Stranglehold

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God.” ~ An insanely-paced and fun-first shooting gallery reminiscent of an arcade game. A sequel to the masterful action film Hard Boiled (1992), John Woo’s talents translate well into the realm of digital entertainment, as his high art action set pieces were always already video game-esque, in the best possible ways. “Tequila Time” is one of a kind, and the people want a sequel!

As Amazing as the original Max Payne, with way more action, I played it years ago on Xbox 360 but for the price usually is on GOG.com please go for it, it still looks & plays gorgeous.

If you know what the action movie industry owns to John Woo, if you're into his movies, then this is a must have. Basically you play Chow Yun-Fat/Tequilla and you kill every one with style like in a Hong Kong movie. And if you're an hardcore fan, the first time you meet the bartender should put a big smile on your face. The game is supposed to be played with keyboard + mouse which I find pretty hard and not adapted for this game. There is no gamepad support at all. Despite my love for the game, I was to ask a refound, when I dig the forum dedicated to the game. Someone came up with a functionnal solution : thanks to a soft called antimicro, you can actually use a gamepad with the game. It may be not perfect, but much better than the combo kb+mouse.

The movement and environmental destruction deserve praise. These core mechanics are by far the best parts of the game. However, once you've played thirty minutes, you've seen literally everything. They repeat the same standoff mini-game a dozen times, and include the cliched bullet-sponge boss fight and turret section you've seen a million times in other games. For a game about insane action, it's surprisingly boring.

I would write up a whole review for this game but alas it's way too long for the character limits of GOG, as the review I did write (which I'll link down below) was originally supposed to be a whole video essay I decided to scrap because doing Youtube Essays aren't really my vibe I don't think. Here's what I will say though, it's a fun four to five hour romp where you slow motion dive, shoot people, destroy set pieces, and go through what I could summize to be an american made Hong Kong action movie, which to be fair Hard Boiled was his closest american styled one before switching to Hollywood for a time straight after. I had a lot of fun with this game, it's a nice game to play for a day while turning off your brain and just having fun. It's not deep, you won't get any Max Payne styled twists or anything and the acting is about as stiff as it can be but there's still something about this game that's charming that I still come back to it from time to time whether it's on PS3 or here on GOG. Hopefully this'll be approved but yeah it's a fun title and if you want a cheap game that's fun, I personally think it's worth the ten dollars but you could also try to wait til it's on sale too considering lack of multiplayer and how short it is (which is preferable to me compared to seventy hour games). Anyways yeah go play it it's fun! https://www.backloggd.com/u/gamemast15r/review/612047/