Lies, deception and murder
The hero of Dead to Rights is Jack Slate, a cop in the K-9 division. His partner is Shadow, a loyal sniffer dog with a nose for crime (sorry). While on a routine investigation at a construction site, he finds the body of Frank Slate, his father. It is clear to Jack that his dad was murdered, but the only lead he has is to Blatz, the only person he knew with a large dislike for his father. After a chase through the bowels of Grant City, Jack traps Blatz in his hotel room. Inside the room, Jack finds Blatz tied up, and he gets clubbed over the head by a man with a golden luger, who proceeds to frame Jack for the murder of Blatz. Jack is sent off to jail, and kicked off the force, but vows to find out who set him up, and who really killed his father.
GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!
Dead to Rights is 15 chapters of nothing but action. Jack has a variety of stunts and moves that he can perform, as well as having an array of armaments at his disposal. In true Matrix/Max Payne style, the game includes a variety of stunts as well as bullet time. Jack can dive forward, backward and side to side while firing his guns, and if you hold the dive button for an extra second, you will engage the bullet time. Bullet time basically allows you to shoot a hell of a lot more shots than you normally would in a dive, as well as avoiding hits from enemies.
Jack will also spend a lot of time in hand-to-hand combat. The hand-to-hand system has been constructed fairly well, fans of the 16-bit beat ‘em up era should feel right at home. There are three attack buttons, kick, punch and throw, and a block button. The punch and kick buttons can be mixed to create different combos which are effective for fighting more than one opponent. On top of these standard fighting moves are the disarming moves, which allow you to disarm and defeat an enemy with one swift move. There are 20 disarm moves in all, though they must be unlocked during the course of the gameplay. The game will switch to bullet time when you perform a disarming move, and will display the name of the particular move you are using. There are a variety of weapons in Dead to Rights, pistols, sub machine guns, automatics, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and so on. Any weapon used by the enemy can be used by Jake if he uses a disarming maneuver on them. Several guns can also be used in akimbo (two at a time).
Dead to Rights features a lot of mini-games. The first of these mini-games you will encounter is absolutely absurd. You control Hildy, a girl who worked for Jack’s father who now works in a strip club. As Hildy performs her dance moves, you must press a button while it is in the “hot zone” to please the crowd, and create a distraction for Jack. This mini-game is pretty average in concept and execution, though the other mini-games are rather good. These games include hitting a speed bag, lifting weights, defusing a bomb and operating a helicopter machine gun.
The problems involved in Dead to Rights’ gameplay seem to be suffered by most action games these days. It’s a fairly short game (very linear, too), and despite the enjoyment it brings you may not bother playing through the game again because of the shallow nature of it all. The PAL version’s difficulty was actually toned down from the NTSC release, which saw complaints from people about the unfairness of the game. It took me about 7 hours to finish the story, and although I died a few times on certain bosses, I didn’t seem to find things overly frustrating.
Visual work in Dead to Rights is underwhelming. The graphics are rather plain – sorely lacking in the visual effects that separate the Xbox from the other machines of this era. One could use the argument that this was primarily a Playstation 2 project, but even by the PS2’s standards this one is lacking. Jack Slate has actually seen some decent modeling done on him, though he does smell of generic ex-copitis. The other characters are average across the board, though some of them (Hildy) look like a regurgitated breakfast. Animation on all characters has been very well done. The inclusion of some ragdoll physics is a plus in my book. The environments in the game do suffer from a few slightly blurred textures, but are otherwise on par. Thankfully, the game has a very stable framerate, never dropping below 30 fps.
The soundtrack of Dead to Rights is reminiscent of the gritty type of music you’d hear in a cop show on TV – 24 or NYPD Blue for example. This is usually filled with low volume tunes that are drawn out and feature a lot of bass. The voice acting in the game is pleasing on the whole - especially for the main characters, though the dialogue is not as strong as the acting. Jack Slate has a ridiculous amount of one liners, about 75% of which are absolutely stupid. Sound effects are up to the usual standard of action games, though they suffer from a lack of Dolby Digital 5.1 support, but anyone without that sort of tech should be reasonably happy.
Dead to Rights is still an above average game despite the mediocre graphics, cheesy one liners, awkwardly bad mini-games, unoriginal gameplay and overall short length. The story is interesting and the gameplay is enjoyable, and you should find the overall experience fulfilling.
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