Dead to Rights - GameCube

One of 2003’s biggest Namco releases, Dead to Rights pits players as super-cop-turned-fugitive Jack Slate in a hard-hitting thriller based in the fictional world of Grant City.

One night whilst on routine patrol, Slate takes a “shots fired” call from police dispatch. Arriving at the scene, Jack discovers something that leads him through a twisted labyrinth of crime and corruption, which turns him from a model officer to a fugitive hunted by good cops, bad cops, bounty hunters and crooks alike. Without a gun, car or a home and with pitifully few friends, Jack battles with the criminal element that continue to rain crime on the city like a hurricane. With your help, Jack Slate will wage this war until its explosive conclusion, when he has the criminals responsible…

The style of the Dead to Rights game world is noticeably similar to that of two other well-known games - Enter the Matrix and The Getaway. Like these two blockbusters, Dead to Rights is played in the third person, featuring beat-em-up style gameplay and hand-to-hand combat in an arcade experience typical of developer Namco. Your objective is simple – kill all, then kill some more. There are few tactical elements. But it’s the simplistic gameplay of Dead to Rights that makes it fun. Given time, you’ll be able to arm yourself once more with a good choice of weapons that can be stolen to make progress easier, adding a good shoot-em-up element to the experience.

The game world itself looks typical of a 3D adult adventure, and although character animation is a little on the weak side, dozens of extravagant combat scenes help to make up for it. There also some nice graphical particle effects that make the world of difference to the way the game looks in action.

All in all, a good game from Namco with the strong possibility of a sequel. more