john woo presents stranglehold

Unlockable Hard Boiled Difficulty

Unlock Hard Boiled difficulty by clearing the game on any difficulty.

Conserve Your Fuel

When using the Barrage special ability in single player, your character is both invulnerable and has infinite ammo; if you need to cut the ability short to conserve the Tequila Bomb meter, press the D-pad RIGHT again to turn off Barrage mode. The unused Tequila Bomb energy may be conserved for later use.

Hint easy Stay Dry Achievement

Although you can simply run across the crumbling areas of Chapter 6 Slums of Kowloon for the achievement, you can also load the checkpoint “Condemned” in chapter select and shoot-dodge to the corner where the Heavy Machine Gun is and grab the achievement.

Hint Easy Untouchable Achievement

The first shoot-out event in Chapter 1: Hong Kong Marketplace gives you a cinematic Tequila Time; use that training/tutorial advantage to down all three enemies without being hit for the achievement.

Hint – Broken Achievments

I was playing this game on Hard and I got all the way to the second half of the final boss fight before I finally gave up and lowered the difficulty to Normal.

I got the achievement for “Normal Completion” which surprised me a little because I only beat the last part of the game on Normal.

The next time I clicked “continue” with the intent to beat the final battle on “Hard”, and it just went to the final cut-scene and I got the achievement for “Hard Completion”!

I tried it on “Casual” and got another achievement. It seems the only difficulty this wouldn’t work on was “Hard Boiled”, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m not sure if this works if you beat the majority of the game on lower difficulty levels, but I just wanted to share this with the world. 

If you load that last checkpoint via Continue game, you can get the ‘Old School’ achievement as well!

Hint – 50 Point Style Combo Achievement

On the first level you can get it pretty easily by stringing together all you kills in the second area you go into. Slide down the long banister and shoot the signs off to kill everyone below, then dive onto the roll cart at the bottom and roll across the market square and towards the other set of stairs leading back up.

Kill the 3 guys that come out of the door to the left of the stairs to spawn the ones who comes out from on the stairs, then just run up the banister (or just run up the stairs like normal) shooting all the signs and vents above them until you get to the top.

It might take a few goes to string it all together but if you do it right you can get a combo of over 50+ style points no problem (my top record on that area so far is 79).

Easter Egg: Movie Theater Trailers

In the first chapter (Hong Kong Marketplace), head to the Ambushed section. After you kill everyone in the courtyard and move along the alleys, you will be forced inside a building (there’s no where else to go). As soon as you enter, there should be a door you can break. Break it and go along the corridor until you reach a movie theater. On the movie screen are trailers for Wheelman and Blacksite.