A must-play for John Woo or Chow Yun Fat fans.
The gameplay in Stranglehold is, to be perfectly honest, nothing all that new. If you have ever played the Max Payne series, this has much the same feel, just without all the depression. The environments are well detailed, though the graphics aren't really pushing the limits of the system. However, somewhat lacking environments are a small price to pay for the fact that ANYTHING will be damaged by your shots. Is there a guy shooting at you? Drop a neon sign on him. Someone standing on the roof of a shack? Bring it down. In the end of each mission, you are rated based on how many $ worth of damage you did to the environment, with an achievement being available for amounts over $75,000,000.
The biggest place the graphics shine is in the character models. They all animate almost perfectly and look absolutely fantastic, particularly Chow Yun Fat.
The sound is also good, with powerful weapon effects and a decent soundtrack. The voice-acting, though, is quite possibly the best part of the game and some of the best I've ever heard. Chow Yun Fat resumes his role as Inspector Tequila, though in English rather than Cantonese this time. The rest of the cast as well is excellent in their various cliched gangster movie roles; the ever-angry police chief, the undercover mole, the old mob boss fighting a young upstart - it's all there.
Unfortunately, this is a game that even I, a severely average gamer, can beat in around 6 hours. Since it is so short, though, you don't mind playing it a second or third time, especially since some of the achievements are so fun to get, i.e., 50 kills while hanging from a chandelier.
In summary, Stranglehold is a fantastic, arcadey shooter with good graphics and an amazing vocal cast, but ends up being hurt a little by it's length, or lack thereof. However, any fan of John Woo or Chow Yun Fat is obliged to, at the very least, rent it.