Next comes an unexpectedly beautiful level, thanks in no small part to the fact that it’s raining. The progression is largely similar to previous levels: move forward, kill anything that moves, move forward again and once more kill everything that moves and so on and so forth until the end of the level.

The real points of interest at this stage are the special abilities players should have unlocked by now. As we mentioned above, the more combos you do, the more your special action gauge fills up. Four skills are available via the d-pad: the first is a healing ability and refills your life gauge. The second is a sniper mode that slows down time and kills the enemy in one hit. The third is a brute force mode, also in slow motion, that lets you you shoot your enemies without stopping, a real pleasure with the shotgun. Finally, the fourth (which we didn’t get to see) is automatic. As soon as it’s triggered the game handles itself; there are some extravagant camera effects, doves fly by and the room is cleared of enemies.

We also got a chance to play the game in stand off mode. Here you face five or six opponents, the game drops into bullet time. While you’re standing still you’ve got to shoot your opponents , avoiding their bullets all along. It is a sort of a Eastern take on the classic Western duel.

Final Thoughts

Stranglehold is undoubtedly an attractive game. John Woo’s Hong Kong is well presented throughout. The two short hours we spent as inspector Tequila have us hooked. It looks good, it’s fluid and more importantly it’s very lively.

All of the elements of a good shooting game are there for the taking . The only downfalls are those damned coke refineries, which sadly cut down on the action, and a couple of average animations that really take the feeling down a notch.

All that’s left now is to wait until September 7th to see how Stranglehold looks on release.