When Stranglehold was announced for the Xbox360, PS3 and PC, it quickly attracted the attention of a wider audience than most games. It’s the first game to be produced by a movie director, and not just any old B-movie director, but John Woo.

Stranglehold heralds a new opening in the video game industry; we don’t just mean cutscenes either. When a director with as good a reputation as John Woo actively participates in the development of a game, we can rightfully think that it’ll raise the bar when it comes to the overall experience.

Unfortunately, video games and movies don’t usually go hand in hand. This is true from both directions; bad adaptations of a games end up in cinema just as movies translate poorly into games. It is from this perspective that we hope to see Stranglehold buck the trend. After all, it’s obvious that there could be a stronger relationship between cinema and game development.

We were invited to exclusively test a few levels of this game; of course we didn’t wait to be asked twice. With the game barely begun, the emphasis is put on John Woo’s participation. Here we find his entire Hong-Kong underworld recreated and once again staring his favourite actor: Chow Yun-Fat. The actor has lent his likeness, his voice and even done motion capture so that players can really take on the role of the original Hong Kong supercop, Tequila.

The first element to get excited about is that the game is a direct sequel to the movie “Hard Boiled”. So it is not just some sombre adaptation that’s appeared out of nowhere. A woman, a girl, a kidnapping by the bosses of the triads,these are things that would make anyone angry, but Tequila isn’t just anyone.

He has nothing to lose and, perhaps more importantly, he has an arsenal worthy of a small uprising at his disposal. There’s an air of comfortable familiarity here for anyone who’s seen Hard Boiled. Anyone who knows the original movie knows that not much else is needed to make the action work.

It’s immediately clear that the master himself has taken part in the production; the camera angles, the storyboards, the movements… it’s an unmistakable style. Here we find the ambiance that originally made Woo’s reputation. The action takes place, once again, in Hong-Kong.