Dead to Rights: Reckoning

We're no experts, but we've seen enough Tarantino movies to know that even if you were laughed out of sniper school, it doesn't usually take more than a handful of bullets to kill a man. And call us perspicacious – we've heard worse – but years of watching war films have also led us to notice that machine guns tend to prove a more effective means of summoning the Grim Reaper than a simple pistol.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning, however, challenges both of the above notions. Not only that, it also fires against established video game convention that states a player's weapons should improve the further you get into a game.

This, we suspect, is not intentional.

It's also not the game's main problem. Indeed, from the moment the first cut-scene leads you into the action, there's a sense that all is not as it should be. The lack of speech and therefore necessary reliance on subtitles to narrate the story may not sound (ahem) like much, but it has a devastating effect on atmosphere. Combined with the lacklustre and relentless soundtrack, it effectively leaves the game with no dramatic tension to speak of.

By far the best example of this is the plot twist at the end of the game that under normal circumstances would raise at least a smirk, but here just ends up being a pause before the shooting resumes.

And shooting is perhaps Reckoning's biggest problem – somewhat crucial as it forms the core of the play experience. Aside from the aforementioned peculiarity of it requiring some 20 Uzi bullets at point blank range to down an opponent when three slugs from your standard issue revolver will usually do the trick, the game features an auto-aim system assigned to the R button that has a remarkable tendency to lock onto the target you least want to blast at the most inopportune moment. It's almost as if it's deliberately working against you.

Thankfully, the game isn't particularly hard on the standard difficulty setting and there's usually enough health and body armour packs to pick up, even if their distribution within the game world isn't always as well thought out as it could have been. Still, the levels tend to be of a suitable length for pocket gaming, and the short loading times are definitely welcome.

That is more than can be said of the repetitive action. It goes a lot like this: enter a new area; a wave of baddies turns up; they shoot; you shoot; they fall; the second wave comes in; you shoot; they die; then you're allowed to kick a door open and do this all again in a different setting. Even the boss battles follow a disappointingly set pattern.

Yes, there is some variety in the way Jack, your character, can dive in bullet time during tricky shoot-outs and dispose of disappointingly dumb enemies without taking damage. And the ability to disarm nearby villains (triggering particularly violent – if inventive – slo-mo sequences showing Jack removing an opponent's weapon) offers a little strategy.

But that move is ultimately constrained due to the fact that any remaining scumbags will keep shooting while Jack thinks up a new way of blowing the baddie's brain out with their own firearm. As a result, you either perform it on the last man standing or you trust the game's inadequate camera system (most problematic during indoor segments, to be fair) to have accurately shown you're dealing with a lone gunman. Which kind of defeats the purpose.

The only genuine tactical option is Shadow, your trusted canine sidekick. At the touch of a button he'll gnaw with gusto on the jugular of the felon of your choice, and the nearer you get to the end credits the more you rely on his skill (which, understandably, can only be used when the 'Shadow gauge' is full).

As you make your way there, the game scores each level according to certain parameters, such as time taken, accuracy and so on, presumably to encourage replay interest. And if every moment involved the excitement of kicking down a door, diving into a room in slow motion and taking out three gangsters before rolling back onto your feet and disarming another while Shadow takes out the remaining villain, we'd load up another slice of John Woo action just as soon as the credits faded.

But alas, there's no Hollywood ending here. The reality is that once you finish Dead to Rights: Reckoning, not even the prospect of a four-player wi-fi deathmatch game will have you coming back for more.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning is on sale now.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning

Like some of its weapons, Dead to Rights: Reckoning makes a lot of fuss but doesn't perform anywhere near as effectively as you'd hope.
Score
Joao Diniz Sanches
Joao Diniz Sanches
With three boys under the age of 10, former Edge editor Joao has given up his dream of making it to F1 and instead spends his time being shot at with Nerf darts. When in work mode, he looks after editorial projects associated with the Pocket Gamer and Steel Media brands.