rooms--even ones filled with tables and chairs and tons of broken objects--without being slowed down or having your combat abilities interfered with [...] Everything that accumulates on the floor will get pushed aside as you move through the environment so you'll never get hung up on a broken chair or cement pillar piece. This works because all the objects are dynamic and have physics properly applied."

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&u=wikipedia&id=GALE%7CA132941544&v=2.1&it=r&sid=bookmark-ITOF&asid=25d11234

Development

• Woo on why he started Tiger Hill Entertainment: "I went to E3 several years ago and saw my action style imitated in a lot of other games, and they were not even well done [...] I thought I should protect my trademark and produce my own video games."
• Woo and his producing partner, Terence Chang, will act as producer alongside Lori Tilkin, who manages the animation division for Tiger Hill

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&u=wikipedia&id=GALE%7CA167627354&v=2.1&it=r&sid=bookmark-ITOF&asid=d3eac3f9

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&u=wikipedia&id=GALE%7CA172598022&v=2.1&it=r&sid=bookmark-ITOF&asid=72edc78c

Game design - AI

• Stranglehold uses Engenuity's pathfinding middleware, AI.implant, to determine how AI enemies can traverse through terrain with large amounts of debris
• To do this, AI.implant uses a "Dynamic Path Refinement" (DPR) technology that adapts to dynamic physics around each AI agent
• This allows enemies in Stranglehold to chart out new paths for the AI to walk around environments that have been partially destroyed

Game design - cinematic design and workflow

• Tiger Hill + John Woo drew the storyboards, which detailed camera work and choreography
• Game locations
  • Wanted to have a mix between East and West, old and new, etc. that hadn't been seen before in a video game previously
• Engine customization
  • Main priority was to optimize the engine to be able to handle thousands of dynamic objects
  • Customization included lighting systems, optimizing the render pipeline, using Havok physics, and creating tools for content authoring
  • Wanted to give the game's artists more control of performance tradeoffs, which allowed them to choose which parts of the scene needed high fidelity objects
  • Rewrote the cinema tools
  • Replaced the audio and AI systems
• Character Design
  • Visual design director Stephan Martiniere wanted the characters to have a "unique emotional resonance"; each character was to be realistic with slightly exaggerated features so that they portray a specific character archetype
    • Eg. Yung had a larger jaw and tapered forehead to resemble an ape; Peanut has a small chin and upturned nose to make him look like a rat
    • Sometimes character designs were dialed back for technical reasons, e.g. to reuse common animations from other characters
  • The dev team digitally scanned Chow Yun-fat and John Woo and used the resulting meshes as reference for modeling and texturing
    • Tiger Hill requested that Chow's appearance be digitally de-aged by about 10 years in order to more closely resemble what he looked like from Hard Boiled, so the team had to use reference photos from Chow's earlier films and digitally alter the mesh and texture map to make Chow appear younger
  • Artists used Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max to create the in-game geometry
  • Tequila's highest LoD = ~10,000 polygons
  • Other characters LoD ranged from 6000 (high LoD) to 300 (low LoD)
  • Artists used Maya, 3DS Max, Pixologic's ZBrush, and Adobe Photoshop to create facial maps at a resolution of 1024x1024 - first created diffusion maps while sculpting, then adding normal maps by importing the geometry and diffuse map into ZBrush, where artists could up-res and sculpt specific features **
  • Artists also added facial wrinkles and pores overlaid on the base normal map
  • Then using Unreal Engine 3 shaders, they could blend portions of the "wrinkle maps" in and out, based on the facial animations
  • While the main characters were high-detail, the enemies and NPCs could not get the same level of detail due to technical constraints with the body-swapping system
    • Because each NPC was created as an unique asset, the team found it difficult to maintain a system that forced them to change every single enemy and their respective LoDs, in order to edit one thing
  • Rain and wetness
    • To simulate wet skin and clothes for Tequila, modelers created a new material effect for it using Unreal that changed how wet it looked based on its specular values
    • Used a scrolling mask in the normal channel to simulate water droplets hitting and running down the body
    • Sculpted a special model to recreate "wet hair"
• Rigging and Animation
  • Tequila facial rig was created in Maya; "consists of joystick controllers driving Set Driven Key poses for an array of expressions to match performances"
  • Facial system for in-game and cinematic characters is the same, though it uses models with different LoDs
  • Cinematic models have 2x the number of face bones and higher polygon counts
  • Riggers created the poses using 72 bones; needed extra tooling in Maya Embedded Language to help animators with their workflow
  • Eddy: a boned skeletal system (no blendshapes, no morph targets) is most efficient way for Unreal Engine 3
  • The joystick controllers "drive the animated facial normal maps created in ZBrush for the wrinkle system."
  • To handle the slow-motion Tequila Time, the team was forced to create many animations in order for Tequila's movement to look smooth in slow motion, then write custom scripts inside Unreal Engine to blend the animations together
  • Midway motion-captured nearly all of the character animations for the cutscenes and in-game animations using a Motion Analysis system in the studio, then used Motion Analysis' EVa RealTime to edit the motion capture data to map it on the game models uing Autodesk MotionBuilder
  • After addition tweaking using MotionBuilder's rigging tools, the animations were imported into Unreal Engine using Epic's ActorX plug-in for Maya
• Cut-scenes
  • After one of Woo's writers polished the script, a storyboard artist from Midway worked with Woo to storyboard each scene
  • Eddy: "It was important to the overall pacing of the story that the cut-scenes--or "Woo moments"--hit certain crescendoes at key moments in the story"
  • The cinematics team produced 60 minutes worth of 80 cutscenes
  • Cinematic director Marty Stoltz developed animatics from each storyboard, working out 3D versions with a placeholder soundtrack and simple sliding characters
  • Each animatic was used as a guide to develop the motion capture needed for each shot; after the animation was delivered, a cinematic layout artist began working on the scene
  • The scene would then be reviewed by Kaehler, who would provide feedback and environment art to ensure continuity between the game and cutscene; he would also give direction on the scene's lighting pass
  • The final pass of each scene was submitted to Tiger Hill for review
• Effects animation
  • To simulate smoke, artists created big meshes, and applied shaders with smoke textures to simulate volumetric rendering
  • Light shafts were also simulated in the same way
  • Midway chose not to implement a real-time weather system due to reduced visibility and it making parts of the game unplayable
  • To create rain and fog, they used a combination of particles and textured planes

Game design - breakable object system and "Woo Glue"

• Lead programmer Steven Ellmore details on how the team worked on the destructive environments
• Artists worked on fragmenting objects in Autodesk Maya, which was time-consuming
• To track separate pieces, a bookkeeping system was created; programming rules were set to decide how objects should break
• The team classified objects into four categories
• While the team figured out how to make it so that there was more than one way to destroy something, it had its limitations -- how do you force something to collapse when its supports broke?
• The development team decided to build a system, called "Woo Glue", that would bind fragments together without causing problems with the physics system
• Artists set up a connectivity graph that describes how pieces are connected to each other
• The AI system calculated bounding boxes on-the-fly
• In order to handle thousands of objects, the team created an "object sleeping" system that would programmatically turn on and off physics on an object when the player was in range of them
• Hide fragment creation by using visual effects like particles
• The team had to create complex lighting rigs to handle the lighting for destructive environments, and the shaders were hard to optimize for PS3
• Summary: destructive environments were very art-intensive

Game design - dynamic cinematic gameplay

• Lead designer Neill Glancy details how the development team incorporated a cinematic quality to Stranglehold
• Glancy wanted players to feel like they were taking part in an action movie, and to do that, they need consistent controls in order to immerse them into the cinematic qualities of the game
• Tequila Bombs were a gameplay mechanic specifically designed to be that consistency, as they were inspired by Woo's films

Art Direction - Characters

• Art director Jason Kaehler and 2D artist Vince Proce developed a two-part process to define the art style for the game:
  • Kaehler and Proce would write biographies for every character in the game, then draw rough sketches based on those descriptions
  • 3D artists Keith Beu and Stephan Martinière would take those sketches and decide on a final look
  • Then the developers held casting calls to photograph faces of hundreds of extras, in order to build a library of facial features that the artists could stitch together to create composite face textures
  • Occasionally the artists would need to exaggerate features in order to create a character with a look that matched their personality
• 3D scans provided by Eyetronics - made 3D scans of Chow Yun-fat in Hong Kong, and Woo in Santa Monica

Collectors' Edition featuring Blu-ray of Hard Boiled:

• Worked on deal with Dragon Dynasty
• Since Dragon Dynasty was planning to release their own copy of Hard Boiled, Midway worked out a deal with the Weinsteins where the Stranglehold version of Hard Boiled would be in limited supply, and that it would only play on PS3

Voice acting

• In addition to Chow Yun-fat, other actors like Arnold Vosloo and Randall Duk Kim were announced by Midway in June 2007
• Other voice actors include Grant George, David Lodge, Lydia Look, Neil Kaplan, Stephanie Sheh, Michael Sorich, Russell Wong, Danny Bernardo, Jin Kim, Phuoc Nguyen, Andrew Lee, Joseph Yau, Philip Chan, Ronal A. Cheng and Alexander Brandon

Release and marketing

Rollout

• Shown off at E3 2006 with a one level demo
• Shown off at Midway's Gamers Day event in January 2007 with a longer demo set at a museum

Marketing campaign

• National TV ads
• Outdoor advertising - billboards, bus shelters, trolley cars, wallscapes
• Sponsorship of Saturdasian Invasion Film Marathon on August 18, 2007 on Spike TV
• Online ad campaign
• Demo on Xbox Live Marketplace, PlayStation Store, and PC
• National pre-sell programs with different retailers - pre-order Stranglehold, receive branded items like a shot glass, Xbox faceplate skin, special edition John Woo comic book
• Web presence at www.strangleholdgame.com, http://strangleholdcentral.ign.com, myspace.com/strangleholdgame
• Limited edition PS3 collector's edition featuring the game and a full-length version of Hard Boiled on the same Blu-ray disc
• Limited edition Xbox 360 collector's edition featuring a BTS documentary, extended in-game cinematics with commentary, sound design featurette, documentary on the game's visual style
• Stranglehold's True to Woo Short Film Contest - received over 300 entries
• Various sweepstakes with different partners
• Cross-promotion with Genius Products in conjunction with their Dragon Dynasty DVD collection, including the recent release of Hard Boiled
• Sponsorships of major US Asian film festivals in Los Angeles and New York

Delays

• Originally set to release in winter 2006, with Midway announcing in June of that year that a PS3 version would be released on November 17, the console's launch date

• Senior producer Alex Offerman: Xbox 360 out one year longer than the PS3, and the team wanted to polish the game since "we were set on using the capabilities of the PS3 to the fullest."
• On August 23 2007, it was announced that the PC and Xbox 360 versions would be delayed by one week, instead of releasing on August 27

Marketing ad ban

• A UK television advertisement for Stranglehold was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority
• The ad, by ad agency Picture Production Company, featured a voice-over saying, "Honour is his code. Vengeance is his mission. Violence is his only option"
• The commercial was originally deemed fit for broadcast after 7:30pm by Clearcast
• However, the ASA received two complaints from the public: one questioning whether the ad could be broadcast before the 9pm watershed, and one deeming it glorified violence
• The ASA stated the ad could be viewed as "encouraging and condoning violence"

Release

• Released on Xbox in North America on September 5, 2007
• Released on PC in North America on September 18, 2007

Reception

Sales

• Sold 1 million copies by March 2008

Related media

Sequel

• Footage from a former visual effects developer revealed pre-production tests for environmental destruction

Reviews

ABC News

• Critical of the story - "Like many of Woo's films, the story has more holes than the walls of a Chinese tea house."
• Somewhat critical of the repetitious gameplay - "Despite a feeling of "been there, done that," which increasingly accompanies the game's levels as you progress, "Stranglehold" throws enemies at you by the dozen, and, thus, manages to keep moving at a fast enough pace that you won't get bored, despite the repetition."
• Praised the voice acting - "Fans are also treated to some top notch voice acting from Chow Yun Fat, who reprises his role as "Tequila" Yuen, a cop who shoots first and doesn't bother with the "questions" part. Even Woo shows up in the game."
• ""Stranglehold" delivers all of the pulse-pounding edge-of-your-seat thrills you'd expect from a Woo movie. You'll fire thousands of rounds of ammunition, and leave piles of bodies in your wake. Just don't expect to have any idea what's actually going on."

Ars Technica - 6/10 - Frank Caron

• "While a video game may not have been the way many cinema fans would have preferred to revisit the gritty world of the film, the game proves to be a serviceable action title that is marred by a few poorly-implemented ideas."
• Praised the destruction system - is impressed by the amount of objects that can be destroyed with the Massive D system
• Praised the controls - likes the fact that the context-sensitive actions make moving around and interacting with the world easy, which allows for a cinematic experience since the player can create their own action scenes
  • Somewhat critical of the times when the game occasionally misinterprets the context-sensitive action that you want to do
• Praised the combat - generally thinks the "combat proves to be quite the spectacle" thanks to mechanics like the above, as the other systems (standoff mechanic, different shooting sections like when you fire the gun of a police helicopter)
• Critical of the camera - "The combination of the third-person perspective and the various cramped environments lead to some dizzying moments—which will often enough lead to your untimely death."
• Critical of the "uninspired" linear sections, in comparison to the open arena-style sections - "The linear sections prove to be rather uninspired and boring, which is a stark contrast to the intoxicating arena battles. It's as though you have to "pay your dues" through the lead up to an arena section."
• Somewhat critical of the environment puzzles - framed as a "temporary annoyance" due to the fact that they appear immediately following an action sequence
• Notes that the lack of reloading removes one of the most tense parts of a shooter, in which you are out of bullets and need to temporarily duck behind cover because you are defenseless
• Critical of the game's length
• Critical of the game's multiplayer - describes it as a "severe disappointment" - "I'm all for arcade-style shooters, but Stranglehold falters on so many fronts that the multiplayer becomes unplayable."
  • When one player gets to use Tequila Time, every other player gets to use it too, rendering the mechanic "useless"
  • The Tequila Bombs are completely unbalanced - Precision Aim and Spin Attack are one-shot kills, but with Spin Attack, the player is invincible during its animation (and vulnerable with Precision Aim)
  • Also complains about how unimportant the gunplay feels, due to how much health everyone has, and how plentiful the health regeneration items are scattered throughout each level
  • Dislikes the lag and "horrendous interface"

AV Club, Chris Dahlen

• "Games that trigger choreographed moves with a click of a button usually wear thin the tenth time you skate down a handrail; what really keeps Stranglehold exciting is its style."
• Critical of how the moves in the first two levels "feel like gimmicks"
• Praised the game's introduction of new challenges to avoid repetition, such as the game's inclusion of a jazz band whose members drop out of the backing track when they die
• Critical of how finicky some of the actions are, "all those wall-jumps and stunt moves could feel more fluid."
• Final judgement: "Barely worthy of Woo, but well worth players' time."

Bit-Tech - 8/10 - Dan Boaden

• Commented on the game's story: "Although the storyline is about as realistic as me running up a banister without once stopping for balance, it does gives the gritty ambience needed to justify wiping out half the population of China in a single day." - Noted it's not fair for people to be so critical of the plot when it's just used as a way to set up the action
• Praised the destructible environments - says the environment "allows for a completely immersive experience and you get a genuine sense of panic as the wall you are hiding behind is slowly eradicated by gun fire and you’re left to face a barrage of enemies with no protection."
• Praised the audio - says the voice acting generally is "very good", sound is "very immersive" and, along with the graphics, "creates an absorbing cinematic experience"
• Critical of the PC port - it has no other graphical options other than being able to change the resolution, turn decals on or off, and toggling dynamic shadows
  • Noted no anti-aliasing options
  • Noted its poor stability - had several crashes and program hangs throughout their playthrough, attributed the problems to the "high system requirements" needed
• Somewhat critical of how the mission objectives "appear very arbitrary and pointless", noted that the game begins to feel repetitive once you've seen its special moves

Boston Herald, Doug Elfman

• "Stranglehold is a one-trick pony, but sometimes it's fun to ride a one-trick pony. The fun trick of “Stranglehold” is you must do the same thing over and over: press a few buttons to kill thousands of baddies. But the killing methodology is intriguing and paced well enough to keep it from feeling like a sluggish donkey ride."
• Praised the gunplay - "Its cool gun features are reminiscent of my two favorite solo-mission shooters of all time, Red Dead Revolver and Max Payne."
• Critical of the game's length
• Critical of the multiplayer - found it "limited to a maximum of six people waiting for short, sad rounds to begin."

Computer and Video Games - 7.9/10 - Will Porter

• Noted that despite the comparisons to Max Payne, Stranglehold was unconcerned with making sure players were aware of their enemies' location and number of bullets
• Somewhat praised the gameplay
  • "It isn't rocket science, but it's great fun."
  • Lamented that the game lacked the "tactical weight" of Gears of War, and that a better game might have been made if the dev team "realized that sometimes fewer (and more damaging) bullets can bring greater intensity
• Somewhat critical of the controls - found them a "tad simplistic", noted crouching was redundant in anything but the hardest difficulty
• Somewhat critical of the plot and character development - described that the "game seems desperate to take away a lot of the emotion and humanity of Woo's earlier movies and eschew character development for pure stereotype."
  • While Hard Boiled characterized Tequila as a "hard-drinking cop on the edge", in Stranglehold he is reduced to a "stroppy, murderous child who should have faced an industrial tribunal long ago"
  • Lamented that "had the developers borrowed a sense of pace and character growth from their director alongside his action smarts, the title would have been improved dramatically."
• Somewhat critical of the game's missions
  • Noted that missions like the one where you destroy drug labs before you are allowed to progress forces you to "grudgingly backtrack" through already-explored areas
• Critical of the game's short length
• Somewhat praised the multiplayer; said it was "worth a bash", praised the fact that its slow motion dynamic was borrowed from the deathmatch component in F.E.A.R.
• "Sure, Stranglehold isn't a perfect game - in fact, in many areas it's a bit duff. But even if the stupidity and brevity gets you down, I guarantee you won't have played a better representation of such utter, needless carnage."

Destructoid - 4.5/10 - Anthony Burch

• "It’s quite tough to write an effective intro paragraph for a game like Stranglehold: blanket statements like “it’s fun” or “it made me want to kill the developers” don’t accurately reflect the alternating stream of problems and entertainment that Stranglehold offers. Is it fun? At moments, absolutely.  Is it flawed? Undoubtedly. Is it worth your money? Yeah, but no more than ten dollars of it."
• Critical of the story - finds the usage of tropes found in American police films annoying, along with dialogue that doesn't make any sense
  • Dislikes how the broader themes of Woo's Hong Kong films are cast aside in favor of "a story that serves only as a flimsy frame for huge action setpieces"
  • Dislikes how all of the audio is performed in English instead of Cantonese; says it ruins Chow Yun-fat's "cool factor" and that it is difficult to understand Chow when there are no subtitles
  • Ultimately describes the story as "worthless"
• Critical of the presentation - thinks that Stranglehold is even more of a rip-off of Woo's style than Max Payne
  • Admits that there are some things that are "admittedly kind of cute" - "pistols hidden in bird cages", Woo himself as the owner of the Unlock Shop
• Praised the visuals - likes the bullet impacts, the character deaths as "a nice mixture of scripted animations and ragdoll physics", the visual polish
• Praised the audio - "[...] the massive battles in Stranglehold serve as a great way to test the quality of your surround sound system. If you’ve got an HDTV and a decent surround setup, Stranglehold will remind you why you spent all that money in the first place – aesthetically, there’s nothing to complain about."
• Critical of the gameplay
  • Praised how the gunfights are "spectacularly violent" - "the epitome of mindless, bombastic fun" when the player is surrounded by enemies and destructible objects
  • The standoff mechanic is described as "totally nonsensical" - " the game retains the shallow playfulness of a bad-yet-entertaining popcorn flick"
  • Critical of how repetitive the gameplay is - outside of the above, there's not a lot else to do in the game
  • Compares and contrasts Max Payne - due to Max Payne's focus on a more complex story, the overall game felt varied; whereas Stranglehold feels like an arcade game due to its lack of story
  • Critical of the game's length - especially critical of the game's second level in Tai O, which forced the player to complete the same objective of destroying drug labs multiple times - "single most insultingly tedious gaming stage I’ve ever played"
• Critical of the game's controls
  • Due to the game putting the "stunt" button on the same button as the "jump" button, the game feels unnecessarily frustrating when it doesn't know whether you want to jump over a ledge, vs. jump onto and slide down it
  • Dislikes the camera placement - is too close to Tequila
• Overall - "Stranglehold is an immensely flawed but occasionally kickass game that is best enjoyed in short bursts." - Declares it suitable for renting, playing it in short sessions
  • States that the best level was already featured in the demo version of the game

EGM - 7.5/10 (Joe), 8.0/10 (Matt), 7.5/10 (G. Ford) - Joe Rybicki (Staff Reviewer), Matt Leone (Previews Editor, 1UP.com), Greg Ford (Reviews Editor)

• Joe Rybicki: "And this Stranglehold delivers, largely due to its tech: Being able to destroy nearly everything in this action-shooter's world never gets old."
  • Praised the "debris-splashed graphics", "clever writing"
  • Critical of the "mediocre" level design, "unreliable" controls, "a point of view so tight on the creepy virtual Chow Yun-Fat that it feels almost claustrophobic."
  • Wanted more than "a series of cookie-cutter levels, "waves of faceless enemies, and only the rarest deviations from either of these"; called it "mindless, destructive fun" and not much else
• Matt Leone: "[...] the game succeeds without a ton of polish"
  • Praised the destruction system and the gunplay
  • Critical of the enemy spawning system ("[...] often from out of nowhere, right behind you, and in clown car-style closets"); some nitpicks ("the sometimes amazing/sometimes awful visuals, the awkward platforming")
• Greg Ford: "Rarely do I consider it a good thing for a game to take a mere seven hours to complete, but with Stranglehold, it hits the sweet spot."
  • Praised the game's length - any longer, and the game would seem like it is dragging out its length
  • Critical of the multiplayer - "It boils down to whittling away too-long life bars and jumping incessantly until the others give up from damn annoyance."

Empire Online - **** - David McComb

• General praise
  • "Midway’s Stranglehold is a stroke of genius and shoo-in for chart-shattering success."
  • "Stranglehold’s take on the director’s choreographed ultra-violence is credible, captivating and exceptionally good fun."
  • "And with a bombastic soundtrack, slick visuals and dynamic action that never lets up, Stranglehold comes closer than any cinematic spin-off in recent memory to capturing the spirit of the movie that inspired it."
• Praised the game's ability to capture Woo's style
  • Liked the "beautifully captured" Mexican standoffs
• Praised the controls
  • "Using Stranglehold’s gloriously simple controls, even the most ham-fisted player will look like a gaming god within seconds."
• Praised the destructible environments - the debris "adding tremendous energy to even the smallest skirmish"
• Praised the music - "bombastic soundtrack"
• Praised the visuals - "slick visuals"
• Praised the action - "dynamic action that never lets up"
• Somewhat critical of the relentlessness of combat - "[...] Stranglehold’s combat is relentless and ferociously intense, making the game a stressful experience that will alienate players who want a little more brain stimulation and variety from their virtual escapades."

Engadget - 8/10 (Second review by Andrew: 7.5/10) - Colin Torretta

• Notes that the Collectors' Edition, featuring a Blu-ray copy of Hard Boiled, make the game better, since it gives continuity to the events of Stranglehold
• Praised the environment system - Massive D allows for the game to mimic Woo's style; "is an absolute marvel to behold and is something that would not even vaguely be able to be done on the PS2"
• Critical of the game's environment interaction system - felt like more iteration needed to happen to avoid the game misinterpreting what you wanted to do, leading to some avoidable deaths - "75% of the time you feel like a movie bad-ass, and 25% of the time you feel like the world's worst stunt man."
• Critical of the repetitive nature of the gameplay - the set pieces looked great (in particular the Chinese casino level), but the gameplay was too similar between each level
• Somewhat praised the graphics
  • "Chow Yun-fat looks recognizable", but the graphics don't have that "next-gen shine" to them
  • Likes the realism of the environmental destruction
  • Frame-rate seemed fine other than one instance where the game lagged as two statues exploded
• Praised the Collectors' Edition featuring the Hard Boiled Blu-ray:
  • Praised the film transfer - seemed to be better than the Criterion release
  • Liked that the subtitles make sense
  • The inclusion of the film makes Stranglehold more enjoyable

GameDaily - 8 - Robert Workman

• "The game provides an overwhelming amount of fun; it manages to be just as much about style as it is substance, which comes in handy during the more difficult stages."
• Critical of the game's "rushed" multiplayer, says that "Unfortunately, Tequila Time and Bombs don't really work that well in this mode"
• Praised the game's presentation, environmental design, and frame rate
  • Liked that the "visuals capture the gritty look of a John Woo film"
  • Commented that "some of the characters hardly look as realistic as others"
• Somewhat praised the audio, says that "Chow Yun Fat and the rest of the cast provide solid voicework", lamented that there was no Cantonese-language dub
• Noted that it would be nice if the Hard Boiled Blu-Ray in the collector's edition let the player rewind the fast-forward
• "John Woo's Stranglehold is a fine throwback to the action games from the good ol' days. It kicks so hard that it just might leave bruises. We suggest you take a few hits."

GameInformer - 7.25/10 - Matt Helgeson (Second review by Andrew Reiner: 7.25/10)

• Was initially hyped to play the game, but ultimately was disappointed that it had "a number of failings that combine to make Stranglehold a mediocre (although sometimes invigorating) action title rather than a true next-gen masterpiece."
• Critical of the game's pacing and repetitiveness
  • Noted that the gunfights were "exciting" in a demo, but that was all the game had
  • "Aside from a few boss battles (which aren't really that dissimilar to the main game) and helicopter shooting sequence, it settles into a numbing rut."
  • Because of the game's repetitiveness, you begin to spot its shortcomings more easily, like the clunky rail and table-sliding mechanics, and the poor level designs and missions (e.g. destroy 10 drug tables)
• Critical of the plot and dialogue - described it "not very involving"
• Critical of the multiplayer - called it "bare-boned" and "poorly balanced"
• "If you desire nothing more than to kill criminals on a massive scale, turn nightclubs into a war zone, and look cool doing it – this is your game. For me, Stranglehold was like guzzling a case of Mountain Dew. After the initial sugar rush wears off, you realize there’s not much substance there to sustain you over the long haul."

GamePlanet - 8.0/10 - Aylon Herbet

• Noted that the game's story "isn't very deep" but it was sufficient
• Somewhat praised the graphics - said the environments had "decent variety" but said the art direction "isn't anything special", noting that other games running the same engine look much better
• Somewhat critical of the audio - said the "music and sound are OK but not all that noticeable while playing"
• Somewhat praised the gameplay
  • Said controls were "fairly solid" except for when you had to aim at an enemy when diving right next to them in slow motion
  • Said sometimes Tequila Time was finicky; it sometimes "switches itself on and off too quickly and can make you miss your target"
  • Said it was very satisfying to see the Precision Aim Tequila Bomb in action, saying that "the developers have made great animations and sound effects to accompany the different locations on a person's body you may hit."
• Somewhat critical of the game's performance - some stutters, seemed to freeze during some of the loading screens
• Somewhat praised the level design - called it "mostly good"
  • Noted that some of the levels contain instant fail mechanics that force you to start over again, and that those were "very frustrating"
  • Noted that the boss fights, while "simple fun", weren't "particularly challenging"
  • Said the game difficulty was "unbalanced"
• Critical of the multiplayer, said that it "isn't terribly good"; games were "laggy, mostly empty and with everyone moving around quickly and diving everywhere, it makes aiming almost impossible"
  • Noted that Tequila Time doesn't help you if everyone is affected the same way; unfavorably compared it to the Half-Life multiplayer mod The Specialists
  • Realized that Stranglehold felt like a Max Payne mod
• "If you enjoy a good third person action game, Hong Kong style, then it definitely would not hurt to give Stranglehold a look. Enjoy your murderous rampage..."

GameRevolution - C-

• Critical of the game's story - called it "cheesy and ridiculous", and said "you'll need some Tequila of your own" in order to enjoy the plot
• Critical of the finicky environmental interactions
• Critical of the game's bugs - "enemies acting like idiots, getting stuck on objects, or becoming bulletproof from particular angles
  • Was critical of two bosses: one that was impossible to beat unless the player moves through the apartment in a specific way, and the other involved emptying clips of a sub-machine gun from point blank range for two minutes
• Critical of the sometimes frustrating levels - called the mission to destroy drug tables in Tai O "infuriating in the confusing shanty town of tin huts with no map"; had difficulty finding the last bomb location in another mission
• Praised the environmental interaction, liked the fact that almost everything can be destroyed
• Critical of the graphics - "low-res textures", "lousy water effects", and a "finicky camera"; compared it unfavorably to The Darkness and Heavenly Sword for having "wooden, oddly sheened faces"
• Praised the game's audio - liked the "satisfying guns and explosions", and the "good voice acting by the cast"
• Critical of the multiplayer, said it feels "tacked-on", notes that Tequila Time "becomes pretty pointless when everybody goes slo-mo at the same time"
• "If you're a fan of Hard Boiled or action games in general, Stranglehold is a worthy rental and you'll easily beat it before it's due back."

Games for Windows - 6/10 - Joe Rybicki

• Critical of the game's "near-direct" PC port of the Xbox 360 version; criticized the fact that there are no video customization options or gamepad support
• Praised the game's destructible environment, said that "the ability to blast the living hell out of every environment is undeniably satisfying"
• Critical of the game's controls - found the contextual action ability "frustratingly unreliable", said that the game "loses its balletic potential when what should be a string of supercool slow-motion moves is broken by the finicky nature of the interactive objects."
• Critical of the level design, said that while "certain areas stand out" (e.g. the active demolition site, the final level set in an estate), the other levels feel too similar to each other
  • Notes that the finicky interactive objects means that players will interact with them less, which contributes to why "the levels don't become the free-form playgrounds they were probably intended to be."
• Praised the game's "impressive tech"
• "Stranglehold packs some impressive tech; the power to positively flatten nearly every object in a level offers a certain charm. [...] But with such unreliable environmental exploits, the game devolves into little more than a stylish, mindless, unusually destructive shooter."

Gamespot - 7/10 - Alex Navarro

• Notes the similarities between Stranglehold and Max Payne - "Stranglehold effectively takes the elements that made Max Payne fun and uses them to its own advantage, while sprinkling in a number of original touches and gimmicks that give the game its own Hong Kong cinema flavor."
• Somewhat critical of the story - considers it a "confusing and ham-fisted" plot that, while better than Woo's American films, lacks the "gritty feel" of Hard Boiled
• Somewhat critical of how difficult it is see to see the environmental puzzles that require the player to shoot at planks to create new pathways, as well as how many bullets it takes to do so
• Somewhat critical of how some Tequila Bombs are more useful than others - notes how Precision Aim is not nearly as good as the one that clears out an entire room
• Somewhat praised the standoff mechanic - notes it's "pretty fun", but a "silly contrivance" to have one guy shoot at you at a time
• Praised how the guns feel
• Notes the difficulty spike in the third or fourth chapter - notes that Tequila Bombs help ease the difficulty in later levels, although they make a few of the boss fights too easy
• Somewhat critical of the fact that while the gameplay is fun, it isn't particularly dynamic enough that you'll won't find the game repetitive later on - "Little of what Stranglehold does ever feels like it operates outside of expected boundaries, and the few things that are original aren't necessarily amazing enough to hold up the entire game."
• Critical of the multiplayer - feels very "tacked-on"
  • The slow-motion mode seems to only work when you and other players also have a full Tequila Time meter
  • Maps feel cramped
  • Limited modes - only deathmatch and team deathmatch
• Comments on the Collectors' Edition containing the Hard Boiled Blu-ray
  • Praises the film transfer - no artifacts, the picture and audio quality is better than the DVD version out at the time; notes that the original print that the transfer is from might not be in the best shape
  • Notes that the collectors' edition at $69.99 retail might be too expensive, given the game's short single-player mode
• Somewhat praises the game's presentation
  • Praises the destructible environments - "Whether you're in a gaudy Hong Kong casino, a lavish penthouse, or a cold, sterile-looking history museum, it's great fun to destroy the scenery. It's really quite impressive how much of every environment is destructible. It's also a boon for the gameplay, because each cover point you hide behind tends to get shot to hell very quickly, which forces you to duck and run."
  • Critical of how the character models look "overly shiny" and not very detailed, limited animations, and a camera that doesn't move the way you want it to
  • Somewhat praises the game's smoothness - only problem is when you try to move the camera too quickly
• Praises the game's audio
  • Praises the "appropriately cheesy" dialogue, especially with the police chief's lines
  • Praises the voice acting - notes that Chow Yun-Fat does a good job with his English lines, with only a few "dead-reads"
  • Praises the music - likes that it is a "nice mix of typically bombastic orchestral pieces and some Asian-flavored string sections"
  • Praises the sound effects - "[...] sound effects are mostly top-notch, from the gun sounds right on down to the individual effects of bullets hitting each and every type of surface"
• Overall impression - "Stranglehold isn't the sort of game that's going to set the shooter genre on fire. It's a more-than-competent take on an existing formula, and it has enough unique moments and overall challenge to succeed. Sure, it gets repetitive at times, it's got a few design quirks, and the multiplayer is borderline irrelevant. But there's enough solid, exciting action here for shooter fans to sink their teeth into. It's a short ride, but an amusing one while it lasts."

GameSpy - 3.5/5 - Dave "Fargo" Kosak

• "While the stunts are a little more repetitive than what you'd expect from a movie, the game does a great job of making you feel like an action hero. There are definitely better shooters available for the PC, but none have this much style. If you don't mind the length of the game, there's a great weekend or two of entertainment in this box."
• Praised the presentation - thought that the game did well with giving you reasons to use the Tequila Bombs; liked how the game was cinematic
  • Liked how even the main menu felt cinematic - "Even the animated menu backdrop -- which freeze-frames an over-the-top action panorama and then zooms in on various details as you navigate the menu -- feels top-notch."
  • Praised the attention to detail the development team paid throughout each level, as nearly every item felt interactive - "Every area in the game is a playground for guns, really capturing the John Woo experience."
• Somewhat critical of the story - unlike the rest of the presentation, the plot felt "paper-thin" throughout the first two levels; the cutscenes felt like "short, stilted little fragments of dialogue that set up the next action sequence but do little to get your motor going."
• Praised the combat - thought that the pacing was "spot-on"
• Somewhat critical of the PC port of the game
  • Felt like it was clearly ported over from console - navigating menus with the mouse didn't always work correctly
  • Annoyed by in-game checkpoints that forced the player to replay large sections of easy fights in order to fight a harder boss
• Somewhat critical of the game's pacing - largely felt that the pacing was good, except for a couple of sections that dragged the pacing down:
  • When you miss the one thing you needed to blow up in order to progress to the next part of the level
  • A section of the game rigged with trip mines that instantly kill you, which is frustrating given the lack of checkpoints
• Somewhat critical of the multiplayer
  • The multiplayer gameplay is "pretty thin" - there are only two modes, the many ways to instantly kill other players undercut the "dance-like choreography" found in single-player
• Overall - "But at its heart this is a single-player game, about tearing through a level full of bad guys with blazing guns akimbo. Stranglehold serves up cinematic single-player combat like a four-star chef. If you're looking for a quick action fix, and don't mind a shallow story or weak multiplayer, there's several hours of outstanding entertainment here."

GameZone - 8.2/10 - Nick Valentino

• Somewhat praised the level design - boss battles "add some variety to the mix"
• Somewhat critical of the game's glitches - "enemies almost [phase] right through Tequila", and corpses vanish suddenly
• Somewhat critical of the graphics - "Stranglehold really doesn't take advantage of the PS3's graphical capabilities but it's not an ugly game either."
  • Liked the "sharp visuals" that highlight the exotic locations; remarked the character models looked "decent enough", criticized that some of the enemy models looked the same
  • Liked that "the real visual treat comes from the visual effects and the destructible environments that have tables ripping apart into splinters and glass shattering everywhere as your surroundings simply fall apart all around you."
• Somewhat praised the audio - soundtrack is "wonderfully cinematic and intense", music "picks up at all the right moments in the game"
  • Somewhat critical of the sound effects - sound effects "sound a tad muffled in places", described the voice acting as a "bit rough", noting that the voice actors "sound like authentic Chinese actors trying to speak English"
  • Noted Chow's performance was "solid"; noted that it might be better for the voice cast to deliver their lines in their native tongue, instead of trying to navigate the dialogue in English
• "While it doesn’t push the third-person shooter category to new heights, John Woo’s personal touch brings just enough style to a solid shooter PS3 gamers will certainly relish."

IGN - 8.1/10 - Hilary Goldstein

• Annoyed by the visual cues signaling something can be interacted with - "It gets a little bit obnoxious after a while to see the environment flashing and actually takes away some of the fun of discovering new areas of interaction."
• Critical of the occasionally buggy interactions with the environment - "the lack of a fluid interaction system hurts one of the title's strongest selling points"
• Critical of how generic the enemies are and how limited their animations are (recognizing that this is a tradeoff for how destructible the environment is) - "Stranglehold has a lot of cinematic flair, but lacks the visual pop I'd expected."
• Critical of the camera, and how it doesn't manually adjust whenever you're leaping off of walls or need to turn in another direction - notes that "camera spring" in the options - bemoans why this wasn't turned on in the first place
• Praised the standoff mechanic - "Though people will come for the fast-paced action, the standoffs were my favorite part of Stranglehold. They're tense and exciting."
• Critical of the game length - single-player mode is only 6-8 hours long, at a $50 price point
• Somewhat critical of the multiplayer
  • "Each match is complete and utter chaos"
  • Even though each player has Tequila Bombs and can sometimes enter slow motion, players can only use it if both players are in slow motion at the same time - "no real advantage to using Stranglehold's primary gameplay element"
  • Precision Aim is impossible to use, because the cursor goes into slow motion, yet other players are moving in real time
  • However, the multiplayer is an "interesting experiment" that everyone should try at least once
• Overall - "This is the true sequel to Hard Boiled, which means Stranglehold is more about style than substance. So, not surprisingly, the story is melodramatic and forgettable and the adrenaline-pumping action is the star of the show. Stranglehold could use two more chapters and a little more visual polish, but it is an otherwise exhilarating experience."
• Summary of ratings (from archived version):
  • Presentation - 8.5 - "It feels like you're playing a John Woo flick. Which, of course, is the whole point. Lots of extra DVD-style content as well."
  • Graphics - 7 - "It's a hefty feat to have almost every object in these large environments destructible. But it's impossible to ignore the mediocre animations and generic character models."
  • Sound - 7.5 - "If Midway really wanted this to sound authentic, it would have had the actors speak Cantonese. The cacophony of gunshots in every environment is awesome."
  • Gameplay - 8 - "Most of the time you are tasked with diving and shooting. That's when Stranglehold is at its best. If only interacting with the environment wasn't so hit and miss."
  • Lasting Appeal - 6 - "The single-player adventure is short, but it's so much fun, many will come back for seconds. Lackluster multiplayer is worth at least one go-around just for kicks."

Jeuxvideo.com - 15/20 - L'avis de Logan

• Somewhat critical of the thin plot - describes the plot as just there to facilitate pretext for action sequences across seven levels
• Somewhat praised the game's cinematic direction - "Du coup, on prend un pied immense à user et à abuser des actions mises à notre disposition, rien que pour le plaisir des yeux." ["As a result, we get a huge kick out of using and abusing the actions at our disposal, just for the pleasure of the eyes."]
• Somewhat critical of the repetitive gameplay - says the game relies too much on its destruction system and action sequences to propel the genre forward; calls the standoff mechanic tiresome as it is used too many times
• Somewhat critical of the game's short length
• Critical of the multiplayer - complains about the game's two multiplayer modes (DM and TDM)
• Overall - "Dans l'absolu, il n'en reste pas moins une excellente séquelle de pixels à l'oeuvre de John Woo qui ravira tous ceux qui sont un jour restés bouche bée devant cette leçon de cinéma offerte par un homme qui a redéfini le gunfight sur grand écran." ["In the end, it remains an excellent sequel to John Woo's work, which will delight all those who were once stunned by this lesson in cinema offered by a man who redefined the gunfight on the big screen."]
• From notes summary section:
  • Graphics - 17/20 - The levels are not all equally fun, but every one of them features destructible environments
  • Playability - 15/20 - The gameplay is good; slow-motion mode is fun, and so is the interaction with the environment; however, the AI is not good, there aren't a lot of special moves, the loading times are a bit long, and gunfights are often too divided by "rooms"
  • Lifetime - 9/20 - The single-player mode lasts around seven hours, and the multiplayer is not very fun since it only has two modes. Bonuses can be unlocked, but three-quarters of them can be unlocked after a single playthrough
  • Soundtrack - 14/20 - Convincing soundtrack (only thing missing is the jazz-inspired main theme of Hard Boiled); sound-effects, music, and French dubbing is good
  • Plot - 9/20 - A story about love, revenge and betrayal; dialogue and plot is very cliche

SFGate.com - Erick Wong

• Somewhat critical of the game's plot - "not much of a plot to work with"
• Praised the game's overall presentation - "the game absolutely nails how it feels to have Chow walk into a room and destroy it with bullets"
  • Lamented the game's lack of Cantonese audio option
• "Stranglehold is a must-have for fans missing the old John Woo intensity, a pure undiluted dose of action reminding us even now that there's nothing cooler than seeing Chow Yun-Fat with a gun in each hand."

TeamXbox.com - 7.7/10 - Will Tuttle

• "While John Woo Presents Stranglehold definitely has its moments, the game ultimately feels more Hard Target than Hard Boiled. Hey, at least it's not Broken Arrow, right?"
• Somewhat critical of the game's story - said it "isn't great", but was happy to see Inspector Tequila again
• Somewhat critical of the controls - "The surprising part is that the controls don't always feel that tight, so you'll probably pump more lead into your surroundings than you will the bad guys."
• Critical of the game's lack of replay value
  • Critical of the multiplayer - described it as "barebones" and that "the nature of the gameplay just doesn't translate at all", stating that the bullet time mechanics turned it into a "sluggish, boring mess"
• Somewhat critical of the graphics, unfavorably compared it to Gears of War or Rainbow Six Vegas; acknowledged that there was a tradeoff between graphics and environmental destructibility, noted that the character models were "highly repetitive"
• Somewhat praised the game's audio
  • Had trouble understanding Chow's non-native English
  • Sound-effects were "excellent"; soundtrack is "a nice blending of sweeping score an environmental music"
  • Appreciated the last part of the Mega restaurant level with the band playing
• Somewhat critical of the game's pacing

VentureBeat - 7/10 - Ryan Conway

• A retrospective review in 2011
• Somewhat praised the game's plot, describes it as a "well-written action film", acknowledges that it "may not be the kind of cinematic fare that would be winning any Academy Awards but that isn't what it is meant to be."
• Critical of the game's short length
• Praised the game's audio - loved the actors' performances, in particular Chow Yun-fat
  • Liked the music's "interesting clash of styles" between "typical heavy rock", "oriental folk music", and "mellower and bluesier jazz tunes that Woo incorporated into Hard Boiled"
• Praised the game's graphics - described it as "stunning", though acknowledged it didn't look quite as good as Gears of War or Bioshock
  • Thought that the "realistic character designs" and the "gorgous backdrops" made it one of the better-looking games of 2007
  • Liked the cinematic cutscenes; made him feel "as if an action director and cinematographer are working together to film a movie as opposed to programming camera shots into a video game"
• Acknowledged that the multiplayer seemed to be mediocre (but noted that he didn't get the chance to play it because he did not have an Xbox Gold membership)
• Critical of some minor details:
  • No map screen (got lost a few times)
  • Finicky special moves (was annoyed that because of the fact that they're mapped to the same button, he would sometimes slide instead of duck, etc. which resulted in some avoidable deaths)
  • Camera issues (laments that it had "this weird way of zooming in and out as Tequila is wandering around the environment", described it as "aggravating" and gave him literal headaches)

VideoGamer.com - 8/10 - Tom Orry

• Noted the story serves its purpose
• Praised the game's voice acting and cutscenes
• Somewhat critical of the gameplay, due to its repetitive nature; says that its "relentless shooting" causes things to feel like you're doing the same thing
  • Critical of the game's sudden increase in difficulty; was annoyed at the game's "patronising need to ask if you want to play on an easier difficulty", especially if your problems were from the game's camera
• Critical of the game's multiplayer - feels "tacked on"
• Somewhat critical of the visuals - did appreciate the "insane amount of on-screen carnage", but noted that character models looked "a little rough around the edges", and that "if you were to see the game during a quiet moment you could be forgiven for thinking that the dev team has failed to make the most of the Unreal Engine 3"
• Praised the audio - sound was "equally impressive" to the destructibility; noted the "perfectly suited soundtrack" and "plenty of thumping sound effects"
• "The biggest complement that I can pay to Stranglehold is that when I’d finished it, I wanted to jump straight back in and play through again. It’s got its flaws but if you like shooting things it’s hard to see how you could play Stranglehold without a big grin on your face."

Washington Post - John Gaudiosi

• A "fun ride, one worth playing again"
• Critical of the camera - notes that it can be fixed by turning on "camera spring" in the options
• Critical of multiplayer - calls it "thin"