This is the city
"Dead to Rights" does boast a well-constructed story line, worthy of an above-average John Woo-style flick. Officer Jack Slate is a hardworking cop from the tough-as-nails metropolis of Grant City. Unfortunately, Slate and his faithful police dog Shadow get caught up in a twisted web of underworld deception. In rapid succession, Slate finds himself framed for his own father's murder. Seizing the moment and some lucky breaks, he intends to clear his name and take revenge using the classic action hero method of killing every criminal in town.

Things get twistier from there, as Slate learns the true nature of Grant City's underworld power structure, and where all the pieces fit. Namco full-motion- video sequences are typically good, and the computer-generated sequences in "Dead to Rights" are no exception. Extremely well-done FMV sequences occasionally pop up to illustrate key events in the narrative. Unfortunately, the graphical goodness begins and ends with them.

"Honey, you got real ugly."
"Dead to Rights" is not a pretty game by current standards. The low-quality texture work and muddy visuals would be surprising to see on a PS2 game, let alone an Xbox title. While animation and motion capture is smooth, the character models and environments simply don't do them justice. The lack of graphical punch detracts heavily from certain sequences, particularly in-engine cutscenes. A minigame early in the game shifts the player's control to a female friend of Slate's. She then performs an "erotic" dance to distract some guards to help our hero. It attempts to be titillating, but is instead flatly ridiculous due to the ugly visuals.

The sound and music fare far better than graphics. Most sound effects center around gunfire and explosions, and they do their jobs well. Each gun has a distinct sound assigned to it, and you can often tell just what your enemies are packing by listening to the shots. "Dead to Rights" does make effective use of silence, punctuated by dramatic music cues during shootout and fights. The dynamic music fits nicely with the action-heavy game design, and feels straight out of a shoot 'em up cop movie.

Guns aim themselves
It's in the gameplay department that "Dead to Rights" loses the most points. There's a lot going on in this game, with multiple gameplay styles mixed together and spread out among the fifteen chapters of the story. The main draw is the shooting action, which isn't nearly as similar to "Max Payne" as some would have you believe.

"Dead to Rights" relies almost exclusively on an autotargeting system for firearms combat, and this is where the problem lies. While a headshot would lead to a quick, clean kill, you don't have that kind of control over Jack's aiming. All you can do is lock on an enemy and use the color-coded reticle to decide whether you have a good shot or not. Want to switch targets? You'll have to tap the right trigger button repeatedly and hope that you manage to zero in on the guy who's shooting you in the head from off-camera.

This autotargeting clumsiness makes life exceptionally difficult, despite the large number of tricks you can pull to help your odds of survival. Slate can take bad guys hostage and use them as shields, send Shadow to bite thugs to death, and throw handy explosive canisters to help clear a room in a hurry. If you're caught without a gun, there are many cool disarm maneuvers that can be executed to rearm yourself. Unfortunately, opportunities to use the disarm are few and far between. More often you'll find yourself up against a wall of thugs with seemingly much better autoaim than yours. Expect to repeat sections over and over to the point of irritation.

In the less trigger-happy sections of the game, "Dead to Rights" becomes a hand-to-hand beat 'em up. The fighting system used in these stages is utterly devoid of any complexity or fun. Since Slate can only hit enemies directly in front of him, using sweeping kicks or other supposedly crowd-clearing moves is futile. Thus, gameplay is reduced to hammering the punch button until the tedious fighting stage ends. The fisticuffs are so clunky that this aspect of the game almost feels unfinished.

The inane minigames that pop up far too frequently are no better. Along with the aforementioned stripper dance, you'll end up weightlifting, arm wrestling, and hotwiring cars. All of these are accomplished through button-mashing and tend to stop the game dead in its tracks. Most are mercifully brief, and the 3D-maze game that must be completed to disarm a bomb in later chapters is rather good, although overused.

Dead in the water
"Dead to Rights" has at its core several great concepts that were never realized to their full potential in the final product. Between the dull punchfests, the insanely accurate enemies, and the extra difficulty created by forcing the player to rely on autotargeting, completing "Dead to Rights" quickly becomes an act of will. Considering the quality of the presentation of the story, it's unfortunate that the gameplay falls so short of the mark. Those really starving for a crime-story action game may want to give "Dead to Rights" a rental, but in the crowded months ahead, there will undoubtedly be better games on which to spend your hard-earned money.