by Jody - January 13, 2004

After Jack Slate, the cop of the game, checks out the scene of the murder, he finds his father dead. Soon after, Slate begins a personal investigation, trying to collect information on the murderer, but gets framed and thrown in jail. Knowing that this is not the end of the story, but the beginning, Jack Slate breaks out of jail in attempt to find and arrest his dad�s murderer � while being hunted by police and local gangs. And so, our story begins!

Something you wouldn't expect.

From the beginning of the game until the very end, you will notice how well this game progresses � storyline wise. Unlike a lot of cop games, where the storyline jumps on and off course, Dead to Rights� just stays right on path. As I said earlier, Jack Slate is after the person who murdered his father. With the help of his trusty dog, Shadow, he embarks on a journey to find the person. On the way, he is confronted with a countless number of policeman, thugs, etc, but these do not stop him take them out. Another game with the endorsement of the free-roaming system, we get to use Jack Slate to take out hoards upon hoards of thugs.

Before you actually get to enter combat, you must take a tutorial though. With the proper cheat, you can bypass this, but we here at GamePlasma don�t encourage the use of cheat codes in our gameplay. It�s not that bad of a tutorial though � you will learn a lot about the game and how many different ways you can take someone out. From everything I�ve seen, it appears that these guys took some ideas for games such as Max Payne, Streets of Rage, The Bouncer, and even Grand Theft Auto 3. This is not a bad thing though, as there are just so many ways to dispose of the enemy. Instead of just blankly shooting him in the head, you can have more fun by snapping his neck. Boss not give you your raise that you so meticulously wanted? Break his face.

Now it�s time to explain the in-game system. Basically the game works off of two meters � the life meter and the armor meter. As you probably already know from playing games like GTA: 3, the life is purely your health and the armor is what you have over it. Playing through the game, you will find health packs and bulletproof vests. As you probably know though, the health packs recover your life bar and the vest recovers your armor bar. I bet you�re wondering how can something hurt your health and not your armor though, right? Basic melee attacks only hurt your armor � so with it you�re health won�t go down. Bullet shots and bombs hurt your health though � without health, your armor is pointless.

GTA3? or better?

Graphically speaking, I�ve seen a lot of cop-style games with better graphics (True Crime) but this game doesn�t shun when it comes to solid eye-candy. At times, the characters seem to get kind of blocky and that sometimes interferes with objectives, but that is just something that you will have to find out on your own. Besides this though, the animations are pretty good, with realistic fighting schemes, blood drawn movements, and fly-through-the-wall visuals.

I like those gun shots.

Just like any other cop game, or action game in general, the sound tends to repeat itself... a lot. The best part about it though is the voice acting � in which Jack Slate�s voice has almost perfect lip sync with his mouth. The gun blasts do sound pretty realistic, but haven�t we all heard it before? Yeah, that�s what I was thinking. The music in the game is pretty awesome though � it totally makes you feel like you�re watching a new action-packed cop flick.

Give it a rental.

Dead to Rights packs a lot into one small disk and it�s not hard at all to pick up and play. This has to be one of the most important action games of the year � it has proven itself to have more than just any GTA game. With it�s strengths and weaknesses, this game is worth both a rental and a full purchase!