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The Dead to Rights series has had its ups and downs. The original was very good, and contained relentless action, cool special moves, and everyone’s favorite overused effect, bullet time. The sequel that was released this past year was not as well received, as it just did not have that fresh feeling the original delivered. What’s more, the sequel strayed away from what made the original great in the first place, mindless, all out, non-stop action. Thankfully, the series goes 2 for 3 with Dead to Rights: Reckoning on the PSP and gives gamers the first great shooter on the system. Dead to Rights: Reckoning has everything a good title should have, intense story, tons of violence, solid game play, and even a fun Deathmatch mode for those using wireless gameplay with their PSP’s. Dead to Rights: Reckoning brings back the fearless beat cop, Jack Slate. Someone has kidnapped an essential informant in a high profile investigation of an untouchable crime lord named Whisper. Jack and his trusted K-9 partner, Shadow, return to navigate the corrupt underworld of Grant City and go bullet to bullet with an army of hostile gang members to rescue the lost informant before it’s too late.
Visually Dead to Rights is very close to its console counterparts. With slick presentation, great level design and textures, a large variety of enemies, cool weapon effects, explosions, and of course bullet time, Dead to Rights goes back to its roots with the visual design. As with most 3rd person action/shooters, the camera can get a bit wonky at times, but never does it get in your way so much that it costs you dearly. Dead to Rights: Reckoning delivers a solid graphical experience in a small little package. Audio puts a hit on what could have been a stellar first action title for the PSP. Sure, the music and sound effects are adequate enough and are more than passable especially with headphones, but not hearing Jack Slate during the cut scenes was a bit disappointing to say the least. This lack of polish in the audio department really takes gamers out of the story and gives you little reason to even watch the cut scenes besides following the storyline, which is really no more than a cheesy B movie, cop on the edge script. Gameplay is fast, fun, and frantic. Sure it is really a brainless shooter, but the level design makes for some cool action sequences seen usually only in Hong Kong action films. The depth comes in the form of the weaponry offered and the use of your trusty dog Shadow. You will experience slow motion dives, melee fighting, devastating disarms and awesome kill moves. While the extras still aren’t as diverse as in the original, the game feels more like a sequel than the console version of Dead to Rights 2. The A.I. is stupid, let’s just be real on that point. Yes, they’ll duck, take cover, and use extreme means of taking you out like grenades, but it really doesn’t take much to eliminate your foes in timely fashion. Lastly, Dead to Rights on the PSP takes advantage of the widescreen visuals by allowing you to view your enemies and track multiple foes at one time. It is nice not to have some schlock shooting you off screen before you even know he’s there… which was a flaw in the console sequel. Overall the game plays great and fans of the original will jump right in for quite a blast…get it…blast. If Dead to Rights: Reckoning was a single player affair, I would suggest this only to the serious fans of the original, and even more so, fans who thought the second console version was lacking. Thankfully, this title can be added to your “buy” list as it does support a very fun 4-player deathmatch mode that you can play via wireless play. The multiplayer mode is not terribly deep, but if you want to blow off some steam against some strangers, you can do a whole lot worse on the PSP than with Dead to Rights. Namco needs to deliver the message to Rebellion and stick with what works. Dead to Rights 2 was not the successor I hoped for, but thankfully, I get some redemption with the PSP version, which is as good of a follow up to the original as you can get, especially on a handheld. Let’s hope Rebellion learns from this and produces a third installment that lives up to the series’ reputation.
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