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Dead to Rights: Retribution Review

Posted on 31. May, 2010 by Freak_c in News, Reviews

‘Dead to Rights: Retribution’ is a dark, gritty, foul mouthed, rough action, 3rd person shooter game but to mix things up you have a beautiful canine side kick, that seems very out of place.  Does this game have what it takes to be your new best friend? Or will it be sent to the pound?

The game is set in a place called Grant City and you play a police officer, Jack Slate with a Husky named Shadow by your side.  Things have gone to hell in the dark and rainy metropolis and you’ve got to use your skills and canine companion to get to the bottom of what’s spurring on this crime wave as well as other motives that progress during the story.

This game has everything that you would find in a b-grade action flick.  The cop who goes around shooting anything that moves to solve the crime, the ‘brick s@!#t house’ hero who takes on hundreds of enemies at a time and of course the bland, yet funny one liners.  This isn’t to say that the game is bad or even broken, on the contrary the game was fun and enjoyable.

While running through the streets Jack can only carry two weapons and two clips per weapon, this forces you to pick up other weapons and use the game’s hand to hand combat system, more on this in a moment.  The arsenal in the game comprises of all the standard weapons from pistols, shotguns, machine guns and RPGs.  A nice feature while using guns is that when you get a headshot the game slows down to ‘bullet time’ speed and then carries on.  This also helps fill up your ‘focus meter’ which allows you to slow things down for a certain amount of time. This comes in handy when you enter a room full of thugs and can then pick them off one by one.  The meter will refill while in use, so if you get head shots while using it the meter will refill to keep it going for longer.

Another way you have to get yourself through the game is by up close and personal hand-to-hand combat.  It also plays a big part in ‘Dead to Rights’, as you’ll be unarmed often and you’ll need to take a dude out to get your hands on his firearm.  The combat system has a fare share of combos that you can perform on the guys and allows you to take them out in style.  Speaking of taking out thugs, this is done in two ways; by disarming them, which is self explanatory and the second is with a takedown.  With a takedown you pound on a bad guy, hit the button prompt, and are treated to a crazy kill animation.  Jack shoots out a guy’s legs before putting one in his skull, hits the dude into the air with the butt of his rifle before making him human Swiss cheese, and so on.  If you’re unarmed, there are a number of takedowns that end with faces getting smashed into pavements and knees being obliterated.  These are soon repeated often and loose the impact from when you first see them.

The main problem with the combat system is the camera, as it can’t keep up with all the action.  You’ll be fighting some guy and another will run in to engage you from behind, you can point your joystick at the new foe and try to take him on at the same time, but Jack Slate isn’t Batman and this system doesn’t keep up like in ‘Arkham Asylum’.  I’d be attacked plenty of times by some guy that was in the blind spot of the camera, that I didn’t see while I was attacking a few of the other baddies.

‘Dead to Rights’ other main character that you get to play with is your trusted ‘side-kick’ canine companion, Shadow.  During most levels he is at your side, you can send him out to maul and attack bad guys and you can also call him back to prevent him from getting injured.  Shadow can also retrieve guns and ammo while you wait behind cover to replenish your health.  The really fun levels were the ones where you get to play as Shadow only, these are more stealth based levels and require you to examine the foes paths before taking them out fairly gruesomely.  You then have to drag the bodies away so as to not alert the other guards.  The Shadow levels are the best by far, they’re not that challenging or anything, but they are a great change of pace from the typical action game vibe.

Unfortunately Shadow seems very out of place in the world of ‘Dead to Rights’.  The world is dark, morbid and rainy and then here comes Shadow, a beautiful and brightly coloured Husky.  I also noticed that the animation wasn’t the best and most of the time his feet seem to float just above the ground (these don’t ruin the game in any way, just thought they needed a mention).

The overused formula of killing everyone in a room, moving to the next area and doing it all over again is what makes ‘Dead to Rights’ a forgettable game.  It does, however break from this blueprint once or twice by letting you lead hostages around, climb into a Mech and go undercover.  These levels were some of my favourites and were truly great experiences, sadly, they were just miniscule moments in this 8 ‘hour-ish’ long game, so the overall title gets swallowed up in forgettable shooting and taking cover.

The graphics are not mind blowing but are what you would expect from a game like this.  Nothing really stood out except for the error with Shadow’s walking, that I mentioned earlier.  The sound and score also tie into the game and are again, what you would expect, making the game a forgetful one after you complete it.

Conclusion
‘Dead to Rights’ is just another third person shooter game, with only a few levels that break from the action.  Shadow’s levels are the ones I remember the most.  If you have time to kill on a weekend then I would say look at renting this one.  Not bad but not great either.

6/10

Tags: dead to rights, Dead to Rights: Retribution, Review