Game title: John Woo Presents Stranglehold

Platform: Xbox 360

Studio: Tiger Hill Entertainment, Midway

Rating: M for Mature

Reviewer's score: 7 out of 10

THE REVIEW

GAMEPLAY: Director John Woo is known for his signature style of choreographed "beautiful" violence in films such as "Face Off." With the poor history of film-related console games, Woo developing a game comes with real gaming trepidation.

But gamers can relax. "John Woo Presents Stranglehold" is a definite breakthrough. Actor Chow Yun-Fat is back as Inspector Tequila Yuen from his influential role in Woo's classic action flick "Hard-Boiled," and he brings all his duel-weapon shooting, diving and bannister sliding, giving the game the Woo flair. But flair means nothing if the game isn't fun and surprisingly, this movie-related game works. Have cinema games turned the corner? One can only hope, but here Woo's development team has set a new standard.

Yun-Fat's Tequila is the vehicle that takes players through the game's action in a third-person experience so that players control the inspector but still get to watch his face and body language as he takes on the bad guys. The Dragon Claw crime syndicate in Hong Kong is threatened by an upstart gang and asks the police for help to stave off the violence.

Tequila enters the fray with a pistol in each hand that he doesn't hesitate to employ in dramatic and bloody fashion against the bad guys that bring various guns of their own that Tequila can pick up after a kill. The game jumps right into the action using the initial stages as the tutorial that helps the player shoot but also score style point and stay alive along the way.

When players launch the inspector into a gun-blazing dive, the game enters "Tequila Time" where everything changes to sepia-toned slow motion allowing precise shots to the enemy's head or heart. The action takes place in diverse places such as alleys in Kowloon, penthouses in Hong Kong or museums in Chicago. All are filled with ways for Tequila to interact with his environment, giving players a motive to shoot objects that might fall on enemies, glide and shoot on carts or slide down the backs of dinosaur bones. Nearly everything in each of the settings is destructible, and after each chapter of the game it reports on how many millions in damages the player is responsible for.

One of the best surprises in the game is that it tweaks game-play on occasion to keep a steady diet of shooting down bad guys a lot more interesting. Mini-puzzles and quests to blow up drug dens add just enough needed variety to the game to keep things interesting.