2nd Op By

Gene Park 3.0 RATING

In 1978, 17 juvenile delinquents were taken into Rahway Prison in New Jersey. The program was called the Juvenile Awareness Project Help, and was documented by the film Scared Straight. The theory said that these teens would be scared straight into being law-upholding citizens, so long as they never have to go to prison. The project was unsuccessful, as research discovered that there was little change in the attitudes of the delinquents. In his review, Chi implied that Dead To Rights does not contain an accurate or meaningful portrait of prison. While he is right, the game left me scared straight. I am never playing this game again.

Dead To Rights is the latest in a trend of games that are given a mature rating while boasting that they truly live up to the label. Grand Theft Auto III, Max Payne and State Of Emergency are all games with themes darker than what youd find in Nintendos Super Mario Sunshine or Animal Crossing. This new wave of adult games has more in common than just sex and violence. None of them are truly mature. They are all what Chi refers to being "socially timid and comfortable cliches." An issue of Playboy magazine has more class than these games. They are mostly feeble attempts at acceptance in mass media that games can be mature.

It is often said that nothing is sacred. But apparently, many things are taboo in the world of videogames. GTA3 and Max Payne had to make up new names for drugs, instead of using heroin or cocaine. Dead To Rights is just as evasive. Sex is never mentioned, only implied. They wouldnt even go near homosexual gang rape. Like Hannibal Lecter from Silence Of The Lambs, the game peels the skin off everything mature from other sophisticated works of art, and wears that skin as a mask. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, Dead To Rights violence is trite, not enjoyable and says nothing about the human psyche. It says nothing in particular.

The most abysmal level of the game is the aforementioned prison level, which is an exercise in everything wrong about gaming. Where to start? It features repetitive fighting, terrible controls, incredibly limited but cheap artificial intelligence (fellow inmates dont know how to climb stairs or even travel outside the designated area they were programmed in), an excruciatingly long and pointless fetch quest, bad dialogue, repeated voice comments, stale graphics and a terrible camera. Now it wouldnt be so bad if this were the only level with these problems. The level is uniquely bad, for no other level repeats the same amalgamation of atrocities. However, the entire game is plagued with these problems.

When fighting hand to hand, you can throw your opponent, but it barely does any damage and doesnt hit other enemies. Even Capcoms ancient Final Fight allowed you to clear the screen of bad guys by throwing, giving the game some balance, making it plausible for one man to take on an entire army. When you do throw, you are left unable to move for a moment, while another person from behind can get a quick combo in. The combos get old quickly, especially since the enemies do exactly the same moves. The brawling is as awkward and stiff as GTA3s, but at least in that game you can just get in a car and run your foe over. Fighting in this game will make you wish youd get run over.

As Chi mentioned, the Hong Kong movie shooting sequences are the real eye-poppers of this game. The disarm animations are worth your time to unlock. They are particularly brutal, capping enemies in the head, chin, stomach and throat in a variety of complex maneuvers with simple button combinations. However, the targeting system is not only antiquated (especially after The Mark Of Kri), but flawed. It doesnt always target the person closest to you. You might be struggling with your hostage pointing at a sniper on top of a rig, while someone else will be emptying his shotgun into your brain right behind you. Even the disarm moves are practically useless. There are rarely any situations in the game where they may be of practical use. Youd have to take a couple of bullets just to use them, and even if you dont have weapons and use it to get one, other enemies surrounding you will politely wait until you finish the animation, then unload on you. Not only is it illogical, its also cheap.

The bullet-time dive is also impractical. While diving and shooting in slow motion might clear up the room, the bullets they fire still move at exactly the same speed. In Max Payne, the bullets moved at a slower speed, and being able to see the bullets themselves made you believe that time has really slowed down. Comparisons to Max Payne are unfair because this game was in production before Payne was released. However its embarrassing to have Dead To Rights be released after Payne, and still get nothing right that the previous game was able to pull off.

One thing that might be refreshing about Dead To Rights was how difficult it was. I havent played a game this hard in a long time. However, much of the difficult stems from poor design choices, like the uselessness of the dive or the cheap artificial intelligence. Many of the bosses are difficult not because they can out maneuver and out-smart you, but because their life bar is bigger than the previous boss, and they hit harder than the previous boss. Chi said the game is "depressingly regressive," and there isnt a better way to put it. There are games a decade old that do what this game cant.

Like Chi, Dead To Rights was a game I was anticipating for a long time because it had creative features like human shields, disarms, and was supposed to be a seamless blend of martial arts and gunplay. I wasnt expecting a meditation on violence and corruption in big cities, or any commentary on social issues like the death penalty. With the trend of unsophisticated mature games in the industry, I expected nothing more than a game that is artistically lacking, but will at least make up for it in the gameplay and invigorating action sequences. However, the game is poorly designed save for a few punctuating moments. With this lack of ambition in developers, Im not scared straight, just scared. Im scared about how long we might have to suffer embarrassing soulless examples of mature games before mature gamers realize they are being taken for a ride.

Disclaimer: This review is based on the Xbox version of the game.

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