Stranglehold Review

The recipe for keeping the player hooked is simple. As you watch the story unfold, you are taken on a rollercoaster ride through linear levels with bigger guns, more enemies and exotic locales; the difficulty of the game is tuned in such a way that it's challenging and even frustrating at times, but that's the sort of stuff you'd expect from a Dead to Rights-like title. Personally, I saw this as a plus for Stranglehold, if anything.

Take that, ya bastards! No, I'm not coming down.

Damn, pigeons! I hate 'em!!

I played the game on the Xbox 360 and was very impressed with the excellent and intuitive layout of the controls; I was able to get into the action in virtually no time at all. The frame-rate remained smooth throughout, and although this is not a game to be watching out for clever AI routines, the bad guys never behaved too stupidly. In addition, different guns like assault rifles and shotguns performed exactly as I'd expect them to in an arcade shooter. As a result, the action felt very smooth and seamless...

... for the most part.

Occasionally, I'd had problems panning the camera around to get a better view of my surroundings. I couldn't quite pinpoint the source of the issue; it could be a field of view issue or just bad positioning of the camera; but, it was quite annoying to have to pan all the way to the left or right just to get my bearings.

In a nutshell, it's safe to say that with Stranglehold, you will be getting exactly what you paid for: over-the-top arcade action with a Hong Kong twist and trademark Woo choreography. As such, the game is great. On the other hand, there is only so much you can do with what you got here, and Stranglehold, although very good, is neither technically nor in any other way, able to pass that threshold and achieve excellence.