STRANGLEHOLD BULLET THE BLUE SKY MASHUP LICENSE

These special abilities are all useful, though some more so than others. Pulling off stylish moves throughout the game fills up a meter that lets you trigger one of four different 'Tequila bombs.' These are special abilities that do everything from recharging your health, to letting you spin around like a gun-toting whirling dervish, killing all the enemies that surround you, all while doves go fluttering off into the sky (what would a Woo production be without doves?). Fortunately, about halfway through the game, the developers apparently decided to just give up on these distractions and focus almost exclusively on the shooting. These are arguably the game's weakest links, in that they're often difficult to discern and sometimes take more shots than they ought to actually work. There are even occasional environmental puzzles that require wooden poles or planks to be shot out to create new pathways for Tequila to traverse.

Exploding barrels are all over the place, and you can imagine the havoc they wreak when shot. If an enemy is standing underneath a neon sign, shoot it and watch the sucker get crushed. Pieces of the environment can also be shot or otherwise destroyed for both fun and efficiency. See a little wheel cart sitting around? You can jump onto it and roll around the area, blasting everyone silly. If there's a rail nearby, you can run up or slide down it. If you run up to a wall, you can dash up it and dive even further than usual. If you run up to a table, you can choose to slide right over it, or kick it over and use it as a temporary cover point. Tequila can interact with practically every piece of scenery in a level. That's not the only ability he's got, either. There is also a specific button that puts you into bullet-time completely separate from the shoot dodging, though it's rare when you ever need to use it.

The one trick is that you won't ever go into bullet-time automatically as a result of diving around, unless you specifically have an enemy in your targeting reticle sights. Though the game refers to it as 'Tequila Time,' this is really just the bullet-time mechanic from Max Payne given a fancy makeover. Fortunately, they don't have the ability to jump and dive around in bullet time like our man Tequila. Enemies come flying out of every nook and cranny of each stage, and always with guns blazing. This game's body count is pretty staggering for a game that runs only about six or seven hours. You will shoot a lot of people in Stranglehold. Nevertheless, the plot serves as an OK-enough motivation to get Tequila back in action and shooting people in the face-and really, that's pretty much all you need. It lacks the gritty feel of the original flick, and a lot of the film's cool factor to boot. It's a decent crime tale that's certainly better than much of John Woo's American work (though exactly how involved Woo was in this game's production is debatable), but there is still something about the whole story that feels very Hollywood. Somewhere in there, Tequila's former girlfriend and daughter both end up being held hostage by one of the gangs. What follows is a sometimes confusing and ham-fisted story of gangs double- and triple-crossing one another. He's still a rogue cop on the Hong Kong police force, and when a member of the force turns up dead, evidently offed by one of HK's major gangs, Tequila steps up to deal with the situation. Stranglehold takes place many years after Hard Boiled, though Yun-Fat's Inspector Tequila doesn't seem to have lost a step.

STRANGLEHOLD BULLET THE BLUE SKY MASHUP LICENSE

It seems sort of criminal that Midway didn't license that Champs song to play every time you go into 'Tequila Time'. It's an interesting piece of work that's more fun than it isn't, and fans of Hard Boiled ought to especially enjoy watching Chow Yun-Fat reprise his role as Inspector Tequila. Stranglehold effectively takes the elements that made Max Payne fun and uses them to its own advantage, while sprinkling in a number of original touches and gimmicks that give the game its own Hong Kong cinema flavor. Regardless, if you're going to make a game based on a badass cop dodging, diving, and shooting all over the place in slow-motion, there are certainly worse places to look for inspiration. Midway and John Woo's video game sequel to the director's classic Hong Kong action flick Hard Boiled borrows very liberally from the mechanics of Remedy's slow-motion, heavy-action franchise, which is a little ironic and mind-bending because Max Payne was itself a tribute to John Woo's brand of cinematic action.

That's because, in a sort of round about way, it is. It would be very easy for the average person to take one look at Stranglehold and write it off as a Max Payne rip-off.

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