I played this on the PS2, and somehow it played better – when playing this game on the Xbox, it somehow played badly.
The game is essentially the first Max Payne clone – originally it seemed to have a lot going for it, but many of the features and settings were changed in order to appease the US consumer. It could have been a John Woo fan’s dream, instead what we have here is redundant graphics, terrible camera angles and tiresome control mechanics.
Let’s remember this is from Namco – they’re not some run-of-the-mill codeshop . Having said that, when was the last time you remember Namco releasing a really great original title? Yeah, I had the same trouble answering that too…
Max Payne set the benchmark for a new type of third person shooter, it injected some life into tried and tested gameplay and added something a little darker, a little more serious. Sure its gameplay was not without its flaws, and yes the whole thing was done very much over-the-top but with a huge sense of tongue-in-cheek as well.
Max Payne 2 gave us more of the same, in so far as it was essentially the first game revisited – think of Max Payne 2 as the Unreal Tournament 2003 of the third person shooters, not original to be considered innovative or new, but good enough to entertain well.
Right at the back, holding hands with Enter the Matrix (a game I applauded in ignorance due to my love for Shiny, and was in all honesty abysmal) at the back of the queue for “wannabe” merchants we have Dead to Rights.
Right from the intro sequence, we expect John Woo style action – the character, cool as can be, saves a building within 3 seconds of a detonation – disliked by his people, the cops, and hated by the others, the bad guys. This man has no place to go. He’s a man’s man, he does a job and that’s his life. Er….well not quite…
Aside from the ridiculous camera setup, you character is disabled in many ways – everything has a button – i think there are about 15 or 16 different buttons in total that you can assign. So out goes Max Payne’s simplicity – hell, let’s fix something when it ain’t broke shall we?
The game has some innovations which move the genre forwarded – the ability to pick up cannisters throw them into a crowd of bad guys and blow them to hell as it lands with a bullet piercing through is fun and helps to add some variety to something you will have seen better executed elsewhere.
The ability to hold someone hostage is, at best, an interesting diversion – the game is just far too easy to complete by just hitting auto target, or just running your character in the enemies path firing with all guns blazing – dies this game require skill? Did the Titanic survive the crash into the iceberg?.
No matter what happens, you can’t help compare this to the title with Messrs Payne. Dead to Rights was still in development right before Max Payne’s release and had been in development hell for a while before eventually being released on the PS2.
The game does not merit attention, or time – it is all a waste really. The in ability to jump, the restricted and trapped environment is far far to linear having been spoilt by Max Payne’s illusionist freedom of movement.
Dead to Rights tries to hard to emulate a hard cop Hollywood movie in a game – and as we all know, movie tie in games suck, as do movies based on games – there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions not the rule.
Had Namco left this in development hell, no one would have cared – had they stuck to the original “Hard Boiled” esque motif, throw in graphics that are not just “optimised” port graphics, include some real innovation and a decent camera and it could have been a really good game. As it stands, it’s superior to Enter the Matrix, but inferior to Max Payne, as was EtM, so not much of a recommendation for this title.
Verdict: Mediocrity loves company – Enter the Matrix has a friend in hell.