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Dead to Rights: Retribution Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Dead to Rights: Retribution Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

A Boy and His Dog

Dead to Rights, as a series, was in danger of being lost in time. The original game was decent enough and sold well, but its sequel was widely panned as a bland, unnecessary rehash of the original. It’s been years since the last game, and even fans of the original may be wondering why Namco Bandai even bothered to release another entry in the series. Fortunately, the latest title, Dead to Rights: Retribution, is a vast improvement from the debacle that was Dead to Rights II. Unfortunately, it’s still not good enough to compete with today’s best action franchises.

Dead to Rights: Retribution screenshot

Dead to Rights: Retribution wisely re-launches the series with a new origin story for protagonist Jack Slate and his dog Shadow. Actually, when we first meet the characters, they aren’t yet a united team. Shadow belongs to Jack’s father, a wise old cop named Frank Slate. Frank is smart, respected, and takes no lip from anyone, so you can probably imagine what happens to bring Jack and Shadow together. Something bad happens to Frank, something that forces Jack to work with his father’s dog to find answers and get vengeance. The story is a pretty typical revenge tale that’s relatively well-told, although it veers strangely into sci-fi territory for a game that’s touted as a “noir thriller.” Regardless, the plot is nothing more than a framework on which to hang excuses for Jack and Shadow to kill a whole bunch of people.

When you first fire up Retribution, you might be fooled into thinking that it falls into the increasingly rare “brawler” category. To start, Jack takes on the various thugs with his fists, punching and kicking and countering with an impressively smooth melee combat engine. Despite a few strange button placements, Jack can easily execute a wide variety of moves, including grabbing enemies and cuffing their hands behind their backs. By pointing the left stick towards an enemy as you hit the attack buttons, you can direct your assault in any direction and take on several foes at once. Chain a series of attacks together, and you unleash a brutal takedown that puts your foe down in vicious slow-motion. You can even grab a gun out of an enemy’s hands and turn it on him, immediately blasting him in the face. The melee combat feels initially satisfying, but as soon as you start grabbing guns, it becomes a very different game.

Once Jack has a gun in his hands, Dead to Rights becomes a Gears of War-style cover shooter and makes no attempt to hide its influences. You enter and exit cover with a press of the appropriate face button and hold it to run. You can blind fire and pop up to aim over and around cover objects and vault over them to advance. In other words, it plays like Gears of War, save for the addition of “focus,” the time-slowing technique present in all Dead to Rights games.

Dead to Rights: Retribution screenshot

Focus is useful for lining up headshots and taking out multiple enemies, but even so the combat is never as visceral as games like Gears of War, due to controls that aren’t quite as crisp, foes that aren’t as intimidating, and weapons that don’t carry as much punch. On the other hand, Jack has a weapon that Marcus Fenix doesn’t have: his loyal dog Shadow.

Shadow is at Jack’s side for most missions, and usually functions as an AI teammate. He attacks enemies, brings you ammo, and helps point out the path through stages. You can issue Shadow simple commands to attack or fall back, which can be quite helpful at times. Shadow will grab an enemy and hold him in place while you line up a headshot and even maul them to death on his own. In some stages, you actually play as the dog (including the very first playable section of the game), and as Shadow you can detect enemy heartbeats and sneak up on them for a stealthy kill.

Dead to Rights: Retribution screenshot

Alternately, you can run at them full-bore and bite them in the crotch. The Shadow segments definitely give the game a unique feel, but also lead to some very strange moments. For example, in one level Jack sends Shadow into a military base to disable an electric fence by peeing on a pair of generators. A single noise from the dog sends the entire base into high alert. When the segment is finished, Jack calls Shadow a good boy, congratulating the dog on successfully killing a half dozen people. It’s one of the weirdest moments of master/dog bonding that I’ve ever seen.

Dead to Rights: Retribution screenshot

I do suspect that developer Volatile Games didn’t take Retribution too seriously and knew that certain elements would seem unintentionally comical compared to the grim, straight-faced games that dominate the action genre. After a saggy middle, the game becomes more interesting as it goes along and tasks you with increasingly outlandish goals. At the start of the game, you’re taking out gangs and following fugitives. By the end of the campaign, you’re fighting sci-fi airships with a hand gun and donning power armor to mow down goons that look like low-rent versions of Half-life 2’s Combine.

It’s the goofiness that helps elevate Retribution above blandness – it’s not a particularly good-looking game, nor is the sound that impressive or the plot that engaging. Even with a fairly short run time, it gets a bit boring and redundant at times. There’s no multiplayer and not a ton of incentive to play through the campaign multiple times. In other words, if it weren’t for the all-out strangeness of occasionally playing stealth segments as a dog or the nods to old John Carpenter movies, Dead to Rights: Retribution would be even harder to recommend.

All in all, Dead to Rights: Retribution is a perfectly average game. In a time when the economy is bad and games cost $60, most players will have a tough time justifying a purchase. However, if you give it a rental or borrow it from a friend, it’s worth checking out. It’s not going to be anyone’s new favorite action title or blow your mind in any way, but it does what it intends to do reasonably well. If the game focused on brawling over gunplay a bit more, perhaps it would have worked a bit better. As it stands, I really doubt that the Dead to Rights series will continue beyond this entry. At least the final chapter in the saga isn’t a total embarrassment.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.1 Graphics
Characters look slightly cartoonish and dated, but the art style is consistent, if a bit bland. 3.6 Control
Jack Slate has a lot of moves, and the control scheme generally handles the mix of melee and ranged combat well. 3.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The voice acting is decent, but the score and sound effects are forgettable. 3.0 Play Value
A reasonably solid action game with a few good ideas, but definitely a step below the top-tier franchises. 3.0 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Two Playable Characters: Vice Cop Jack Slate – Pick off enemies with your side arm or get up close and personal and take them down with your bare hands. Shadow – Sneak up on enemies and kill them silently, or rip into a group and flush them out for Jack to take down!
  • Satisfyingly Brutal Disarms/Takedowns: In the face of danger, turn your enemies’ weapons against them with aggressive disarms or execute all-new lethal takedown moves!
  • Fluid Combat System: Seamlessly blends ranged combat with most robust brawling system ever seen in a shooter! Pump enemies full of bullets or destroy them up close…the choice is yours.
  • Intense Hand-to-Hand Combat: Take on enemies with branching combos and counters or throw them into each other! Engage multiple enemies at one time with the “360 hand-to-hand” feature.

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