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Stranglehold

User Rating:

ESRB: Blood,Drug Reference,Intense Violence
Publisher: Midway
Genre(s): Action, Shooting
Home Page: http://www.strangleholdgame.com/

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By: Jarno Kokko Oct 01, 2007

Solid action, as long as it lasts

While Stranglehold is a bit on the short side, providing about eight to ten hours of action, there are unlockable features enticing you to give it another spin, and the additional Hard-Boiled difficulty level provides quite a challenge for those who think they are tough enough. A multiplayer mode is also included, but unfortunately there was not enough time to give it a proper testing. Surprisingly, it seems to have tackled the problem of bullet time in multiplayer - with the game actually slowing down for everyone. It's much more limited than in single player, but it is there and it works; the rest of the Tequila Bomb moves have also been translated to the multiplayer with small tweaks to make them fair, and the levels break up to pieces just like in single player.

When everything is said and done, Stranglehold delivers what it promises - plenty of action and destruction worthy of John Woo's name on the box. If your system is up to date, Stranglehold on the PC is probably the best version of the game simply due to the controls. Games like this were made for the mouse & keyboard combination, but while the PC beats Xbox 360 here, both versions do feel slightly clumsy to play as the hero isn't quite as nimble as you might expect. I guess the best way to describe this small flaw is to say that Stranglehold can't quite match Max Payne in the playability department [or its hardware requirements - Ed].

Dodging bullets in a standoff.

Glow on the rail indicates you can hop on (and possibly slide down).

In any case what little it loses in playability it fully makes up in the sheer scope and totality of the destruction presented. Visually the PC and console versions are nearly identical, and the only downside is that some bits look noticeably low resolution when played at a high resolution on a powerful PC. The game actually looks a lot better in motion than in screenshots - simply because you don't have time to worry about small visual imperfections while dodging all the bullets that are flying around you.

Special Edition versions of the game on Xbox 360 and PS3 come bundled with a copy of the Hard Boiled movie in the US, but no such edition is available on the PC - probably due to licensing issues.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Core Duo processor or equivalent	Not specified
Memory	2048 MB
Graphics Card	DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3.0 compatible
Graphics Card Example	NVIDIA GeForce 7800 or above / ATI x1300 or above
Free Disk Space	15 GB
Net Link	not specified

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 530	AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ / Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Memory	1536 MB	2048 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB	ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB / NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
Free Disk Space	15 GB	15 GB
Net Link	Broadband for multiplayer	Broadband for multiplayer

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	85	Non-stop, no holds barred destruction with much better playability using a mouse and a keyboard than on the Xbox 360. Simple and heavily scripted, but it doesn't really get in the way.
Graphics	89	Textures look uneven at high resolutions, but realistically most will be stuck at playing at 720p or below anyway. Lighting is a bit uneven, but the animation and overall style of the visuals is very good.
Audio	80	The audio works and supports the action well, but fails to really stand out.
Technology	75	Remarkably high requirements with almost zero options to scale the visuals. In a way the game doesn't even try to apologize the target platform (Xbox 360), and simply says that "if you got the hardware, here you go" with a solid but uncompromising port.