pretty much what I expected; not great, but not bad
Essentially throw in Chow yun-fat, John Woo, a bunch of guns and pigeons, and you have Stranglehold. The storyline is typical for a movie of its genre, but there are times when it really does feel like you're playing through a John Woo flick.
The most impressive part of the game is its slick presentation, ranging from cool menus to a nice overall look. The graphics were pretty solid and the game was just eye-candy in general. For me, it was one of the factors that stood out most.
Another cool feature was the gun-play. This game really does have some neat gun/special mode functions. All of which are made to contribute to the John-woo-ness of the game (aka over-the-top flashy kills).
There are also many moments where you can take advantage of the environments and make it feel like you're rambo-ing through countless numbers of enemies. This is probably the game's biggest strength.
With all this said, however, Stranglehold is far from a perfect game. For one thing, sometimes the storyline goes John-Woo/pigeon overboard. The story and characters are, in a nutshell, rather shallow. There are -so- many cheap plot-devices in use that I lost count. Overall, it's just very cheesy, and I found myself rather unmoved during its most 'emotional' moments. In addition, the story really does feel like it's just there for being 'there'. And that's never really a good thing.
In addition, the game is short. Like...very short. In a way, however, it's a good thing because the gun-play would've started to get stale. Honestly, if the game were to continue for another 2 hours or so, I think that would've done it for me. In other words, the gameplay just has a whole 'been there, done that' feel to it. The special-modes seemed like they were only going to remain novel for not much longer.
Still, overall, the game I feel does what it set out to do: make you feel like Rambo-yun-fat in a HK-cop flick. All the stereotypes are there, for better or worse, but honestly, this game is not bad at all. It really had its moments, and shone brightest during its testosterone-pumped action events. Though the story and characters were somewhat lame and Tequilla's voice just begged for English subtitles, the John-Woo-ish visuals/gun-play kept the game enjoyable as a whole. The presentation in general was just really neat-o. And it wasn't like I was expecting anything deeper to begin with. So really, I'd say this is a great game to rent or play at a friend's house. It could amount to quite a few hours of fun.