In development since 2005, John Woo Presents Stranglehold made a huge lasting impression when it was first announced well over a year ago. The thought of playing a third person action game staring Chow Yun Fat being overseen by John Woo was mouthwatering to say the least; add the fact that Stranglehold is a videogame sequel to 1993's Hard Boiled, with Fat reprising his role as Inspector Tequila, and you've got a game that has some huge expectation to live up to.

The goal of Stranglehold is simple: bring Woo's classic gunplay as seen throughout his film library to the videogame market and make it just as exciting and intense. Let the player slow down time and dive over objects, slide down railings, swing on chandeliers, have tense standoffs against dozens of enemies and even completely destroy their surroundings. Basically, make one of the most fun and exciting shooters in a long while. For the most part, it's a case of mission accomplished.

The storyline is simple but get surprisingly deep as you go along. In latter-day Hong Kong, a lone policeman has gone missing and the force is stumped until they received a ransom call, asking for a single officer to come alone. What they didn't bank on was Tequila showing up and completely obliterating everything in his path! Though at first the storyline just sets the backdrop for your massive killing spree, before long you'll be watching rather well done cut scenes detailing past events and setting the tone for the next stage, which moves from areas like Kowloon to a Chicago Museum.

Stranglehold falls back on some common action game practices whilst incorporating next-generation technology and stunning graphics to help balance it out. Enemies constantly spawn behind doors and come barreling out over and over for extended periods of time and your weapons even simply swap in your hand without any sort of animation showing Tequila switching them - but the game is aware of this. It isn't trying to be a realistic shooter; it wants you to run in with guns blazing and shoot everything with as much style as possible, and to love every moment of it!

The most prominent feature of Stranglehold is what's called 'Tequila Time'. Whenever you dive, glide down a railing, slide over a counter, cart, or perform any other acrobatic feat while aiming at an enemy, the game slows down (of course, you can activate this manually as well). Tequila Time honestly isn't anything special or new; we've been seeing it for years now in many third person action games of this sort, most notably titles like Max Payne and The Matrix. However, the stunts you can pull off look so stellar that it really doesn't even matter if it's an original idea or not- it's just fun to slide down a railing, jump off to the side, then vault yourself off a wall, all while shooting at enemies with a meaty shotgun in slow motion. Not only that, but you can learn to string certain tricks together, such as sliding over a table, diving over another and landing on a rolling cart; from here you can shoot enemies as you roll through the area, before rolling off and into cover. If you simply dive onto the ground then holding the dive button after performing the stunt keeps Tequila prone so you can roll around and continue shooting enemies from a concealed position.

Pulling off tricks and stunts like this in rapid succession, whilst killing enemies, raises your style meter on the left side of the screen. For every kill you get a certain amount of points, with more stylish kills earning bigger numbers. As you continue the assault, this builds up and up in a large combo, earning you more points that not only can be cashed in for fun extras later in the game, but also cashes in towards Tequila Bomb points. Tequila Bombs refer to four different moves that unleash hell on your enemies, or benefit you through a health boost. They can be activated by tapping the D-pad in a specific direction, left being the first and least effective (a small amount of health) and down being the highest and most brutal (a spinning move that kills every foe on the screen with stylish cinematics, complete with Woo's trademark doves). There is a Precision Aim attack which allows you to zoom in and fire a single bullet with extreme precision for a one hit kill (usually) and a Barrage move that simply fully loads your guns and gives you invincibility for a limited time.

Earning style points is essential, as you'll really need these attacks in the later part of the game, although that isn't the only way to earn them. Throughout the game you'll find some hidden and some not-so-hidden paper crane objects that can be picked up for a Tequila Bomb boost. They're scattered around everywhere and offer a way to increase your meter if you're in a bit of a rut and aren't earning enough style points to otherwise enable the moves. If you're playing on Easy this shouldn't a problem at all, but on the harder difficulties it can be tough to keep your meter up, as you'll be using the health boost quite a bit. You see, for some odd reason, you and enemies can take a plethora of bullets to the chest without dying, but a single punch is enough to kill nearly every enemy and nearly kill you as well. Battling your way through an epic gunfight only to die from a random punch from behind is incredibly frustrating and silly; but there are ways around this. Many times the AI can be tricked and cheaply killed, be it hiding in a specific spot so that the foes get stuck on objects and can just be pelted, or literally standing above or below their range of fire to the point where they don't even bother attacking or moving. The final boss of the game can actually be killed this way!

Another big problem I found with the game is the level design. While it varies incredibly well, moving from the neon-lit streets of Kowloon to a beautiful boat dock, complete with crumbling shacks on giant totems above the ocean, to a Chicago museum and even atop a crumbling sewer in the pouring rain, it doesn't take advantage of all of your abilities along the way. Where some levels offer great interactive items to shoot to take out enemies, others go for lengthy periods without any whatsoever, and while all the stunts are great fun to perform, there's only so many times you can swing on a chandelier before it loses its appeal. It feels like there should just be more to do other than dive, slide and swing. With that said, combining these moves and pulling off stylish kills on the fly does look - and feel - great; it's just a shame that the level design couldn't have taken more advantage of these moves to do so much more. Finally, at certain times the game swaps to standoff mode, where Tequila has to take on numerous enemies all with their sights trained on him, using with nothing more than two pistols. From a stationary position you can lean left or right to dodge bullets while precisely aiming at the enemies to take them down quickly. This helps keep the gameplay fresh, as you'll almost always find yourself looking forward to these moments and they usually happen at just the right time.

The seven levels won't take too long to play through, depending on your difficulty setting. However, one admirable feature of the game is the ability to go back and replay specific chapters of the game, which comes in handy for achievement hunting. Some sections are better for earning specific awards, such as fifty kills while on a rolling cart, but being able to replay sections of the game allows you to play the majority of the title on hard, but skip certain difficult parts so you can come back later and finish them off on the hard setting when you're better focused. Basically, you don't have to replay the entire game on hard if you already passed a majority of it on hard anyway - you just have to go back and finish the section you haven't done. You hear that, Call of Duty? Gears of War nailed this perfectly and it's nice to see other games following suit.

Graphically, the game matches up to the best the 360 has to offer - for the most part. Particularly in the rainy settings, the details in the environment as well as the water effects on your character as you dive through the air in slow motion are nothing short of stunning. The physics engine allows dozens of items to break apart and react to every bullet in real time, making for some truly epic feeling shootouts that really does Woo's flair for stylish action justice. When activating a Tequila Bomb, the game switches to dynamic camera angles, adding cinematic panache, before jumping back into gameplay without missing a beat; enemies even react differently based on where you shoot them and will crawl around on the ground if you took out their legs but failed to finish them off. Furthermore, the game uses innovative technology to help give each enemy a random appearance, effectively removing the feeling of fighting of numerous clones, seeing as you'll be shooting hundreds of them in a very short space of time.

The audio side of Stranglehold is also beautifully crafted. Chow Yun Fat doesn't speak often and though his lines aren't delivered with a whole lot of emotion, they get the message across. However, the various guns, bullets and destruction could not sound any better. Seeing everything slow down is complimented by the sounds not only slowing down but increasing in overall "oomph". Taking that last resort dive off the edge of a rail as you look back in slow motion and let off one final shotgun round at an enemy could not look or sound any better. When it comes to the music, Stranglehold's soundtrack merges hard hitting orchestral pieces with some nice Asian-influenced string sections, but due to the constant frenetic action, the only time you're likely to really notice it is the clever music notes that hit during certain gameplay moments to signify that you've either earned a new Tequila Bomb or cleared every enemy from the screen!

Stranglehold also includes a multiplayer deathmatch mode to be played online with up to five other players, but changes the way things work a little bit. As you play, your Tequila Time meter starts at nil and begins to increase until it's full. At anytime a player can activate their Tequila Time and slow the game down for everyone, keeping everybody on an equal level but making it a bit easier to aim. For every hit that connects you earn Tequila Bomb points that build up (you can also collect cranes to increase this) until you can unleash devastation on your fellow players. The games seem to quickly turn into seeing who can gather the most cranes the quickest to keep their meter constantly increased, thus unleashing near impossible to withstand attacks. It might not be the most balanced multiplayer mode out there, but it is good for a laugh and something a bit different. Don't expect any real lasting appeal out of it though!

John Woo Presents Stranglehold may not exactly be what players were expecting, but it comes packed with a truly next generation look and presentation that makes it difficult to not enjoy, even if it is only for brief periods. It could do with more variety, but it certainly accomplishes the goal of throwing the player into massive, hectic gunfights that last for minutes at a time, and when the level design permits absolute destruction and environmental hazards, the fun factor really goes through the rood. The short nature of the gameplay and indeed the limited number of levels, as well as a multiplayer lacking in depth, make Stranglehold a game that, like many of Woo's films, is easy to let go of - so you might want to give this one a week rental instead of investing big bucks into it. But you should definitely check it out, because until the novelty wears off, there are few games packed with as much insane, high-octane fun as Stranglehold!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).