A couple of months and several million miles away from 2007’s procession of summer blockbuster adaptations, Stranglehold is also based on a film. Specifically it is a video game-only sequel to John Woo’s 1992 action film Hard Boiled, with the director himself taking a consulting role and re-united with its star Chow Yun-fat. There is a clever bit of lateral thinking in this from makers Tiger Hill and Midway, along similar lines to EA’s in bringing us the game of The Godfather in 2006. Stranglehold presumably came from looking at the success of The Matrix and Max Payne and determining that a new game could use all the coolest bits without looking like a copy by going right to the source. It’s the first of many smart ideas.
An immediately obvious benefit to the source material, before the intro is even done with its giant flickering location captions, is a sense of place and identity. The back streets of Kowloon, fishing boats of Tai O and assorted restaurants, casinos and museums are presented with panache. Main character Inspector Tequila finds himself caught up in yet another tale of a murdered partner and kidnapped child, but both revenge and his role as maverick cop take lower priority than that of a man taking pride and pleasure in the kinetic joy of blowing stuff up on the way to a job well done. It never makes any attempt to escape from being yet another game that glories in guns and death, but within that the distinctive influence of Woo’s style is pervasive.
Max Payne used its slow motion bullet time meter as a fairly central part of its mechanics and style. Stranglehold goes much further still. You can press a button to trigger Tequila Time in the same way, the screen turning sepia and your crosshair lighting up red as you aim at someone. Activating it in that way is rarely necessary, though. Instead, it happens automatically when you slide over objects, or look out from cover, or jump on top of environmental elements highlighted in glowing white for ease of use. And doing all of these things as you kill enemies earns you style points which recharge the Tequila Time meter.
The effect is like that of The Getaway’s lean-to-heal but on an all-encompassing scale. When being shot at by assorted gangsters, leaping onto a guardrail to present a clearer target does not seem like a particularly wise idea, any more than resting against a wall cures gunshot wounds. In the reality of Stranglehold, though, because making that leap is the visually cool thing to do in the fight, it earns you more time to aim, reduced damage to Tequila, and increased damage to enemies. Stranglehold doesn’t merely take style tips from John Woo’s gun ballet, but completely codifies it into its rules and reality.
The design simplifies things as much as possible to help along the way, nearly everything done with one trigger to shoot and one to do everything else with those highlighted objects. The rapid destruction of Black is another obvious touch point, but Stranglehold’s environments are not made only for blowing up. It presents constant opportunities to slide down bannisters, or travel along on rolling tables, a world made out of stunt set-ups, Tony Hawk with guns. And failing that, you can always just take a dive, the world slowing as Tequila throws himself through the air towards the latest of his countless enemies.
On top of the Tequila Time, you get to use certain powerful effects at the expense of more of that meter. This starts with instant healing, and goes through long-distance kills shown in gory close-up to the most powerful one which kills everyone in the room as Tequila pirouettes and doves fly. Stranglehold treats ridiculousness as a fact of life, delighting in being a place where video game exploding barrels are equally logical to the world around them. Its first boss battle is emblematic, taking you to a tea house and pitting you against a guy in a gold suit with a rocket launcher. The best way of beating him is to climb the stairs and take a leap onto one of the big lanterns hanging from the ceiling, swinging back and forth as missiles fly past in slow motion. There is something delightful about a game that tasks you with working out what the most narratively satisfying bit of action movie ridiculousness would be in any given situation and carrying it out.
Top of the charts for week ending 15 September 2007:
