You may have heard Dead To Rights being compared to Max Payne due to its third-person perspective, double-pistol toting shooter action, use of bullet time and sometime detective novel allusions. Well yeah, DTR contains similar elements to that game but it also borrows from a myriad of action titles and throws together a varied mix of different combat styles, sometimes altogether in the same level, or chapter as they're known here. You can cut loose running and gunning down large numbers of enemies using a large range of weapons, you can duck behind walls and lean out momentarily taking out heavily armed adversaries and you can engage in hand-to-hand combat in situations where you're hopelessly outnumbered. In fact unless you're facing off against one of the 16 or so bosses you're nearly always hopelessly outnumbered but somehow you'll nearly always seem to make it through even if it's only by the skin of your teeth!

In DTR you play K9 cop Jack Slate who finds his father murdered while investigating a case in the very first (training) level of the game. Enraged and against direct orders Jack immediately sets out to find the murderer and avenge his father's death. Unfortunately for him, it seems every bad guy he's ever managed to upset is out to get him and Jack soon finds himself framed for the murder of the crooked businessman he believed killed his father. Publicly disgraced and thrown onto death row for a crime he didn't commit Jack begins to suspect there's much more going on in the seedy underbelly of Grant City than meets the eye so he devises a plan to escape and embarks on finding out who actually did kill his father and why. What he finds out as the game progresses takes him through a trail of corruption at high civic levels and it seems he can't trust anyone around him as the plot unfolds.

The story is actually a fairly decent one with some nice twists and turns and it's enough to make you want to keep slogging through the 15 chapters to find out the conclusion. However it's also pretty heavily drenched in action movie cliché and some may find it a little predictable. Think of any Hollywood and in particular Hong Kong action movie where the odds are unbelievably stacked against the gun-toting hero and you'll already have a pretty good idea of the plot and action in DTR.

But ahhh, the action! What DTR may lack in originality or finesse it more than makes up for with sheer weight of varied combat action. In fact some may even go as far as to say there's just too many damn ways to dispatch of the cannon fodder constantly throwing themselves in front of you. We on the other hand certainly don't sniff at the opportunity to be spoilt by choice! In DTR you'll be engaging in lots of hand-to-hand combat using punches, kicks and throws and have the ability to block incoming blows and counter grabs from opponents. In the midst of a group of attackers there's also the handy backfist you can chuck in to fend off the guys behind you.

Then there's the shooting - mostly running around with all manner of pistols, shotguns and automatic weaponry taking out enemies left, right, and centre and never stopping to reload! Instead enemy weapons drop to the ground and can simply be picked up and added to your arsenal or be used to top up ammo supplies as you run across them. This really keeps the action flowing and at times it can be a real non-stop rampage. Now chuck in the added bonus of using your loyal (and for some reason invisible till required) canine sidekick Shadow to disarm (read: viciously & fatally maul) opponents and bring their weapons to you plus the ability to pick up conveniently placed gas canisters that can be lobbed at enemies, targeted and shot with explosive result and we're talking carnage smorgasbord. And we haven't quite finished yet either!

A couple of the more interesting combat features in DTR are the use of human shields and the disarms. If you find yourself grossly outnumbered (usual scenario) and a little exposed to enemy fire, no sweat - just grab a hold of the nearest bad guy in a headlock and use him as a human shield to take all the enemy fire while you continue spraying the lead with your free hand! Once he's served his purpose he'll either be killed by his own comrades or you can simply put the poor guy out of his misery yourself by popping a cap into his skull or back. It's all pretty cold-blooded - just the way we like it! Disarms are pretty cool in that there are a large number of different ways that you can seize a weapon from nearby enemies for yourself while delivering a dramatic deathblow. Basically you start with one or two moves in your repertoire but after performing two disarms on each level you can unlock more. This adds a nice touch to replay value as you can go back through the game a second time specifically to try and unlock all the disarms and use them.

Controls are pretty intuitive and streamlined and what at first seems like a complex list of commands soon becomes second nature. The D-pad is used to quickly scroll through your inventory/arsenal and when shooting you auto-target foes with the R1 button while firing with X. For more precise shots R2 can be used to manually target. The bullet time effect is achieved by pressing the triangle button which makes Jack dive in slow-motion in the direction you've chosen with the left analogue stick. Diving depletes your adrenaline bar which is built up by your normal killing sprees and although it's not something you'll probably do a lot of during the game it can sometimes be quite effective in whittling down some of the bosses. While diving with a gun you can change weapons and switch targets in mid-flight plus fire off a massive amount of ordinance in the short space of slowed-down time! During hand-to-hand combat X is used to punch, square to kick and circle to grapple for a throw. Simultaneously pressing square and X will produce the backfist and R1 brings your arms up in front of you to block enemy blows.

While we're still on a positive note we should mention here also that gameplay in the PS2 (and GameCube) version has received some minor tweaks since the original Xbox release. The earlier build was criticised by many as being extremely difficult but this has been addressed and difficulty, whilst still quite tough in places, appears more balanced here with a choice of several levels to suit individual requirements. The number of rather tedious mini-games included are also supposedly more balanced, slightly less in number and a little more integrated into gameplay. After playing through a few of these though you'll just be wishing they'd included more combat scenes as the mini-games are mostly just a waste of time (in our opinion) and do absolutely nothing to enhance gameplay. Something we should praise Namco for though is their skill in keeping load times right down so as to get us back in the action quickly as it could easily have been a lot longer given the amount of visual content in some sections of the game.

That's a few of the good points but unfortunately DTR is far from perfect and there's a few downsides which we feel could have been addressed to improve the overall game. Firstly the AI, whilst quite good in places, is just a bit dodgy a lot of the time. Rather than acting together to try and take you down, large groups of enemies will just stand around attacking you one-by-one making it easier to wade through them than it should have been. Also, despite the shooting sections being generally quite enjoyable, the very nature of the game in throwing wave after wave of enemies at you becomes repetitive and tedious after a while. In other words it just ends up being more of the same level after level in between the bosses. Chucking in the earlier-mentioned mini-games to try and break things up a little really does nothing at all to improve this.

There are also minor issues with the camera in-game. Movement tends to swing out a little too wide a lot of the time when you're in one of the many tight spots and you'll be manually adjusting it constantly to try and see where off-screen enemies are. Also it could be argued that a more user-friendly default camera angle favouring an optimal gameplay view would be better than one that goes for a cool cinematic look. Generally though it works fine and has been much worse in other similar games.

Longevity's a debatable issue with DTR. If you just want to get through the game beating each level to get to the end as quickly as possible you can actually finish it on easy in around 8 hours of frantic button smashing. However, the difficulty does ramp up somewhat with each setting and it'll take you decidedly longer on a higher one with some of the toughest sections being seemingly impossible. Unlocking the different disarm manoeuvres will give some people enough reason to play it through again though as will the odd time when the mates drop around for a nosey at all the carnage.

Visually DTR is a funny mix. Our initial reaction upon firing the game up was that the graphics looked "ok" but were a little "rough around the gills". That is there's a fair amount of detail here and there, explosions look nice, blood sprays around all over the place and a lot of the FMV sequences and action animations are done very well but it can leave you feeling that this is early PS2 graphics dragged into the present day. As we mentioned earlier DTR was initially to have been released mid-2002 and we think it shows - there's certainly been a fair few titles released since then that have been far superior lookers.

Notable sore points visually are the very blocky looking erotic(?!) dancer in the early strip club level (also by far containing the absolute worst mini-game ever!), nice reflective pools of water that don't ripple at all when you move through them and the fact that your ever-present best friend Shadow is urrrrr, well, "never" present! The PS2 version is definitely the poorer cousin to the Xbox and GameCube ones visually too with more noticeable aliasing plus it just can't match the Xbox's higher res and fancier texture mapping and lighting effects.

Luckily we reckon DTR has it fairly well covered soundwise. Nothing exceptionally better than any other game in the genre but Jack's voice is suitably tough and he has some nicely scripted lines as do a lot of his opponents. Sure there's the odd bad voice-over but what game doesn't have those? Music fits the game well and blends nicely with the cinematic feel of a lot of the camerawork but it's the loud, realistic weapon sounds that you'll be hearing the most of and what adds oodles to the game's largely non-stop action movie ambience.