Dead to Rights

Blood for Blood

HIGH Pulling a gun out of a thug's hands and using it to blow his brains out a moment later.

LOW Getting shot at point-blank range because the game doesn't understand I want to be punching now.

WTF Sam Fisher no longer hides bodies. Shadow the dog does.

Game Description: Dead to Rights: Retribution is an single player Action-Shooter game in which players roam the crime-ridden streets of Grant City with vice cop Jack Slate and his wolf-dog Shadow, doling out justice as they see fit. Featuring the ability to play as either Slate or Shadow, players mix brutal melee combat with diverse gunplay, explosive weapons and stealth animal like hunting techniques in this long-awaited follow-up to the original 2002 Dead to Rights game.

Some years back I played Dead to Rights and found its plot so captivatingly, amazingly ludicrous that I wound up writing a fifty-odd page review of it. It was relatively well-received by people who worked on the game, and even wound up being mentioned in 2005's prequel, Dead to Rights II. Now, to celebrate the release of Dead to Rights: Retribution, I've decided to repost the review here, now with illustrations! Hopefully the occasional image and video will help make it a little more palatable—yes, I'm well aware that it's TL, and I won't be offended if you DR.

There are times in my life in which I have felt despair, in which the presence in my life of the guiding force of a just and loving universe has not been immediately apparent to me. From now on, whenever I feel that way, I simply need to remember one thing—in just a few short months, everyone's favorite CoteWiNoLo is going to be back on the streets of Grant City...

Namco is publishing Dead to Rights 3.

Typing that sentence feels like being kissed by angels. Seven years after the original, five years after the attempt to make a sequel, four years and two years after the assets left over from that failed sequel attempt were crudely re-fashioned into Dead to Rights 2 and whatever the hell that PSP thing was, Namco has finally employed a development house to produce what the gaming community (by which I mean me) has been screaming for—another Jack Slate adventure!