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Stranglehold

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
John Woo Presents Stranglehold
John Woo Presents Stranglehold cover
Developers
Midway Chicago
Publishers
Retail Midway Games
Digital Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Engines
Unreal Engine 3
Release dates
Windows September 18, 2007
Reception
Metacritic 77
IGDB 80
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres TPS
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary
Stranglehold on HowLongToBeat
Stranglehold on IGDB
Stranglehold on MobyGames
Stranglehold on Wikipedia

Stranglehold is a singleplayer third-person TPS game.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM 7 DRM disc check.
Polish and Hungarian copies uses SafeDisc v4.85 DRM[Note 1].
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
The Map Pack DLC and Collector's Edition were not released for PC.

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch v1.1 updates the game to the latest version.

Skip intro videos

Delete or rename files[3]
  1. Navigate to <path-to-game>\StrangleholdGame\Movies
  2. Delete or rename the following files:
intro_Legal_Euro.bik
intro_Legal_US.bik
intro_Logo_Midway_HD.bik
intro_Logo_Shared.bik
intro_Logo_TigerHill_HD.bik
intro_Logo_Unreal.bik
intro_c0010_bink.bik
A brief Midway video is still present.
intro_c0010_bink.bik may contain FMV footage not seen in the game.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Stranglehold\

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.

Video

Video options.
Video options.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
See Widescreen resolution. Interface elements are skewed and cinematics are pillarboxed.[4]
4K Ultra HD
See Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
See Widescreen resolution.
Windowed
Use the -windowed command line argument[5]
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
SGSSAA or OGSSAA bits = 0x000200C1
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Widescreen resolution

Use the HOR+ FOV fix to unlock all resolutions and adjust FOV (disable GoG Galaxy overlay first)[6]
Set custom resolution and FOV (v1.0)[7][8]
  1. Add the -ResX=X -ResY=Y command line arguments.
  2. Change X and Y after = to the desired resolution width and height respectively.
  3. Use Widescreen Fixer or Stranglehold FOV Hack to fix the FOV in game version 1.0.

Input

Keyboard settings.
Keyboard settings.
Input settings, only accessible during gameplay.
Input settings, only accessible during gameplay.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Not accessible from the main menu.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Inversion options only available once campaign is loaded.
Controller
Controller support
Y-axis mouse sensitivity is significantly lower than x-axis, and may need to be adjusted to compensate.[9][10]

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Retail only. link #1 or link #2
French
German
Hungarian
Local retail only, available to download.
Italian
Polish
Voice-over translation.
Russian
Spanish

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play
Online servers have been shut down.

VR support

3D modes State Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision
See Helix Mod: Stranglehold.
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, see important hints in the vorpx forum profile introduction.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) XP SP2, Vista
Processor (CPU) Dual Core
System memory (RAM) 2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 15 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 7800
ATI Radeon X1300
DirectX 9.0c compatible


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]

References

  1. Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
  2. Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
  3. Verified by User:Mars icecream on 2019-11
    Verified for the GOG version (1.1, 31068)
  4. Stranglehold - PC GOG release - Gameplay 3440x1440 with FOV mod - last accessed on 2019-11-29
  5. Stranglehold fix.. - last accessed on May 2023
  6. Verified by User:Keith on 2019-11-29
  7. Stranglehold v1.0 | WSGF
  8. Stranglehold v1.1 | WSGF
  9. PC port quality of John Woo's "Stranglehold" - last accessed on 2019-11-29
    "Vertical sensitivity is significantly lower."
  10. Verified by User:Andytizer on 2019-11-29
    Raising y-axis mouse sensitivity to much higher than x-axis gave an adequate playing experience.