"John Woo is making a prequel to Hard-Boiled."

That's all we needed to hear to get pumped, but when it turned out it was a video game, well then our head started turning. It was a crazy full circle sort of thing; Hard-Boiled inspired quite a bit of the gunplay in Max Payne and the core concepts of Max Payne no doubt had at least a little influence in how Stranglehold turned out. Given that the game is being developed with Woo's input and stars a digital version of Chow Yun-Fat, pairing that kind of premise with the now well-established ideas of slow-mo-diving-while-shooting and endless baddies to off, it would be pretty hard for Stranglehold not to rock.

Which is why we were practically salivating at the thought of finally seeing Inspector Tequila's earlier days and what kind of things we could do as the master of slo-mo gunfights. As it turns out, a whole lot, though if you've seen the game running in the past -- either by way of our videos so far or just read impressions of the 360 version already shown off -- none of this will be particularly new to you. Well, save for this little tidbit that we did manage to pick up on: there will be online multiplayer. Sorry, that's all we know for now, but it's coming, rest assured.

For anyone else who somehow missed out, there's also the news that the PS3 version will ship with a high-definition transfer of Hard-Boiled in a special Collector's Edition. Other than that, however, the game plays identically, which is to say it rocks. Instead of plugging through the same tea house level that we've seen for a while now, we were able to run through a museum and geek out on just how much stuff blows up. You haven't lived until you've run up the spine of a T-Rex skeleton then dove off and put two into the head of some damn fool thug just watching as you do your best Superman impression off the head of an ancient dino. Or, uh, if you wanted to you should just shoot the skeleton and watch it all fall apart in chunks.

This is -- and has always been -- the focus of the game; tight gunplay, tons of enemies to drop and a level of destruction that has never been in a video game before. By the time we'd finished off all the baddies in that central room, the level of busted/destroyed stuff was on the level of the infamous lobby scene in The Matrix[i], and that's exactly what Midway's Chicago development house is going for. Though we started with a mere pair of pistols, we eventually managed to pick up an assault rife and a shotgun, which just opened up a fun new world of possibilities when it came to milking the level's endless opportunities for cinematic finishes.

If you haven't heard about it yet, all the levels in the game are rife with railings and banisters than can be hopped up on and run along all while popping guys in slow motion. Of course, any time you do hop onto one of these little glowing points, it starts sapping your slo-mo meter, so you have to use it fairly sparingly. We also noticed something we never caught before. The game only goes into "true" slo-mo (ugh, fine, "Tequila Time") when there are actual enemies on the screen, so while it took us a little getting used to, we quickly adapted and were shifting in and out of slo-mo takedowns like old pros.

When you do feel some lead sammiches to your enemies, you'll fill a little circular gauge that powers the "Tequila Bombs" -- special moves that consume varying levels of the meter; the longer you hold out, the more powerful the move you can do. In a pinch, you can sacrifice a quarter of the meter to refill your health (though there are health kits scattered all over the level too). Fill the meter more and you can kick off Precision Aim, which slows everything down and lets you fire off a single shot into a particular part of a bad guy (the crotch is always fun, as their death animations are location, specific); Barrage, which tints everything blue and turns Tequila's shots into long, lancing, ultra-powerful missiles of death; finally, completely filling the meter allows access to the Spin. which throws everything into an insta-kill cinematic where Tequila does multiple 360 runs, icing every single enemy in the room -- and of course doves appear to highlight the scene.

What really hit us (besides the fact that having no dead zone on those SIXAXIS analog sticks makes aiming a pain in the ass with some games) was just how rife with opportunities to play off or with the environment the game is. Kicking off a normal dive move while next to a wall will instead allow Tequila to run up the wall and cartwheel off it, all while spraying bullets. Seeing display cases and vases and skeletons all shatter and explode and chip away is just... well, it's [i]satisfying, there's no other way to put it.

We're still a little leery of the framerate, though, but this is something that's not quite locked down on the 360 version either, and from what we've seen, the game looks nearly identical. The PS3, however, is getting a Collector's Edition, so provided they can smooth things out and leave the experience of sliding across a table, running along a banister and then diving onto a food cart and unloading on someone while coming around the corner, the PS3 version is definitely going to be the one to get. When was the last time we were able to say something like that?

We'll have an update on things in a few weeks, so check back then.