| Dead to Rights |
| Presentation In Dead to Rights, you assume the role of Jack Slate, a hot-shot, hard-boiled K9 officer. After finding his father murdered, Jack goes on a path of destruction attempting to find his fathers killer. While trying to find the killer, Slate gets framed for the murder of the man he believes killed his father. After being thrown in jail, and sentenced to death, Slate makes a daring escape to find out who framed him, and to clear his name. Graphics The graphics in Dead to Rights are pretty much on par with current Gamecube games. The full motion video scenes are nice. although a little grainy. I don't know if Namco was going for that look on purpose or not, but overall the FMV scenes are pretty good and theres quite a few of them. While the graphics are on par to other games, more attention could have been paid to small details. Theres a scene early in the game where you're in a strip club, you have to evacuate everyone, and why in the world does everyone look the same, and are all wearing the same clothes? A small detail that could have been easily changed. I can understand everyone looking the same during the beat em ups, that's standard, but during a cut scene? As far as the backgrounds go, they are all pretty average. They fit the type of game it is. Dark and gritty strip clubs, and jail cells, all the way to bright stadiums. Although some interactiveness with the background would have been nice. Sound No big complaints here. Everything sounds good. The dialouge isn't bad at all, although Jack and his stripper girlfriend are the only two that have decent voice actors. Everyone else sounds pretty lame and unconvincing. Jacks quick wit, and sharp tongue add some humor into a game as serious as this. The music fits perfectly, and creates a great atmosphere in the game. The sound effects are typical for an action game, bullets flying, henchmen grunting as they die. All the typical fare we've come to know in the action genre. Controls The controls here are pretty much straightfoward here. You can switch weapons, change targets,dive into bullet time, all with the press of the corresponding button. Nice crisp responsive controls are always a good thing, and you get them here. There are a couple small complaints though. The first is, the fact that your character moves too slow. A run button would have helped a lot. The second complaint is the fact that the "R" button is used to re-center the camera. I think I've just logged too many hours in PSO, and I've gotten used to hitting the "L" button, but it took me awhile to used to hitting "R." There is a slight learning curve for the controls, but after playing through the first stage(which doubles as a tutorial) you should be pretty comfortable. Gameplay Played Max Payne? Well then you basically played Dead to Rights. Of course there are differences, but there are many similarities. The main difference being that Dead to Rights seems more focused on straight action then Max Payne. Granted Max Payne very much an action oriented game, Dead to Rights just has more going on. The best feature is the ability to dive in bullet time. This enables you to slow down time, so you can avoid getting shot, while you can shoot back. This feature was also used in Max Payne, but it isn't used as much in Dead to Rights, which also adds to the action. Without having to slowdown time every time you see an enemy, makes the game pace a lot faster. There are many times when you can run into a room, guns ablazing, and come out alive. Namco seemed to thinkall the flashiness of the game would make up for its shortcomings. First the flashiness. The feature next best to the bullet time, is the ability to disarm your enemies. Every time you disarm an enemy the game goes into a slo-mo cut scene. By using the directional pad while disarming the enemy you can unlock more ways to do it, all of which look very cool. The abilty to use your foe as a shield is also cool, as is the ability to grab a canister, throw it into the air,and while it's in mid-air, you can shoot it, and have the explosion kill any enemies near it. But like I said it doesn't make up for the games shortcomings. The games main problem is that it's very repetitive. The basic formula for the game is this: blast away at enemies with many different weapons, then for some reason or another you have no weapons, so you have to meelee, in basic beat em style. While the beat em ups do offer a change of pace, they also get redundent. Overall Maybe I had my expectations set high but, Dead to Rights didn't impress me too much. It's a very average game with little inovations. It also gets repetitive fast. But if you're looking for an intense action game, and just want to blast through bad guys, it definately delivers. It's a must rent, but thats may be as far as you would want to go. Subzero1313 |