Thursday, September 1, 2005
Officer Jack Slate has to deal with a life-threatening situation: a mystery man has kidnapped a teenage girl and it's up to Slate to get her back safely. So how does one of Grant City's finest go about defusing this delicate matter? Simple, he recruits his bloodthirsty K-9, Shadow, and proceeds to kill everyone. This is where we find ourselves at the outset of Namco's new 3rd person shooter, Dead to Rights: Reckoning, for the Sony PSP.
Previous installments of the franchise have featured brutal disarms, loads of gunplay, simplistic hand-to-hand combat, a multitude of minigames, and a sky high body count. This installment features all of the above, minus the miningames. A distraction that, more often than not bordered on annoyance, the minigames did at least offer a break in the hectic "kill everything that moves" motto even if they happened a little too often. Not here though, Reckoning is quite literally all killer, no filler.
The first level finds Slate searching for clues outside a biker bar. Naturally, things take a turn for the worst and it's time to let the bullets fly. This stage doubles as the game's in-game tutorial. The tutorial works well, largely because it doesn't interrupt gameplay to explain simple actions like crouching or shooting.
The controls themselves are similar to the Playstation 2 version. Weapons are selected with the D pad and fired with the X button, Triangle calls up bullet-time, and Circle summons Shadow. The only shortcoming of this set up is the lock-on aiming feature with the R button. There's no way to change targets without releasing and then pressing the button again. This causes Slate to aim at enemies that are sometimes at the opposite end of level while your intended target is no more than three feet from your face. It's more than a little frustrating, especially when you repeatedly face a small army of thugs from all sides.
Once you've learned how to control your supercop you make your way through the seedy underbelly of Grant City until you've finally uncovered the shocking truth behind the girl's abduction. The first few levels move along rather briskly, but after awhile you start to notice a three-step pattern: (1.) Kill everyone in an area and a door becomes unlocked. (2) Proceed through the door. (3.) Repeat. That's the recipe to the entire game.
Namco does make attempts at complexity. There is a combo system that rewards points for dispatching a string of enemies within a small frame of time, but the problem with this system is the points (which unlock secret multiplayer skins and levels) are way too easy to amass without any considerable skill.
The bosses are also flimsy and can all be defeated the same way. Simply use Shadow to knock them down rendering them helpless and then shoot them until they're dead. Hard, huh?
Graphically the game looks pretty good, the Narrows of Grant City look dirty and depleted. The Mansion and courtyard in one of the later levels does some nice things with lighting. The character models aren't teeming with detail, but they get the job done. The only major problem with the visuals isn't really the game's fault. The PSP's low refresh rate causes a lot of the textures and movements to leave tracer polygons a phenomenon commonly called "ghosting". It's not a major problem, but it is noticeable.
The last minor gripe I'll raise is the camera. It's just too close to Slate, and there's no real way to reposition it. Pressing the R button places it behind you if you're stationary and if you stand still long enough it will do it for you, but in a game with as many firefights as this one, those moments are few and far between.
The game does score high marks for doing two very important gameplay features very well. The simple control set up make it easy for anyone, whether they've played any of the games or not, to pick up the game and play well. It's also entertaining, even if on a base level. Killing hordes of generic goons with bullet time, ironic disarms, and a throat ripping dog is just good old fashioned fun, at least for a little while.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to counter the game's two largest flaws. Reckoning is hurt the most by repetitive gameplay and a completion time that clocks in a just a hair over two hours. Let me repeat that. This 40 dollar game is good for about a two hour single player mode.
There are other issues (camera, controls, easy bosses, and a over simplified combo system), but they can be dealt with, the only way to make the game longer is to turn on your PSP and hide it somewhere. Jack Slate sums up the gaming experience best with his final words, "Everyone is dead. It's over."
Graphics: A-
Sound: B-
First Play: C+
Last Play: C-
Gameplay: D+
Overall: 68% D+
