If there's one thing the NGC misses, it must be brute force action games with adult content. The smart and friendly people over at Namco must have realised this too. After all, despite what Nintendo seems to think, gaming isn't just for kids.

Enter Grant City, hometown of a whole bunch of bad people and the K9 officer Jack Slate (and his canine partner Shadow). One night Jack is called up to go to a construction yard as he is riding in his patrol car. When arriving at the crimescene he meets villanous construction people and shoots them all but when he discovers what he was called in for, he's in for a true nightmare: the victim was his own father. Jack can't let the case go to another cop and rides out to find who killed his father and why.

The game involves lots of action in different scenes: Jack finds himself in places like a strip joint (followed by a chase trough the streets) and even has to perform a jailbreak (where most of the convicts know he's a cop, so they don't like him very much).

Aside from lots of firearms Jack can deal out some strong punches and kicks to get rid of his enemies who aren't shy of coming at him in bunches of 5 or more. The strangest weapon he has is his dog Shadow: Shadow can attack enemies or even help him solve puzzles. This is a weird bonus to the game. The last time I remember seeing a dog as a weapon was in a Shinobi game on the Megadrive, so this brings back sweet memories, and that's always a good thing *snirf*.

So, how is the action? It's fast: you enter rooms filled with oodles of enemies and you can choose how to take them out. You can walk in Hong-Kong movie style and start blasting at evertything that moves (prefferably with slow-motion dives and such) or you can blow up stuff like fire extinguishers and blast the gangsters to the afterlife with the explosions you create. I have to say that this isn't always the best way to get past enemies, because you'll find yourself dying pretty fast in some situations. No no, sometimes you have to take cover, lure your enemies toward you, lurk around corners, use shadow etc.

The hand to hand combat reminds of double dragon (or streets of rage :D). Bad guys walk over to you and you give them a beating in various ways. This too is a good thing. Jack can disarm enemies or even use them as a human shield to get past enemy firepower.

The game isn't always about action though: there's also the puzzles to be solved and the minigames to be mastered. At the strip joint, you have to make one of the girls dance to a beat to distract the security people. Very nice indeed. Combine this with quests like looking for packs of cigarettes to "buy" stuff in jail and you'll feel like you have a goal inbetween kicking the crap out of your enemies.

Let's be fair though: the game is rather arcade like. The levels are big, but you don't get lost easily: there are lots of doors and areas that are inaccessible, so despite the illusion of walking arounf in a city the game is pretty linear. The enemy AI isn't spectacular either and they all look pretty much the same per "area" (which adds to the streets of rage/double dragon feeling).

This brings me to the graphics: the intro movie is pretty nice but the ingame graphics seem a bit too low detailed for a game in this day and age. When characters speak their mouths don't move and they all look like low-poly models (maybe that's what they are). The levels are really various so you won't get bored by having to look at the same stuff all the time.

Every scene has it's own music too, but I quickly turned it off and put in some music of my own. I tend to do this more often with Nintendo games, because their background music can become very annoying after a while.

Jack always seems to find time to say stuff like "I have to take these guys down" troughout the game. And his enemies have one liners too, but sometimes you can overhear people talking about something interesting and important, so don't turn off the speech :D

What bothered me most about the game was the camera at certain points. Usually you have a free camera which you can control with the C-stick. This is good. But fixed camera: NO! When will they learn that in 3D games fixed
cameras usually don't work well: you'll find yourself running against walls and railings alot when the fixed camera comes in. In the end, all these "negative" points don't really matter: Dead To Rights is a fun game to play that's dynamic enough to keep you interested. The storyline isn't going to win a pulitzer prize but it is something to keep you going. If you love arcade style action, this game is for you.