Stranglehold slips a bit

Stranglehold has backed casually toward the counter of retail and slipped its bottom gently along it - which is a meaningless way of saying it's now due out in mid-September.

The Midway-developed shooter, built on Unreal Engine 3, will now be released in Europe for 360 on 14th September, for PC on 21st September and for PS3 in October - and Midway assures us the game is "gold".

As you know by now, Stranglehold is an action game created in collaboration with John Woo, throughout which you take control of Inspector Tequila from Woo's influential action film Hard Boiled.

In-game Tequila's been done up to look like Chow Yun-Fat (or Ben Grimm, depending on what you make of the modelling), with the latter's voice acting and lots of diving around destructible scenery.

That's thanks to a range of Max Payne-inspired moves including cough-cough "revolutionary" slow-motion Tequila Time. As well as diving around firing at people's heads in slow-motion, you can slow-mo target someone and follow the trail of the bullet to its destination.

You also face the occasional stand-off, where the idea is to dodge incoming slow-mo bullets with the left stick and aim and fire back - or at interactive bits of the scenery - with the right stick.

There's a demo on Xbox Live Marketplace now if you fancy seeing how it works, and you can check out our various impressions on the 360, PS3 or PC gamepages.

Update: We previously reported the PS3 version's release date as 21st September, when it is in fact October. Apologies for the error.