Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

:THIS REVIEW IS EDITED:

GOOD: the john woo style works extremely well in game form- crazy gun fights with acrobatic moves!- tequila bomb gauge makes the game less derivative- most destructible environments ever!

BAD: bad graphics- its a bit short- the gunfights are the only thing in the game

the first thing you should no about stranglehold is that its not very original.
it takes max paynes bullet time and dead to rights one man against literally thousands of people gameplay styles but adding a whole bunch of new moves to the mix and with its own flavour, stranglehold is about the most insane game you could ever play which is a very good thing.
now why do we play games? to escape our lives and do absolutely imposibble things. stranglehold offers this.
well, its a game based on a john woo movie, so well duhh its gonna have slow motion in it, and you cant really do a slow motion shooting game without taking elements from max payne, so that doesnt even matter.
stranglehold is pretty repetitive. move from one level to the other literally destroying the room and demolishing every living thing in sight. its just so much fun that it does not get old quickly and its a good thing its pretty short, otherwise stranglehold would out stay its welcome and people would just stop playing it and say "im not doing this again."
actually one of the more memorable moments in the game is in the resturant and youll move from massive room to massive room just killing everything until you reach an above average boss fight.
now, stranglehold hasnt completely copied other games methods.
it has a thing called the "tequila bomb gauge" which holds a variety of killer moves and power ups. to activate moves, you just have to kill people, simple.
thes are operated with the directional buttons, so theres only four, healing yourself, precision aim (buy this game just to hit someones private area with precison aim trust me), barrage (turing invincible and having unlimited ammo) and umm... i forgot what its called but you spin in a circle and take down everyone in the room.
this whole thing adds originality to the otherwise derivative game.
plus, stranglehold makes great use of the environment. with moves like lying on a cart and rolling along, swinging on chandeliers, diving, and bouncing off walls, all of these moves in slo motion and all of them done while shooting people. tell me, how can you go wrong?!?!?
well now that i have the main part, the gameplay, out of the way i can focus on other aspects of the game.
the story gets pretty confusing, for me anyway and theres just so many gangs you lose track of them, but its easy to grasp the basic concept of it so youll roughly enjoy it just to make you feel stronger about the characters.
the graphics are... pretty bad theyre kind of like wet so yeah theyre nothing pretty to look at BUT i forgot to mention the environments fall apart terrificly!!
by the time the level is finished the entire area will be demolished its insane!!!
well i think thats all i have to say about stranglehold, this review has been majorly edited when i first wrote it it was a couple sentences long and i had just joined gamespot and didnt know how to write a proper review so yeah hope you enjoyed!