Review:
Dead to Rights: Retribution

I've never personally imagined what it would be like to see through the eyes of a dog - one of the many reasons that I wasn't tempted into playing ‘Dog's Life’ on the PS2. So I wasn't too sure what to expect as I took up the controls as a lustrous noble Alaskan Malamute; arguably one of the proudest and most revered canine breeds... as it goes on a vicious rampage, ripping out the throats of teen gang members in a spray of claret.

Yet, within a minute and a half into Dead to Rights: Retribution's prologue, that is what I am doing. Another few minutes and the cute little mutt has broken several necks, torn off faces and frantically but deliberately clawed his way into a man's chest. A short cut scene plays of a van arriving and as a man gets out (I assume he's a bad guy, the van arrived alongside a great sense of foreboding, if not, I've completely ruined his day) my plucky avatar runs up and digs his teeth deep into his crotch in a cloud of red mist, shaking him until he goes limp. This earns me the dubious 'achievement' of... Scrotality.

I could continue in this vein, producing a large and ever increasing list of gut wrenching set pieces that would make James Wan wince, but I think I should probably move on...

So I’ll start at the beginning.

In a bold move, Namco decided to reboot a franchise that nobody was particularly screaming out for in the DTR series. This was a series that started out in 2002, followed by 2 prequels for the PSP and 6th generation consoles in 2005. I vaguely remember playing the original on the GameCube but abandoning it due to it’s fiendish difficulty, and I can recall being aware of the prequels’ release but general interest in the series was already beginning to wane.

Teaming up with Volatile Games, a division of the studio that brought us “Bratz the Movie: The Game” (Ugh), “Bad Boys: Miami Takedown” (Uugghh) and “Glover” (all is forgiven), they produced this new instalment in the series with an edgy sounding subtitle and a killer tagline: “Grant City is infected with crime and corruption. You are the shock treatment”.