This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning is Namco’s straightforward action game for the PSP, offering cinematic disarmament scenes and slow-motion dives as the basis for entertainment. It’s got a detective, an obedient dog, and lots of bad guys with big guns to care of. This may sound like a plain formula for success, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to screw up something this basic. Four words: repetitiveness, camera, and controls. You already know where this one’s going.



The story in Reckoning is just as plain as its gameplay formula. You’re Jack Slate, a typical cop, and you’ve just received a small photograph and a note informing you that if you don’t come to the local warehouse/biker hideout then the girl in the picture is going to die. Naturally you grab a gun and your favorite puppy and head to save the mysterious hostage that potentially doesn’t exist – am I right? Don’t ask me how it’s possible, but somehow the game’s storyline manages to connect everything together, even if it’s done shabbily.

As you’ll gather from the two-minute training level the first time you delve into the game, Reckoning is all about two actions: targeting and shooting. Thankfully the controls for this are simple, accurate, and functional. The analog stick maneuvers Jack around, the R button targets, the X button shoots, and the circle button disarms/opens doors. You can perform a normal dive via a tap of triangle, but you’ll have to hold the button down for the slow-motion variety; if you’re halfway through a slow-motion dive and are ready to pick up speed, merely press triangle again to return to normal. Of course Namco couldn’t let you take too much advantage of this special ability, so you can only use it when the adrenaline gauge has enough juice. The majority of this is pretty moot, though, as the bulk of the gameplay has you tapping R to switch between targets and then proceeding to pound the X button until Jack is the last man standing. You do this, presumably, so a green marker feels safe enough to display itself so you know where to go to hit the circle button for the next stretch of thugs.

Namco included Shadow, Slate’s lethal companion, to twist things up a bit. When targeting an opponent, press the square button and Shadow runs a man down, tackling him and then leaving him a bloody, broken mess. For a lovely cinematic touch, you can even toggle the camera around with the analog stick to get a more grisly view. To keep players from working the poor dog to death (and I certainly would), Namco also included a Shadow meter; you can’t summon man’s best friend until the meter is full and you hear him give a healthy bark. He’s an efficient, fun addition when you’re able to use him.

For interactivity, Namco scattered cars and barrels throughout each level. These can save a player a lot of trouble by merely shooting them when a bad guy is around; the explosions are just as deadly to you, however, so make sure you’re a safe distance back before you go barrel-happy.

I should probably mention the “cinematic” part of this action title as it’s the game’s key selling point. You get a short cutscene whenever Jack opens a door, kicks down a door, hits a door, shoulders a door, or flips a switch. For those who tire of the door variety, you get another cutscene when Jack disarms an opponent; essentially the world watches as Jack throws a guy down/grabs a guy and proceeds to shoot said guy with said guy’s own gun. Cruel, ironic, and bloody – just how gamers like it.

Foes come in one variety: a guy (biker, gangster, whatever) with a gun. Defeated enemies conveniently drop their weapons for Jack, which is a good thing because he likes to travel light. Namco offers a standard arsenal of weapons – a sawed-off shotgun, revolver, silenced pistol, pump shotgun, assault rifle, and then three SMG variants (light, silenced, and tactical). You can pair some of these up (i.e., dual-wield silenced pistols or revolvers) but for the most part you’ll be taking advantage of the shotgun. Thankfully the bad guys do have enough intelligence to take cover when someone’s firing at them; unfortunately, they don’t have enough intelligence to move or return fire when that someone is standing directly over them.

I lied to you when I stated that foes come in only one variety. There is another – the dreaded boss, which is basically a guy (or girl) with a bigger gun and better armor. These “bosses” run around the room while shooting at you as you run around the room while shooting at them; when the boss goes down the next green box pops up and it’s time to go. It’s a smidgen of excitement in this otherwise entirely boring adventure.

There are 12 levels to complete, each taking roughly two-three minutes, and completing the game the first time unlocks super-cop and normal challenge mode. You can have some multiplayer fun if you know anyone who’s easily entertained and persuaded to buy a copy. Assuming you don’t care about wasting your friend’s money (and if you work here you wouldn’t be), you can use the unlocked multiplayer skins and run around shooting at your “friend”. It’ll be a great (but bland) bonding experience.

Those explosions that I mentioned earlier are very nicely done; the few areas that sport fire offer a bright orange glow that helps illuminate the dark, gray world that is Jack’s. There aren’t any voiceovers to mention, but the guns sound like guns and Shadow...barks.

I hope you enjoyed all that nice stuff I mentioned up above, because here is where I ruin any thoughts you may have had about purchasing this game. Let’s start with the less noticeable.

Reckoning features an uninteresting, nonsense plot. How many cops do you know receive random notes of “come here or this girl dies”, actually listen, and then are displeased when bikers set their beers down just long enough to run outside and shoot at them for approaching their turf? Jack Slate himself is, ironically, a blank, expressionless, boring slate that (I’d bet money) speaks in a monotone and grimaces half the time he’s alive. What’s wrong with having a third-person action/shooter that features a character with depth? Metal Gear Solid did it. You can have an action title where players actually give a damn if the lead character (or another) dies. In Reckoning, however, there are only five “characters”, and one of them is a dog (and no, I’m not referring to Jack) and the other gets 10 seconds of gameplay time before being blown away. That’s not a “character” – that’s cheap fodder because someone over at Namco got lazy.

And the dialogue during cutscenes before or after levels is ridiculously flat and stupid and looks like it was written by a ten-year-old. “I walked into the hotel room. It was empty. The hostage was long gone. Someone had left a note. It read ‘go to the grove’. The grove was a notorious biker waterhole.” Absolutely stimulating! Obviously our Jack Slate was right on-board with those fast-track kids in elementary school. “Today I painted a bug. It was blue. I like rain. I want to become a cop.” Namco, you can create dynamic characters and have them play the hero role without coming off as idiots, and you start by letting them speak like real people. I don’t want to be reminded that I’m playing a (bad) game while I’m playing a (bad) game. Immersion is missing here.

Ready for some actual gameplay nuances? On normal mode, some of these bad guys couldn’t hit me even when I was backed into a corner/hallway and standing still while returning fire. I guess bikers and thugs have too much fun selling crack, getting wasted, and riding motorcycles (probably in that order) to worry about targeting practice. Some of them actually stand and stare, gun raised menacingly, in the opposite direction as Jack fills them with bullets. I love coming upon prone enemies – guys seated with guns – because I can stand there and shoot them and they don’t move. They sit there and point their gun at the wall whilst being riddled with pieces of metal.

For some reason sometimes you can’t use Shadow unless Jack has direct line-of-sight of the target. In other words, if there’s a pile of crates between you and the targeted opponent, Shadow will give out a helpless yelp to indicate that you need a clear view before he can charge. At other times, though, you can set Shadow upon foes 100 feet away and he brings them down. Just be sure to listen for the dog’s pathetic whimper as you’re tapping the square button and nothing’s happening.

The health system in Reckoning is dreadfully unbalanced; the green bar is Jack’s actual health while the blue one is his armor rating. Getting shot a few times lowers the blue bar rather slowly, but once it’s depleted practically any little stray bullet can bring him down to half health. This really gets nasty when Jack is surrounded or being shot by a guy with a shotgun, especially since shotguns can break through that blue bar in one-two shots and then kill Jack with a third, if he’s close. If no one’s wielding a shotgun in your vicinity then you’ll have an incredibly easy time removing foes, except for those instances when you are surrounded and being shot at from all sides, because you can’t pull a 180 turn and shoot who’s behind you because you can’t target what’s behind you; you’ve got to run/dive to remove what’s in front of you before turning around and targeting the guys at your back. This is the number three method of death in Reckoning.

The main point of contention is this: the poor camera and control setup. I blame Sony as much as I blame Namco for this. The (left) analog stick maneuvers Jack throughout his levels while the R button targets, pulling the camera directly behind him to give gamers a clear view of what they’re aiming at. Here’s the problem: you can’t move the camera otherwise. You will find yourself tapping R just to focus on a barrel to move the camera behind Jack so you can see where the hell you’re going, and 90% of the time that won’t even be intentional. You’ll run around an empty area targeting cars just so you can look around, and God help you when you actually need to quickly switch between targets when you’re in an enclosed area, because you’re going to die. Several times. Because you can’t control the camera properly and it swings around wildly as you change targets. Someone remind me why we don’t have a right analog stick? How could the beauty of the system be compromised by adding another stick when there’s just enough room for it underneath the D-pad (and if there isn’t I’ve got no qualms with shrinking the screen)? Does Sony hate us or was this a sacrifice for looks, because if so then I’m expecting the start of a trend – be prepared for lots of shooters with freaky cameras.

See this picture to the right? If I sent you a note saying that if you didn’t head to the nearest Wal-Mart and pick me up a new purse I’d kill this kitty, who’s to say that the cat exists? Maybe I took the picture from a magazine? Maybe I stole the photo from the Internet?!? Are you going to hop into your car, race to Wal-Mart, and get me my purse because a cat that might exist might be in dire need when have you no proof whatsoever that this isn't a prank? Obviously not, so why so much work looking for a hostage that might not even exist? I just have a serious problem with games that feature such large negations of logic. I want to feel immersed in my Jack Slate experience, not constantly reminded that what I’m playing is a flawed game with a stupid, boring character who has no leads in his “investigation”, by the way, because he insists on killing them all. Oops! I’m guessing we didn’t graduate first from the academy.

Every boss fight is the same. Shoot a little, watch the boss run away, chase after him, shoot some other baddies while en route, shoot the boss again, watch the boss run away again, chase after him again...ad infinitum. It’s a great stroke of luck that all the bosses happen to carry vital information on them (instead of putting that information somewhere safe so no one could get it) because if they didn’t, Jack would be wandering the streets all day looking for “clues”.

Some of these levels take approximately three minutes to beat, which is probably intentional due to the PSP being a handheld. Why not aim for bigger levels but save features along the way? And why not include more than 12 levels? That’s frighteningly short, even for a handheld game.

I would probably like Jack (and his game) more if I could hear him speak. Instead I get to listen to gunfire, barking, and the same jazzy tune in the background, which I don’t mind so much except that it’s the same song over and over again. The game’s graphical quality is just as average and dull as its gameplay except for the “cinematic” scenes where Jack opens a door, dives, or flips a switch, and those scenes sport moderate clipping.

And finally, even that very cool slow-motion dive feature is troublesome because opponents can still hit you. The idea is that you’re cycling through targets as Jack slowly takes a tumble, but what happens is that while you’re cycling you’re still getting shot.

I think my full opinion on Reckoning is summarized best in Jack’s last words: “Shadow and I were alive. Everyone else was dead. It was over.” That makes those 12 levels worth completion, doesn’t it?



Given that the PSP is a handheld unit that is designed to be played when it’s on-the-go, should developers focus on engrossing titles that take loads of time to play or simpler games that one can start and stop without worry? Do you make a cinematic experience as Reckoning aims for, or (as in this case) a poor shooter that’s better suited for quick and easy play? I think that’s the bigger question that playing Reckoning has brought to mind.

What we’ve got here is a fair game that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone except for a mindless, young teenager that likes shooting games and puppies. Reckoning does have its good moments, and it is fun to shoot hordes of bikers, but it gets tiring and repetitive fast. The lack of proper camera control and a worthwhile plot (or character) doesn’t bother me because with the features it’d be just a slightly better game. I remain unimpressed with Reckoning and am now even more doubtful that a good shooter will ever see release on the PSP.

Boring, dull, but workable. Has a dog. Can shoot. Will travel.

It’s dark, void of color, and boring – in a word, dull. Some clipping.

I counted three sounds – a background song, a dog barking, and gunfire.

It has its moments, but you won’t be drawn to it.

Complete it once and trade it in.