Dead to Rights: Retribution First Look
Remember cuddly Shadow? He's suffocating bad guys and dragging bodies now.
April 29, 2009 - I'm probably dating myself here, but Dead to Rights is one of those games that I'll always associate with my college experience. I distinctly remember getting so into it that I blew off parties and seemingly always had an audience in my room to watch Jack Slate and Shadow take on wave after wave of bad guys.
If there was something enthralling about watching a half-wolf/half-malamute run out and bite dudes in the PlayStation 2 days, lots of people are going to be watching Dead to Rights: Retribution. I just saw it last night, and I could hardly believe some of the bloody shots I was seeing.
If you're just getting back into the Dead to Right swing, it's important to point out that this isn't a sequel to the previous games. Retribution is a franchise reboot that keeps the important stuff such as Jack, Shadow, and Grant City, but puts a bit off a spin on it. Jack's a vice cop and not a K-9 officer, Shadow isn't involved with the police department, and Grant City is one of the worst places on earth so that Jack can kill 200 bad guys and have it make sense.
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The first part of my demo began with Jack running into the centerpiece of the city, Temple Tower. See, Temple's this shining example of what the city could be with a mixture of old school architecture and modern style. It stands prominent in the city's skyline, has a replica of the city underneath it's entryway's glass floor, and is home to the premier Grant city news station. Anyway, there's a bunch of bad guys who have taken the building's occupants hostage; Jack had been arguing with a hostage negotiator about going in, but when a civilian became street pizza in front of the tiff, Jack just bolted in anyway.
This is the first level of the game and serves as the hand-to-hand tutorial. Punching, kicking, and taking foes down will be a huge part of the Retribution experience because ammo's going to be extremely limited. As you punch, block, and kick, you're going to need to use disarm takedowns to grab the enemy's gun so that you're not left with an empty clip. These takedowns/disarms are a simple one-button press; a little icon pops up depicting what move you could do if you like. Now, this all plays into the 360-degrees of combat moves you have to work with. See, the enemies aren't going to coming at you one on one; they're going to come at you in numbers, so Jack's packing the ability to punch or kick in any direction. If he's fighting someone in front of him and someone starts sneaking up from behind, a move of the joystick and a tap of either your quick or strong attack and you'll swing in that direction. Even if you're grappling with a dude -- a hold from which you can just wail on the bad guy -- you can pull off a mule kick to get rid of backdoor bandits or just hurl the guy you're holding into the other guy. Also, you can through people off the tower's balconies via the grapple, so you got that going for you.
Still, the stars of Jack's repertoire were his brutal takedowns. When you're punching or pulling off a "Blockbreaker" move to break an enemy's guard position, blood is spurting up in the air and out of people's moths and what not, but when you pull off one of Jack's serious takedowns, thing s get crazy. I saw one last night where the guy got disarmed, Jack shot him once in each leg to bring him to his knees, hit him back into the air with the gun, and then emptied the clip into the bad guy's chest. Another time, Jack pulled a bad guy to the ground, disarmed him mid-takedown, the guy opened his mouth to beg, and Jack put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
That's some excellent police work.
The second part of Retribution was the seventh chapter of the story. Here, Jack's severely hurt, so you play part of the level as Shadow. That's right; you play as the dog. The screen's packing a gray filter to mimic the canine's inability to see color, and you basically have two methods of attack. See, this is happening down at the docks and the Triads are patrolling the area. Shadow can either be super-sleuthy and bite the hell out of everyone or barrel in and bite the hell out of everyone. In Stalk Mode, Shadow can walk around the area without making a sound but will need to stick to the shadows and cover objects so as not to be seen. If Shadow gets the jump on someone, he can take the guy down silently -- Shadow will jump up, pull the bad guy to the ground by the neck, and bite the human over his mouth and nose so as to suffocate the poor bastard. If you're intent on staying stealthy, you can have Shadow drag the dead guy's corpse to a secluded area so as not to provoke anyone's interest; if the guy isn't dead yet, Shadow can shake him to an early grave.
Why, Shadow?!
If you're ready to go balls to the wall, Shadow can sprint at bad guys at 40 miles per hour and use his 200-pound doggie frame to take guys off their feet before latching onto their jugulars and causing streams of blood to pour out. When Shadow comes face to face with a foe, he bites the bad guy's hand and weapon to disarm him (sometimes causing you to have to tap a button to wrestle the weapon away) and then rips him down by his arm in a bloodbath.
Both sections of Dead to Rights: Retribution looked like bloody, bloody fun. Jack was bending arms the wrong way at the elbow, he was shooting places up in slow motion, a Namco Bandai representative told me that the developers spent 18 months honing the narrative, and Shadow owned fools left and right. The framerate wasn't up to snuff yet and the characters seemed a bit blocky, but there's still plenty of time to address those issues before the game ships in the fourth quarter of this year.
The kills are brutal, the story could be cool, and who doesn't like being a dog?
Screenshots
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