Review: Dead to Rights: Retribution
Game: Dead to Rights Retribution
Format: Xbox 360
Developer: Volatile Games
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
A boy and his dog; just saying it conjures up images of long hot summers spent in fields or woods, playing fetch or just running around having fun, right? Now imagine that this boy is a fully grown, roided up Cop, and that his dog is a gigantic Husky/Wolf type thing. And those fields? They’re needle littered alleyways populated by hobos and Triads. Instead of fetching a ball, your dog rips the jugular out of those punk Triads and brings you a blood soaked mound of throat meat upon its return. That pretty much sums up Dead to Rights: Retribution; One Man and His Dog… on steroids.
Playing as Jack Slate, super cop, and his life partner Shadow the Dog as they clean up the mean streets of Grant City, Dead to rights is, in terms of narrative, a fairly generic experience. In recent weeks, gang related violence has been on the increase in Slate’s once fair city, and following the murder of his father (also a cop) while investigating the Triads, Slate charges in head first to avenge his father. On the way he will uncover “a shocking conspiracy” that will shake his world to its very core.
Of course the “shocking” secrets in the game are utterly obvious from the outset, but overall that does not detract too much from the game. The character of Jack Slate is your typical hard boiled, tough talking, fist fighting cop. In the opening scene Slate displays his singular character trait by arguing with his superior over the handling of a hostage situation, handing over his badge and gun as a result of disobeying his boss and charging in waving his fists around, vowing to sort the mess out. The voice actor portraying Jack manages to maintain a very gritty performance without showing any real character. In fact, Jack Slate is so entirely without character that he manages to transcend awfulness, and actually comes across as being quite cool… in a sort of rubbish way.
Despite being a bit clumsy, the combat is fairly deep.
The game is a lot like a cross between the duck-and-cover antics of the Gears of War/Uncharted series and Batman Arkham Asylum, with a little bit of Army of Two chucked in for good measure. As this is a third person action shooter game, you can duck behind cover and perform blind fire shooting as you would expect. What sets this game apart is that as well as the shooting, there is a fairly deep melee combat system that revolves around performing combos and blocking/reversing attacks, and grappling your enemies.
Once you have an enemy in your grasp you can do one of two things: firstly, you can throw your enemies, which is particularly useful if you are in an exceptionally high location, and secondly you can take the poor sap hostage. When you have a hostage you can use him to deter your enemies from shooting at you, or if in an extreme situation, you can literally use your hostage as a mobile piece of cover, making him your personal bullet sponge.
The fist combat itself is a little clumsy, but there is some depth to it. Pressing the Y button performs a quick attack, while the B button performs heavy attacks. You can chain these buttons together to perform different combo types, but in general I found pressing Y,Y,Y,B,Y,Y,Y worked best in pretty much every situation. Once you have pummeled your opponent enough you are prompted to press A to perform a Takedown quick kill. These little animated kills can be pretty visceral, but there aren’t many of them; seeing Slate break a guy’s arm and then snapping his neck gets kind of old around the 30th time you have seen him do it.
Holding X allows you to block, and if you tap X just before someone hits you then you can counter their attack. Enemies are also able to block, so pressing both Y and B together will perform a block breaking move, and pressing A and X together executes a grab. However, as Slate is only human, he cannot take too much fire, so charging at heavily armed enemies with the intention of punching their brains out the back of their skull is rarely a wise course of action. Should you find yourself within close proximity of an armed opponent, pressing the A button has you disarming your foe and using their gun against them, with the cross hairs lining up automatically with their head. This can lead to some satisfying executions if you are quick enough to fire a few shots.
Headshots are the order of the day
When it comes to the shooting, the game is fairly competent. Holding the left trigger will allow you to aim and ideally you will want to go for one-hit-kill headshots. This is primarily down to the fact that there tend to be a lot of enemies, wearing a lot of armour, and you do not have an abundance of ammunition. In fact, I would probably go as far as to say there is a severe ammo drought in Grant City. You will rarely have more than about a dozen bullets at a time, despite having a uniform with dozens of pouches and pockets. Even when killing enemies, they will rarely have more than a few bullets on them.
You can only hold two guns at a time; a pistol and a larger gun, be it a shotgun, a machine gun, or a rocket launcher, and a set of grenades. Although it is something of a disadvantage, there are a number of in-game features that help level out the playing field. Performing headshots, grabbing enemies, countering attacks and performing take downs all fill up a metre on the left of the screen called the Focus Metre. The Focus Metre can be activated at any time by pressing the left bumper, and puts the game into Focus Mode (basically slow motion) allowing you to get a slight advantage over your foes. It is particularly useful, for instance, to activate the Focus Mode when faced by a large group of enemies, which will let you take your time lining up headshot after headshot. The Focus mode is undeniably useful, and quite good fun, but it has been done many times before – including in previous Dead to Rights games.
Something that is quite original is the implementation of Shadow himself. At the start of the game you take control of Shadow and must protect a wounded Slate from angry triads. The controls are simple enough. Pressing A will make Shadow kill enemies and holding the right trigger will make Shadow sprint. Later sections of the game have you stealthily controlling Shadow as he hunts for keys, or disables generators, in order to help Slate out of a jam. Holding down the left trigger makes Shadow sneak which also activates what I can only describe as his Dog senses. While sneaking, Shadow can see the outline of enemies through walls, as well as clues as to where he has to go. It is a nice enough distraction and breaks up some of the monotony of playing as Slate, but on occasion can be very frustrating due to the Dog’s low level of health.
Shadow has a penchant for chewing on groins
When playing as Slate you can issue simple commands to Shadow; pressing up on the digital pad while pointing at an enemy will make Shadow attack that specific enemy, and pressing up while pointing at a gun will have Shadow fetch it for you. If you find you are being overwhelmed by enemies, or just want Shadow to retreat, simply press down. It is very clear that the developers have put a lot of work into making Shadow look as good as possible and have done a good job making sicking a gigantic slavering dog on your enemies a fun experience.
When Shadow eventually catches a target, he tends to go for the throat (or the groin) which causes gigantic showers of blood to come spraying out. Of course Shadow is only a dog, and not made of Kevlar, so after absorbing a few shots he can be taken down. Fortunately Shadow will eventually recover, or you can walk over to him and revive him yourself.
There are about a dozen missions to fight your way through with various objectives, such as hunting down a specific target, destroying vehicles, or disarming bombs. Yet, in the end, all it really comes down to is hiding behind a bit of cover and trying to line up headshot after headshot. As much as there is to do, it is all quite samey.
That is not the only problem with this game. Mission length is especially uneven, with several missions being way too long. There is also an issue with irritating check points, where the check point occurs before an unskipable section of dialogue, which is an unforgivable gaming sin.
Review Round-Up
Graphics: 4/5 Most of the character models are fairly generic looking, including Jack Slate himself, with fairly standard looking character animations. However, a lot of work has been put into making Shadow look as realistic as possible, and it really pays off. The Grant City environments are mostly dark, rainy, grim and gritty (like another famous fictional City that begins with a G), with a fairly decent selection of colours on display.
Sound: 3/5 The voice acting, in general, is competent at best. Having said that, there are a few scenes that stick out as featuring good performances. The lead actor manages to maintain a grim and gritty delivery throughout the game without ever showing much personality.
Story: 3/5 The story holds together well, although pretty much every surprising secret can be seen coming from a mile off. It is a fairly generic B movie plot, but there’s nothing really wrong with that.
Gameplay: 4/5 Despite being a bit clumsy, the melee combat has a decent amount of depth to it, and being able to disarm enemies or take them hostage is a fun feature. Stealthily playing as Shadow starts out as a decent alternative to the run-and-gun hi jinks, but becomes tiresome towards the end. Implementing Shadow in fire fights works well, as it is always amusing to see a heavily armed foe legging it across the battlefield being pursued by a massive dog.
Longevity: 2/5 This is a single player only game, with about a dozen missions in it, and will take about 8 or so hours to complete on the regular difficulty. There are three difficulties to choose from, with an abundance of easy achievements, and Avatar awards, such as a suit of armour and t shirts on the Xbox 360 version.
Overall 3 Punctured Testicles out of 5. Dead to Rights: Retribution is a solid action game with some very interesting features such as Shadow the Dog and the close quarter melee combat. While there are a number of minor issues that hamper the overall experience, including overlong levels, random difficulty spikes, and some bad check pointing, that does not stop it from succeeding at being a decent popcorn action game. It comes across as feeling a bit old fashioned and can be very frustrating in parts, but overall it’s pretty good fun.
[starreview tpl=16]
I’ve found that the new DLC for this breathed a bit of new life into it – as well as a (slightly dull) new sidestory chapter where you play as the bad guys besieging the police HQ, you get a THE CLUB-influenced variation of GEARS OF WAR 2′s Horde mode, where you have to survive six waves of enemies while killing them in as many stylishly varied ways as possible. Reducing the game to its essential components of pounding wicked bastards’ faces into smashed meat and then setting an big angry dog on them makes for a much more enjoyable experience, I think.