Stranglehold

Stranglehold attempts to translate the "gun ballet" aesthetic popularized by director John Woo in films such as Hard Boiled and The Killer into an interactive media format. Although the game has drawn comparisons to Max Payne, which was influenced by Woo's films, a more accurate account of both games' creative provenances traces them to Woo's lengthy shootouts.

Stranglehold is a third-person shooter game. Players control Tequila as he fights various gangsters throughout Hong Kong and Chicago. Players can traverse each level by walking, diving, and taking cover behind walls. Weapons are available such as pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and grenades.

Three triad groups fight for territory in Hong Kong: Dragon Claw, the Imperial 9s (I9s) based in Tai O, and Golden Kane. After a police officer goes missing, the Hong Kong Police Force receives a ransom call. Disobeying orders from police chief Lee, inspector Tequila Yuen heads to a Kowloon market alone to save the officer, but finds evidence that the officer is dead. Tequila's search leads him to a teahouse, where he unintentionally interrupts a business deal between Golden Kane and I9 members. Following a tip that the I9s killed the officer and that the gang is working under Dragon Claw, Tequila heads to Tai O to investigate further.

Tequila tracks down Dragon Claw leader Jimmy Wong, with whom he has a complicated history; he previously dated Jimmy's daughter Billie, and the two have a daughter together named Teko. At Jimmy's side are his henchmen Dapang and Jerry, the latter being an undercover officer who was once Tequila's police partner. Jimmy reveals that the murdered policeman's death is part of a larger plot by Golden Kane to gain more control of Hong Kong, and that the Golden Kane pinned his death on the I9s to divert police attention. They also partnered with the Zakarovs, a Chicago-based Ukrainian mafia family, to kidnap and hold Billie and Teko ransom in exchange for part of Jimmy's territory. When Golden Kane members attack Dragon Claw's Tai O base, Tequila promises Jimmy that he will find his family and helps Jimmy escape.

Stranglehold was developed by Midway Games and John Woo's Tiger Hill Entertainment. Following the release of 2004's Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, Midway was looking to make a new game based on an existing brand license. Mike Bilder, the studio head, explained that they were trying to establish a competitive advantage by establishing new intellectual properties and said Midway was "trying not to just rest on laurels and become a sequel house". Due to a Midway employee's connections, the company was able to get in touch with John Woo about a possible video game collaboration.

Woo himself had co-founded Tiger Hill Entertainment in May 2003, and through his collaboration with Midway, Stranglehold was to be his studio's first video game title. It was also intended to be Midway's first step into developing for the seventh generation of video game consoles; the company wanted to release the game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. After Woo verbally agreed to a deal, Midway began working on the game in the summer of 2004, and the project was first announced in May 2005.

The game received "generally favorable reviews" on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN praised the cinematic flair and melodrama in the storyline true to the style of John Woo, enjoyable battles, and slick presentation. However, they said that the visuals were lacking, the game was too short, and inauthentic because the characters do not speak Cantonese. GameSpot said that although the game is solid in every department, it is repetitive, due to a short seven-hour single-player game and weak multiplayer.

Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that the Xbox 360 version was "a game whose movie influences are more than skin deep." In Japan, where the Xbox 360 version was ported and published by Success on May 22, 2008, followed by the PlayStation 3 version on September 11, 2008, Famitsu gave the former console version a score of 29 out of 40.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lion Rock Entertainment would be making the sequel to John Woo's Hard Boiled. The film would be based on the plot of Stranglehold. In an interview with Twitchfilm Terence Chang announced that the film would be a prequel to Hard Boiled with a much younger Tequila. S.

with a $20 million budget. Since the initial announcement of a big-screen version of Stranglehold, there has been no further news on its production. It is presumed that the project was a victim of Midway Games' bankruptcy.