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faceoff508
06-01-2002, 08:03 AM
May 31, 2002 - Jack Slate might be the most capable cop to ever appear in a videogame. The star of Dead to Rights has the proper motivation for an action hero (vengeance) but he's got more moves, more weapons at his disposal than anybody this side of Indiana Jones. The enhanced abilities of the main character is what will, if anything, set this third person action title apart from the legions of similarly conceived games. The concept of giving us new ways to take confront our hero with bad guys is something that's been sorely needed in videogames. But let's back up a bit.


The beginning of the game serves as both a tutorial and the prologue to the story you're about to play through. You learn the basics of all the moves you'll have at your disposal. The abilities you have are intricate and deep enough, that the developer's wouldn't want you to just skip through and the truth is you wouldn't get very far if you did. By the time you're done you know the basics of kicking ass with Slate and the reasons why you're hell bent on revenge.



You can shoot enemies using the right trigger to lock-on and attacking with A when you're far away and he's got a nice arsenal of realistic pistols, rifles and automatic weapons to use. But that isn't the cool part. The coolness happens when you engage an enemy face to face. When you approach the bad guy and hit the action button, you'll do one of three things that depend on what weapons the two of you are holding. If neither of you has a weapon, you'll grab him and execute a throw or grapple move. If you have a weapon, you'll take him hostage and use him as human shield. You'll be standing behind him holding him in a chokehold, but you can still aim and shoot bad guys all around and haul your hostage anywhere you need to go. The coolest cool part is that when you tire of your human shield and hit action to disengage, you put the poor sap out of his misery executioner style. If you don't have a weapon and the enemy does, you'll disarm him and take his weapon in a dramatic turn of events. You can and will be encouraged to unlock all of the various disarming moves and grapple/throws.
The grapple/throw moves are part of the extremely quick and responsive hand-to-hand combat system. There's no lock-on mechanism for engaging targets in combat, but Namco has been fairly generous with the directional controls, so you don't have to line somebody up precisely to land a kick or punch. You've got multiple throw and grapples using a direction on the analog stick and the action button and you can even throw enemies into each other and take out entire groups of them at a time.



The disarm animations are the pride and joy of the internal US development team at Namco. The moves vary depending on which ones you've unlocked and the kind of weapon the bad guy is carrying. Since the disarms are such a big focus in the game, it's sheer brilliance that we're compelled to disarm enemies in order to unlock even cooler disarm moves. It's like getting paid to make money, or something like that. Some of the disarm moves are nonlethal, like a quick armbar combined with a sort of Stone Cold Stunner that coughs up the enemies pistols. Others are nice and violent, well worth the M-rating Namco is going after, rather than avoiding, in this game. There are some disarms where Slate spins around the bad guy, yanking the shotgun out of his hand in the process before he ends up kneeling behind him with the muzzle pointed at the back of the bad guy's neck. You know what happens next. Hong Kong action movies are the inspiration behind the disarm mechanisms, and fans will recognize quite a few Jackie Chan-style moves. The disarm component alone looks like it will be worth the price of admission to Dead to Rights.



But there's more, so much more.

Slate will use all kinds of weapons including the standard pistols, rifles and machine guns all the way up to beloved rocket launchers and flamethrowers. Plus, there are disarm and human shield/hostage animations for each one of them. You've never seen an enemy in peril until you're the hero holding a rocket launcher to his dome. But Slate's most original weapon is his canine companion Shadow. In certain prescripted areas of the game you'll actually take control of Shadow guiding him through tight spots to access an area or mechanism that Slate himself can't get through.
However, Shadow's best application is as attack dog. You have to have a full adrenaline meter to use Shadow, but that's no big deal because you keep your adrenaline pumped by disarming enemies, which you should be doing anyways. You target an enemy or object just as you would while using a weapon, but Shadow will come out nowhere to attack whatever enemy you've targeted, kill him, and bring his weapon back to you wherever you are on the screen. Very cool. Usually Shadow comes in handy when you're surrounded by enemies and pinned down. You can flatten Slate against the wall, peek around the corner (like in Metal Gear Solid games) and target an enemy or object for Shadow to attack and retrieve. In the case of an object, usually a weapon, Shadow will simply retrieve the object and bring it back to you. Shadow doesn't get hurt and he can enter the area from anywhere so that you may not even see him until after he's attacked an enemy and shown up next to Slate to drop off the loot. That's what man's best friend will do for you. Let's see you try to get a cat or ferret to help you out in a firefight.



The wall flattening-corner peeking mechanism shouldn't be understated. It ends up feeling like a third person version of Time Crisis with you squeezing and releasing the trigger to swing out from around the corner and pop back behind cover again. You can keep enemies targeted even when you're pressed flat hiding behind the wall.

The last innovative action mechanism is Slate's ability to use throwable objects. There are no grenades in Dead to Rights, but that doesn't mean you can't blow up groups of enemies at a distance. Slate can pick up a can of gasoline or other explosives, hurl it in the air towards the bad guys and quickly target, shoot and detonate that sucker just as it gets near them. It's like super dangerous indoor skeet shooting and you'll love it.



We haven't even touched on the myriad of mini-games within DTR that break up the enemy killing that dominates the game, but your Mario Party skills will definitely come in handy.



Dead to Rights will have every chance to revolutionize what we've come to know as the action-adventure genre. With all of the stuff we'll be able to do with Slate in this game, it will be hard for game makers to continue pushing the same old hack 'n slash, puzzle solving setup that we've all grown so accustomed to. Dead to Rights has an original unlicensed hero in an original unlicensed story which means this game will be defined by the amount of fun it will bring us. The way it should be. Xbox owners will get a headstart on DTR this summer, but PS2 and GameCube fans will see their version before the end of 2002.


---IGN



Pictures and trailers: http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?channel_id=73&object_id=16895&adtag=network%3Dign%26site%3Dxboxviewer%26pagetype%3Darticle&page_title=Dead+to+Rights

MixMasta
06-01-2002, 09:12 AM
this game looks good. i might pick it up sometime....

PROUDXBOXOWNER
06-01-2002, 05:56 PM
maybe i will buy it but rent its a must..

TEA
06-01-2002, 06:00 PM
Nice find.This game is looking like Max Payne 2's competition/challenge and it's gettin the edge over Maxy.:cool:

faceoff508
06-01-2002, 06:22 PM
Originally posted by TEA
Nice find.This game is looking like Max Payne 2's competition/challenge and it's gettin the edge over Maxy.:cool:

It will be alot better!!! You can use people as your shields!! You can use your dog to get into small places and many more stuff!!

Laxeph
06-01-2002, 07:18 PM
Ya, this game is gonna be sweet, but the lack of multiplayer options makes the replay value almost nothin'.

Knight
06-01-2002, 07:27 PM
I was going to get this game but the game doesn't look like it use the XBox's graphics power!! So I'm going to pass on it!!

GRAVEDIGGER
06-01-2002, 08:11 PM
Nice find man...i've had my eye on this game since i first heard about it a few months ago. And it definately has the edge on Max Lame.


Untill next time...:mad:

TEA
06-01-2002, 10:30 PM
C'mon Grave digger Max Payne wasn't that bad until you beat it and Max Payne 2 has the advantage 1.) It may learn from its mistakes. and 2.) It knows its competition features so it can make some better features to give it the edge.
Its going to be a battle to the very end.(Can you say Goku vs. Vegeta/Majin Vegeta;) )