Official Webpage

Platform: Xbox, PlayStation 2

Genre: Action

Number of Players: 1

Jack Slate, hard boiled lone wolf cop, is back for more bad guy killing action In Dead to Rights 2 from Namco.

I remember the first Dead to Rights.  I liked it quite a lot, my only real complaint being that the Xbox version could be overly difficult at times, so I was looking forward to giving the new game a go.  Generally, the first thing I do when I pick up an Xbox game is look at the back of the case to see what features the developers have included.  Dead to Rights 2 supports “Players 1” – and that’s it.  No Dolby Digital Sound.  No HDTV Display (not even 480p).  Not even “Other”.  When I see a game that supports so little of the features the Xbox has to offer, it makes me wonder what kind of effort the developers have put into the title.  Unfortunately, playing the game did nothing to alleviate those concerns.

The first thing I noticed was that there were multiple difficulty settings, something the first games (the Xbox version, anyway) did not offer.  This is good.  I set the game to “normal” and then went to the Tutorials section.

The first game had a playable training level, so that is what I expected from this game.  What I found was a series of training videos, showing me the action while text scrolled along telling me how to do things.  Bah.  I watched two of these, not all the way through.  I looked at the manual (something I loath doing) to get a quick rundown of the controls, then started a new game.

The gameplay breaks down like this; run to an area, shoot the many bad guys, send your trusty mutt Shadow out to maul a guy and take his gun if you run out of ammo.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  There was a melee combat section thrown into the mix, but my question was, why?  The melee combat in the first game was included for levels in which you couldn’t have a gun.  Here, it was thrown in the middle of a run and gun level.  I had plenty of weapons and ammo, only to go through a door and suddenly have none.  As far as the fisticuffs themselves, if you think of old school side scrolling beat-em-ups like Final Fight, you have an idea of what to expect.  Very little variation of attacks are offered, but then, none are needed.  There are some special moves you can do, but there are really nothing more than eye candy.  Simply mashing the punch button will work well enough in most instances, at least until you set the game to a harder difficulty setting.

On the game’s “normal” difficulty setting, I found there to be virtually no challenge.  At the end of the first level, it took me three tries to finish off the boss- but that was because I had blown through the rest of the level so quickly that I hadn’t fully acclimated myself to the controls, using canisters (“Explosives and such” as the manual calls them), roll moves, disarms, and the like.  I hadn’t needed to.  The boss area was the first time I needed to use *any* manner of strategy, and that consisted of running back and forth and ducking behind walls.

The slow motion bullet time style diving effect returns for Dead to Rights 2.  It is still a cool effect- I really love the bullet time thing.  Again, I found it not really necessary to play the game.  Pulling the right trigger auto targets enemies and this is really the only game mechanic you will need to use in order to be successful.  You can still do all those neat little disarms, human shield moves, and you can climb and roll, but I found that these mechanics most often serve as eye candy.  Rarely did I actually need them in order to get through a level.

Graphically, the lack of HD support really shows in this game.  Backgrounds are bland, characters are block, though they animate fairly well.  Overall the game looks like something that could have been done on a Nintendo 64, and is wasted on the Xbox’s powerful hardware.  Audio is decent, if repetitive, doing its job of relaying what is going but, like the graphics, not much else.  Control is one of the games better features.  From the 3^rd person perspective, you have total control over Jack and the camera, and I had no issues with the camera getting stuck or locked in a bad position as happens with many 3^rd person games.  Other basic controls, such as shooting, targeting, and the like, are simple button pushes, not overly confusing over difficult to pull off.

I have not mentioned the game’s story, because it is, by and large, irrelevant.  There are some cut scenes and a plot, of sorts, but the action is so generic that just about *any* storyline could have been substituted and it would have worked just as well. 

Had the developers put more effort into varying the level design and gameplay, Dead to Rights 2 could have been a worthy action game.  It’s not a bad game by any means; it simply feels out of date compared to the current generation of action games, and even to its own predecessor.  As it is, I would recommend those interested to rent before you buy.  The game can be finished in about 8 hours or so, so unless you are a hardcore fan of the original, you probably don’t want to purchase just yet.  On the other hand, for those who are fans of the old school, run and gun type gameplay, this might be your thing.  It does feature a lot of mindless, over the top violent fun.  Dead to Rights 2 would be just the thing for killing a few spare moments or blowing off some steam after a bad day.

-Ed-