Of course, if you're into gratuitous gore for the sake of entertainment, there's certainty all that and Toto, too. Shadow, actually, your canine companion that adds a layer of novelty to what is otherwise a straight up, brain dead, cops & robbers shoot 'em up brawler.
As a four legged sidekick that seems to have studied Kung Fu - or maybe kickboxing - you can set the dog to attack bad guys at whim, mauling them and invariably chewing their throats out to death, if not something a little more tender to death. Shadow is also good for fetching a wide and exciting variety of mundane weapons scattered hither and yon if not dropped by a newly-throatless thug.
There's also opportunity to take direct control of Shadow for entire segments, which are mostly about stealth, Splinter Cell-style with some Batman/X-ray vision thrown in for good measure (Batdog?), the frequent occasion to throat-maul somebody from behind, skulk around, collect important stuff that might as well be Scooby snacks, and at least one occasion to strategically pee on command, as when some electrical generator needs to be shorted out.
Otherwise, you mostly play as Jack Slate, so named to suit all the other worn out action game conventions and ridiculous clichés rammed through the meat grinder and plopped onto disc. Really, Dead to Rights: Retribution is just another run-of-the-mill run n' gun n' beat 'em up game with a hopelessly puerile plot and trite dialogue made worse by bad acting and then made forgettable by big bangs, bigger kabooms and a damn cool Kung Fu dog.
Graphics are acceptably high def for the most part, just limited to a color palette ranging from brown to bland. Roughly-hewn characters models look dated, however, moving about with all the "life like" realism of a Robaxacet doll with a gun.
Add to that its fair share of bizarro game design elements, like pinpoint aiming from behind a box and blindfolded (figuratively, anyway) but wobbly, general vicinity aiming when facing a target dead on - not to mention the fact that any weapon scavenged on your way to a big bad boss battle might very well vanish from your arsenal with out notice nor reason - and you've got one long plod of a hackneyed game with the dial set on "gratuitous violence" and stuck there, probably because somebody peed on it.
Definitively worth renting for the dog and general shoot-a-rama fantastica, but Dead to Rights: Retribution is not a keeper, no how.
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
