Dead to Rights

Dead to Rights is a neo-noir third-person action video game developed by Namco Hometek. It was released in 2002 as a timed exclusive for the Xbox, and released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube followed thereafter. A year after its console debut, the game was released for Microsoft Windows. It was followed by Dead to Rights II in 2005, Dead to Rights: Reckoning for the PSP, also in 2005, and Dead to Rights: Retribution on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010. Gameplay Dead to Rights makes use of bullet time (a mechanism used mostly in the Max Payne series), a popular gameplay mechanic of the time. The game advertises itself as drawing inspiration from Hong Kong action cinema, i.e. gun fu. The player is sometimes accompanied by Shadow, a canine partner who can attack enemies on command, and who will automatically kill whatever enemy he's aimed at and then bring the player whatever the enemy was carrying (to keep the dog from being too powerful, his attack can only be used when a meter for it fills up). In some puzzle sections, the player actually takes direct control of Shadow to reach areas that the human character cannot. Plot Jack Slate is a police officer partnered with his K-9 unit, Shadow. The two patrol Grant City, a metropolis seemingly populated with more criminals than honest citizens. One night while on a routine patrol, Jack responds to a call at a construction zone, only to find his own father murdered. In pursuit of his father's killer, Jack is led through a labyrinth of crime and corruption. He is eventually framed for another murder by the corrupt police chief Richard "Dick" Hennesey, in a bid to stop Jack before he undermines the status quo. After seven months in prison, Jack escapes from imprisonment by putting battery acid on the electric chair wires and hunts down Hennesey, clearing away the city's crime lords in the process. He first gets clothes at the apartment he was framed at and goes to Chinatown for information. There he battles Fat Chow and his goons and interrogates Marvin Silt, a goon who tried to run him down outside the prison before a woman named Eve Adams murders Silt. Eve is able to identify the assassin who was hired to frame Jack and the two have to battle Fat Chow and his goons again, with Jack killing Fat Chow before they are able to escape.