For years now fans of action games have often wondered what the end result would be if renowned action film director John Woo decided to dabble in the digital realm. Woo's unique style of action cinema has been used as inspiration in games such as the Max Payne series and many others, but Stranglehold is the first to be officially involved with the director himself. While Stranglehold does have some flaws they do little to tarnish an overall great game fitting of the big names behind it.

The story is a continuation of the storyline of the movie Hard-Boiled, the 1992 film starring Chow Yun-Fat as the legendary Inspector Tequila. In Stranglehold a cop has been found murdered with a bullet through his badge, and what starts off for Tequila as a simple investigation spirals into a multi-faceted conflict where the enemy has a powerful bargaining chip; his wife and daughter. Though familiarity of the movie will fill in a few small gaps in the characters ultimately the plot is sufficiently both detached and fleshed out enough that players that haven't seen the movie are brought up to speed quickly.

The easiest comparison one can make about the gameplay is to Max Payne, but while the latter really only let the player dive around, the gameplay in Stranglehold is much more flexible. Throughout the game you’ll pull off a variety of stylish and acrobatic moves to take down enemies including dives, running up and sliding down banisters, swinging from chandeliers, springing off of walls, and diving onto rolling carts. While diving can be done anywhere, and wall springs can be done on nearly any vertical surface, to initiate the other moves you simply press the dive button when the object they want to interact with is illuminated with a soft white glow.

You also have control over putting the game into slow motion for a limited time represented by a meter beneath the health bar. The slow-motion gameplay can either be manually toggled by using the right bumper or is automatically engaged while performing an acrobatic move and the player has the reticule over an enemy. This system works really well in execution as you can essentially dive from cover, shoot at an enemy, and return to cover and the only time the slow-motion kicks on and begins to deplete the meter is the length of time that the reticle is over a live enemy.

The fact that using an acrobatic move to kill an enemy is cool isn't the only reason to use them. When an enemy is killed the game rates the kill between one and five stars and adds it to a running star count on the left side of the screen. While simply gunning someone down may only net the player a single star, offing them in a stylish manner like diving sideways through the air and shooting them once in the head will net the player more stars for the kill. You can chain together stylish kills to keep building the star count, and once the action breaks for a few seconds the star count is drained down into the meter in the bottom left of the screen that controls the Tequila Bombs.

Tequila Bombs are used to either maintain your ability to fight or decimate everything around you. At the most basic level you can use a chunk or whatever is left of their power to restore health when a medkit just can't be found nearby. The next level of the Tequila Bomb meter is the Precision Aim move in which the game world slows down and the player controls an aiming reticule. When the reticule is put over an enemy the view zooms in to their position, and when the trigger is pulled the camera follows the bullet in as it strikes the target.

The third Tequila Bomb power is the Barrage mode in which Tequila reloads his weapon and then lets loose with temporary invulnerability, infinite ammo, and enhanced damage. The fourth and final Tequila Bomb power is the Spin Attack, which functions as Stranglehold's unique take on the room-clearing super bombs from gaming past. When you initiates a Spin Attack the camera alternates between showing Tequila spinning and firing whatever weapon he has equipped in every direction (complete with Woo's trademark doves flying away) as well as showing a short view of every nearby enemy dying and their immediate surroundings getting sprayed with bullets.