When I first saw Stranglehold demonstrated at E3 last year I was pretty much sucked in and I said as much in an article at the time. Just to give you an idea of how that demonstration worked, several people sat in a dark room watching as the developers toured us through the game features and some game play. This is really an optimal setting for developers to demonstrate games because it's completely controllable (there aren't any rogue journalists trying to get the game to lock-up or crash) but it still builds more excitement than watching pre-rendered footage or sizzle trailers. I was really juiced about the game after seeing the demonstration but at the time Stranglehold was scheduled to be out in time for Christmas on PC and Xbox 360 and was being talked about as a PS3 launch title. It still isn't out.

View the Stranglehold slide show (20 images)

Game delays shouldn't shock anyone anymore but they do temper our excitement somewhat. The longer we're aware of games before they come out the more commonplace they become right up until they go gold where all that displaced desire can come rushing back creating that I've-waited-two-years-for-this-I-MUST-have-it-the-first-day-it's-out mania. Am I still looking forward to Stranglehold now as much as I was then? Not really but don't take it off your radar yet.

Last week Midway released a demo of Stranglehold on Xbox Live and we thought we'd take a real close look at it. Just to get this out of the way it is a demo of the Xbox version only so a lot of what we say here may not apply to the PC and PS3 versions. I expect the PS3 version to be pretty close to the 360 version with perhaps slightly better graphics but a lower frame-rate. The game play mechanics between the two should be interchangeable (save any implementation of the six-axis tilt controls) but the PC version could feel very different using mouse and keyboard.

Chow Yun-Fat's Inspector Tequila is a hard man to kill.

Before I go into a few of the negative points let's look at what's good. The demo's a lot of fun and it does what a demo is supposed to do; it makes you want more. It opens with a cinematic showing the murder of a cop followed by that scene in action movies where the chief of police yells at the loose-canon cop who's about to pursue his personal agenda. It falls just short of the chief yelling, "You're out of control, Tequila! This city can't afford cops like you. I want your gun and your badge!" It's all a little cliché but this is the kind of game where a story could actually get in the way. What we want is two-fisting guns action and soon enough you're standing in the back alleys with Tequila at your command.

The first time I played through the demo I was decidedly underwhelmed but the more I played it the more it grew on me. If you're a fan of action movies you'll find a lot to like as Tequila slides over tabletops and dives down stairwells. The enemies come at you in waves but there's always plenty to keep you busy and even over take you if you're not careful. You'll only get a taste of the available weapons like the dual-wielding pistols and the shotgun, but if you're good enough to find it there's also a .50 caliber deagle called the "golden pistol" that kills with one shot. It would have been nice to get hands-on with some of the other guns, but they've got to leave something to look forward to in the full version.

Even though the game play is nothing terribly new it does bring with it some nuances. At times Tequila will be surrounded by enemies resulting in a standoff. This is a slow-motion mini-game that forces players to dodge bullets while taking out the enemies one-at-a-time. It's pretty cool the first few times you do it but I could see this being the kind of thing that feels unwelcome late in the game. In addition to the standoffs Tequila has his own brand of power-ups that allow players to deal out some serious vengeance. Precision Aim lets you snipe in slow-motion with a pistol and you get to watch as the bullet approaches your target and tears through whatever body part you were aiming at. Barrage turns Tequila into an unstoppable killing machine (beyond what he already is) taking little-to-no-damage and never running out of ammo while firing wildly for a short time. The ultimate Tequila move is the spin attack. This puts Tequila into a cinematic tornado of gunfire killing everyone in the area. These come in extremely handy in a pinch or during boss fights.

The demo ends with a cinematic right before a huge fight breaks out so while it may frustrate you the end of the game play is followed by a lengthy trailer showing some fantastic action set pieces with the bigger guns. The trailer also shows some multiplayer footage with the players all using the Tequila moves from the single-player game meaning you can slow-down time, dive through windows, and execute the Tequila finishing moves in the multiplayer game. How this is going to be balanced remains to be seen but the multiplayer looks like it could be pretty crazy. By beating the demo on Normal you'll unlock Hard mode as well as a new Tequila ability called Barrage and by beating it on Hard you unlock Hard Boiled mode and the final ability - the spin attack. The only problem is that the unlocks aren't saved when you quit so if you come back later to play it some more they are all locked again.

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