I have only thrown a controller out of rage a few times in my life. I broke a window with an NES gamepad while playing Jaws. My brother may have been whacked in the head with a controller a few times as well, but those memories and welts have faded with time. It takes a special game to drive me to that point of frustration only to have me chasing the controller down to try again. Stranglehold does this by being more than the sum of its parts; its problems (and they are big ones) are outweighed by its style.

Stranglehold is the sequel to the John Woo movie Hard Boiled. It is a movie that I have unfortunately never seen, but the game has given me a great desire to go out and find anything that John Woo has ever touched and watch it several times. The game has more style in one level than most other shooters have in a whole game. The cut scenes in particular are very well done. They’re a perfect mix of intense violence and snappy one-liners. One in particular, in which Tequila must protect a jazz combo from being blown to pieces, had me replay the level just to see the opening cinematic again. It was that good.

The way Stranglehold takes itself seriously is very refreshing. Perhaps this is due to the influence of John Woo, but it would be nice if every game was as consistent in its own world as this one. The storytelling is never overbearing, but I still understood why Tequila was so pissed off. You would be, too, if a crime lord sent your lover and unborn child half a world away for 18 years. This constant, simmering rage made every kill, boss or grunt, all the more satisfying. Inspector Tequila is such a badass that he even saves the game from its own efforts to be unplayable while saving the lives of everyone else.

There is a common malady among almost all third person shooters. No developer has ever beaten it completely, and if Stranglehold were a lesser game in any area, it would have been taken down as well. I am speaking of the camera and the way it interacts with the environment. The camera in Stranglehold is always stuck between showing you what looks good and showing you what is useful. They are almost never the same thing. Quite often your field of view is limited to the point where it is difficult to see where to go next, much less who to shoot and who is shooting you. Add to that convoluted level layouts, and you get the frustration that sent my controller flailing.

There is a lot of stuff in the levels of Stranglehold. They are, to be blunt, cluttered with items placed there just because they look cool being blown up (watermelons!). Blowing stuff up is almost as cool as shooting some sap in the neck in slow motion, but when it in gets in the way of movement and vision, they become a serious problem. Inspector Tequila will get stuck on an end table, unexpectedly slide across a bar and down the stairs, or at the worst have his view so obscured by all the objects in the environment flying around that it is no longer possible to see what is going on. Once again, being killed by enemies that you cannot see, but that can still draw a bead on you, is no fun at all. But at least it looks good moving at half-speed.

Bullet time has been done before. It hasn’t really changed a great deal since Max Payne, but Stranglehold polishes the old effect up by making you work a little harder to use it. You can engage ‘Tequila Time’ by just hitting a button, but that drains it very quickly, and John Woo would not approve. It is much more fun to have it kick in automatically while diving, sliding down a hand rail, rolling on a cart or peeking out from behind cover. In its own way, it makes more sense than just hitting a button and slowing down time. Inspector Tequila is just that cool. The ‘Tequila Bombs’ are equally satisfying. Sniping enemies in the face at long distance with a pistol never gets old.

Stranglehold is proof that a game need not be groundbreaking to be fun. There is nothing here that I have not seen before. A lot of what’s here has been done better in different games, but never all at once as it is here. As a total package, it is entertaining for almost every moment of gameplay; the exceptions being retrieving objects thrown about the room and explaining the screams of rage to your neighbors and/or significant others. If they are film buffs, tell them it’s John Woo’s fault. They will understand.