Stranglehold

Audience in question being either nostalgic for this mid-level XBOX360 release and people who really, really love stylish shooters. It'd be unfair to say that this is trying to be Max Payne (even though it very clearly is), consdidering how much Max Payne was inspired by John Woo and Hong Kong action movies, but as far as the gaming scene goes, this is the thrill it was trying to emulate. The tone is on point and the action is solid. The problem is that the game has technical and core design issues. No controller support, bare-bones options menu, no subtitles, terrible default key-bindings (menu and in-game) and a sickening FOV. The action is frantic and enemies very shamelessly spawn from inside empty boxed rooms (with invisible walls) and all around you, so the camera that stuck to your back makes the gunplay quite literally nauseating. I respect what it was going for and I appreciate the affection some people have for it, but for anyone not in that particular crowd, this is honestly a bit of a mess and you're better off replaying Max Payne.

I had forgotten how amazing this game is. It is an absolute classic which is running perfectly on Win 10. There has been nothing even close which been able to capture the pure carnage and cool of this game. This game is from bygone age which there was only rule when designing video games: the rule of cool. And everything from the main character to every small detail of every level is designed to simply be cool in how you annihilate your enemies. A game you have to play and has aged beautifully.

In many ways this game is better than Max Payne. You can swing from chandeliers, shoot assailants while rolling on carts, slide on banisters, in addition to doing the famous dive which John Woo, the maestro of action, practically invented. Remember before Max Payne and The Matrix there was Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Hard Target. Stranglehold is a must buy for action junkies and John Woo fans

So what, you like shooting at chinese triad's mobsters while leaping in slow-motion? I got news for ya pal, this game's for you. First and foremost, install the trainer that allows you to expand your FOV, otherwise Tequila's model would cover 70% of your screen's real estate, making it harder for you to aim and be aware of your surroundings, then you're readi to go. It gets frustrating at times especially in the later levels where you can dodge and leap freely as you did because you need to dodge both enemy projectiles and laser trip bombs, but man it is rewarding to pull off an action sequence without getting it handed to you. The game campaign is pretty short, the story isn't that great to begin with and the Italian voice acting is ridiculously awful, I hope the English version is better. My review is based on the DVD Version of the game I still own from back in the days, so can't tell if there are problems with this version, but it's a fun game that deserves to be played.

This game has a good story and some interesting action that rewards you. I like that the game awards you for killing things in interesting ways. Slide down the rail of some stairs and kill enemies or shooting down signs and see it smash their head in and so on. You get some extra abilities to use to help you out and I must say some of them felt a bit to overpowered at times. You can only have 2 weapons equipped at a time and they have their weaknesses and strong points. You can thou swap and pick up another one to exchange for one you have equipped currently. If you don't want to shoot you can run up to them and melee them of course. The ammo refill works a bit weird as if you have to much ammo but not full it will not refill it so you have to get closer to half before it refills your ammo so that was something to get used to. The cover system works well enough. Overall a fun action packed game and some interesting levels.