The Double-A Team is a new feature series honouring the unpretentious, mid-budget, gimmicky commercial action games that no-one seems to make any more.

Double-A man doesn't reload. When he runs out of bullets, he throws his gun away and picks up a new one. Double-A man shoots with the A button, not the right trigger. Double-A man can't jump, but he can dive in slow motion. When he discovers his father's corpse, Double-A man doesn't cry, he thinks about revenge in a growling noir voiceover. Double-A man hangs out in back alleys, construction sites, prisons and seedy nightclubs. Double-A man says to the scantily clad girl, 'For God's sake, put on some clothes.' Double-A man's dog is a weapon.

“Dead to rights” is a reference to the 4th Table: a father had the right to life and death over his children ( patria potestas ). Interpreted by European law, Roman languages intertwined between Latin and Greek during this period of the development of civilian law. To be caught red-handed, in the very act of committing a crime or error. It implies that there is no possible way for a person to explain away their mistake.

As soon as Christian Donlan invoked Double-A man in his recent piece on Red Faction: Guerilla, we knew we wanted to return this forgotten, mostly extinct species of game: commercial games with simple hooks, middling budgets and modest ambitions, big enough to be mass market but small enough to be a bit trashy or weird. They're a kind of gaming we just don't get any more, and as dumb as they could be, we miss them. And what better place to start than with Namco's 2002 action potboiler, Dead to Rights?

Dead to Rights is the story of violent cop Jack Slate. Could you ask for a better Double-A man moniker than that? Jack Slate, two-fisted and stone hard. Slate and his K-9 unit (that's Double-A-man-speak for dog), Shadow, patrol the mean streets of Grant City, shooting up bad guys. One day, his father turns up dead at the end of a tutorial mission. Jack swears revenge, although it will doubtless bring the whole rotten edifice of Grant City - its sleazy crimelords and corrupt cops - down on him. That's the set-up, a broad but honest cliché that is established within seven minutes of booting the game up.

Where to play Dead to Rights

Amazingly, Dead to Rights is one of the handful of original Xbox games in the Xbox One backward-compatibility program - and it's Xbox One X enhanced, no less. Not all games we feature in The Double-A Team will be so easy to play now. It seems only to be available to buy digitally from the Xbox store in the US, but it will boot from disc in other regions, and I had no problem finding a box copy in very good condition for £4 on eBay.

This is one of the things we miss most about double-A games: there's a familiarised but somehow refreshing efficiency to them. You know where you are, because you've seen the movies the developers are ripping off, and also because they're not being precious about it. Dead to Rights is a bit John Woo, a bit Raw Deal, a bit cod-noir. The guy's got a dog with him, like in Due South, but it's violent instead of funny. Got it. Let's go.

The same's true of the game mechanics. There's a bit of cover shooting, a bit of Max Payne-style bullet time, you can use goons as human shields, and when your dog is charged up you can use him for an instant kill. (Brilliantly, you select him from your weapon list where he appears as a dog silhouette.) There's no aiming, you just lock on and blast away. There's nothing to craft or unlock. You pick up guns and you shoot them. Sometimes you have a basic, but not too sloppy fist fight, with a few waves of identical meatheads. (Double-A man doesn't need varied character models; he doesn't have time for seeing people as human beings. They are all just targets to him.) Did I mention you have a dog?

There's not a lot of depth there, but that doesn't mean there's no challenge, and there's no chaff either. The simplicity of the game means the developers can move through set-ups at a brisk lick. There are some hilariously throwaway mini-games; within the first 20 minutes of the game, you'll have picked a lock and done some pole-dancing. (Not as Jack; he's not that kind of guy.) 'Conquer key MINI-GAMES and unravel challenging puzzles within storyline context,' declaims the back of the box, which is the touching humility of double-A all over. We're going to have a few mini-games and puzzles, and they're actually going to fit the storyline, guys.

You can't say that Dead to Rights has aged well. It looks awful - frankly, much worse than its 17 years - and the time-to-stripper is astonishingly low. (Only a couple of minutes longer than the time-to-dead-dad.) But you can't quite say it has aged badly either. The dog gimmick is rather perfunctory, and is developed better in the game's sequels, but the violence in those games also takes on a more gratuitous and unpleasant tone. This one is so telegraphed and stylised, by necessity of its low budget and weak technology, it has a kind of primitive innocence to it.

That's what makes Dead to Rights funny to play now, but also lends it genuine charm. Its hard-boiled stylings might once have come across as macho posturing, but they're delivered with such naive sincerity that you can now almost believe they're a knowing self-parody. Improbably, the script is a delight. 'People aren't born here, they're forged out of broken bones and blood money,' rumbles Slate in voiceover over the intro. 'It was another grey autumn. The leaves were changing from go green to caution yellow. Pretty soon they'd be danger red. Then dead brown.'

That's the power of nostalgia, I suppose. It was a simpler time. But that is something video games sometimes seem to have forgotten these days: simple times can be good ones.

Dead to Rights: Retribution is a third-personaction video game. It is the reboot of the Dead to Rights franchise featuring Grant City police officer Jack Slate and his canine companion Shadow. Developed by Volatile Games and published by Namco Bandai Games under the Namco label for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.^[2][3]

Plot[edit]

The game begins with Jack collapsing on a dock after disembarking from a tugboat, and is confronted by members of the Grant City Triad, who intend to kill him as revenge for earlier events. Shadow, Jack's dog, brutally kills all of the Triad members who try to attack Jack on his way to a bar where he meets his friend, an EMT named Faith Sands, and goes into the story of what happened in the game. He flashes back to a terrorist takeover of Temple Tower, where he disobeys orders from Captain Inness and charges in, killing members of the Union gang, saving hostages and pursuing Riggs, the leader of the gang, to the roof where he escapes via a futuristic helicopter. Jack believes Riggs has military training after seeing how the Union were armed and organized. Jack is saved from Inness firing him by SWAT Captain Redwater, who is a friend of Jack and his father, Frank Slate, who takes Jack and Shadow to investigate a lead on Riggs. They discover plans and simulated versions of the Temple Tower studio, and are drawn into a gunfight when Redwater arrives with the SWAT.

After holding out until more SWAT teams arrive, Frank and Jack pursue Riggs and a Triad member, splitting up to do so. Jack succeeds in arresting the Triad, but finds Frank mortally wounded nearby. Faith arrives and tries to save Frank, but fails, and Jack storms off after beating up the Triad brutally and goes to find out why his father was killed. He stops an attempted Triad bombing at Grant City Central, defeats their leader, Tseng, in hand-to-hand combat, and then returns to the area where his father was killed. He discovers that Riggs is a member of the newly formed GAC (Grant City Anti Crime Unit), which was formed by Julian Temple and now approved by the city to deal with crime in ways that go against standard ethics and protocol. Jack fights his way past GAC soldiers and destroys GAC dropships, but is knocked out by Redwater, who kills Riggs after hearing a recorded conversation between Temple and Riggs, who plot to kill Redwater. Jack manages to escape the slowly rising dropship he and Redwater are on, and Redwater's fate is left unknown when the C4 Jack attached to the ship detonates while being tossed away by Redwater.

The game picks up at the bar, where Jack reveals that he detects Faith has deceived him, and she admits she was persuaded by the GAC to help locate him. Faith is wounded by a sniper, and Jack manages to evacuate her on a helicopter she called before being shot, and is dropped off at Temple Tower, where he arrests Temple, who tries to bribe him into letting him go by revealing that Redwater killed Frank, choosing to follow his father's way instead of killing Temple in cold blood. He takes Temple to the precinct he and his father work at, and discovers all regular and SWAT officers have been imprisoned for resisting GAC control. Jack imprisons Temple and frees the officers, who help to free the precinct and call patrol officers back to fight off attacking GAC troops-with help from Captain Inness, who is now glad to work Jack's way and even sends out the transmission to call for backup. Jack takes a dead GAC soldier's armor and sneaks into the GAC Alpha Base in a rundown hospital on an island. He manages to make a distraction that lets the GCPD storm the base while Jack provides sniper cover for Inness, Shadow, and a SWAT team that manages to break into the main area. Jack helps to fight off multiple GAC troops and then pursues Redwater.

Jack takes control of a GAC Tank Armor and fights his way through dozens of GAC while furiously arguing with Redwater, offering him the chance to surrender like Frank would have done. Redwater refuses, stating that he did what he did for the good of the city and that Frank never would have understood, and Jack responds by fighting his way through a group of snipers as he chases Redwater on foot to a lighthouse. Darksiders warmastered edition trainer. Redwater tries to kill Jack with a mounted machine gun, but Shadow bites Redwater's arm only to be wounded, forcing Jack to proceed alone and unarmed against Redwater, who cuts Jack across the eye with a knife and leaves a scar. Jack and Redwater fight, stealing the knife from each other repeatedly, until Jack stabs Redwater fatally, which results in him falling to his death. The game ends with Jack and Faith attending Frank's funeral, and Jack is left to look out at Grant City with Shadow next to him, promising his father he will be with him soon.

Reception[edit]

Retribution received 'mixed' reviews on both platforms according to video game review aggregatorMetacritic.^[20][21] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of one seven, one eight, and two sevens, for a total of 29 out of 40.^[7]

The Daily Telegraph gave the Xbox 360 version a score of seven out of ten and said, 'We all need a Die Hard every now and then, and that’s exactly the kind of spirit Retribution evokes.'^[18] 411Mania gave the same console version 6.9 out of 10, saying that calling it 'a game that is just kind of there, and in this day and age, just being there is no longer enough.'^[22]The Escapist gave the same console version three stars out of five, saying, 'Other than the presence of your canine sidekick, there is absolutely nothing in Dead to Rights: Retribution that hasn't been done before (and probably better) in other games.'^[19] However, The A.V. Club gave the PS3 version a C−, saying, 'The executions are designed to provide a was-it-good-for-you catharsis. They don’t. They come off as juvenile and obscene. Whatever shock value they might have wears off almost instantly, transforming the game’s supposed 'money-shot' into something pedestrian and tedious.'^[23]

References[edit]

1. ^Robert Purchese (18 March 2010). 'Dead to Rights Retribution dated'. Eurogamer.
2. ^Brian Ekberg (28 April 2009). 'Dead to Rights Retribution First Look'. GameSpot. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
3. ^Brian Crecente (25 February 2009). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution Coming This Year'. Kotaku. Retrieved 29 April 2009.
4. ^Joseph Leray (20 May 2010). 'Review: Dead to Rights: Retribution (X360)'. Destructoid. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
5. ^ ^abEdge staff (May 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution'. Edge (214): 97.
6. ^Dan Whitehead (23 April 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution (X360)'. Eurogamer. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
7. ^ ^abcBrian (30 June 2010). 'Famitsu review scores'. Nintendo Everything. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
8. ^ ^abJeff Cork (June 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution: Jack Is Back In A Reboot We Didn't Know We Needed'. Game Informer (206): 96. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
9. ^Tae K. Kim. 'Dead to Rights: Retribution (X360)'. GamePro. Archived from the original on 29 April 2010. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
10. ^ ^abJosh Laddin (6 May 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution Review'. Game Revolution. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
11. ^ ^abChris Watters (29 April 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
12. ^'Dead to Rights: Retribution Review (PS3)'. GameTrailers. 28 April 2010. Archived from the original on 12 May 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
13. ^ ^abDakota Grabowski (15 May 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution Review'. GameZone. Archived from the original on 18 May 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
14. ^ ^abJeff Gerstmann (27 April 2010). 'Dead to Rights Review'. Giant Bomb. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
15. ^ ^abGreg Miller (27 April 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution Review'. IGN. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
16. ^'Dead to Rights: Retribution'. Official Xbox Magazine: 83. July 2010.
17. ^'Review: Dead to Rights: Retribution'. PlayStation: The Official Magazine: 80. July 2010.
18. ^ ^abTom Hoggins (5 May 2010). 'Dead to Rights: Retribution video game review (X360)'. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
19. ^ ^abJohn Funk (13 May 2010). 'Review: Dead to Rights: Retribution (X360)'. The Escapist. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
20. ^ ^ab'Dead to Rights: Retribution for PlayStation 3 Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
21. ^ ^ab'Dead to Rights: Retribution for Xbox 360 Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
22. ^Todd Vote (17 May 2010). 'Dead To Rights: Retribution (Xbox 360) Review'. 411Mania. Archived from the original on 15 January 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
23. ^Scott Jones (3 May 2010). 'Dead To Rights: Retribution (PS3)'. The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on 6 May 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2016.

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]

• Dead to Rights: Retribution at MobyGames