Brains vs. Brawn

In the world of entertainment, there are often two schools of philosophy present, two methods of injecting that entertainment into the minds of the masses. First, there is Touchy Feely University – the forms of entertainment that try to display fully developed characters or some sort of meaning or message to the viewer so a deeper emotional impact can be made (i.e. American Beauty, Braid, Mad Men), thus allowing for a more ethereal experience. Then there is the other school of entertainment that would seem like the bastard brother of TFU, the school that harbors kinds of entertainment that don’t really care about feelings or the exploration of what life is about, and that’s because the students there are too busy doing awesome things.

That school would be the University of Blow S*!# Up, and Dead to Rights: Retribution is about to graduate from there.

A History of Violence

Rising from a long slumber, the Dead to Rights franchise will be seeing the reboot treatment, undergoing not a sequel-extension but rather a revisioning of the first game from back in 2002. In that game you played as Jack Slate, a cop in the fictional and corrupt town of Grant City. After coming across your father’s murder, you set out to find the culprits while handing out some bruises, bone snappings, and broken necks along the way. The game was influenced greatly by the physical energy of Hong Kong action flicks and this time around Retribution is set to recreate all those moments of melee bliss. With all the advances in the action genre in the past few years, however, Britain’s Volatile Games is making sure the revamp won’t be obsolete before it hits shelves. Thanks to games like God of War, Gears of War, and the most recent Resident Evil games, the developers most surely have the work cut out for them, but they’ve been down that road before, albeit with mixed results.

In 2006, Volatile Games released their handheld version of Quentin Tarantino’s crime classic Reservoir Dogs, a game that was ultimately stamped with one big “meh” but was notoriously brutal. The game was banned in Australia and New Zealand, something many action developers could be proud of and a sign that at least the blood-level had been paid attention to.

But still, when has outright violence ever signaled gaming goodness? It hasn’t and never should, but the developers are hoping to redeem themselves with the newest Dead to Rights. While Retribution most surely has the brutality factor in spades, other fronts will have to have been stamped out come release date time, namely the combat system, something that has always been the main attraction for the series. Being a one-man army is what Dead to Rights is about. Well, more like a one-man-and-one-animal army thanks to your attack dog Shadow. In both previous Dead to Rights games, you entered a room with the melee prowess of Bruce Lee and the gun know-how of the Governator, all the while having access to a canine companion you could send out to maul foes to death. Whooping ass was your job, and with Retribution, it’s looking to be that way again.

Physical Diplomacy 101

Entering a fight as your character Jack, you’ll be faced with multiple foes, all of whom deserve an opened can of you-know-what. How exactly this can-opening occurs, however, will be entirely up to you. Go guns ablazin’, swoop in and duke it out with your fists, send Shadow forth to hold them in place as you fire off a few rounds – whatever. The levels will be a map of future blood trails designed by you and Volatile Games is aiming to make the fighting as seamless as possible. Switching from melee to weaponry and back again has been the big focus of development, envisioned in such a way that the combat will be rolled out constantly but not overwhelmingly. A full field of 360 degrees has been given mind, removing Retribution from the pile of hallway shooters, forcing you to don a fully alert mentality as you traverse through the story.

While you’ll only have access to two weapons at a time, you won’t feel underequipped. You’ll be able to steal any weapon from any nearby foe, including various forms of pistols and rifles as well as grenade and rocket launchers (but be careful because the enemy can strip you of your armory too). Linked to these weapons will be specialized takedowns, nasty ways of eliminating your enemies that will occur in slowed time and will be displayed close up so every bit of viciousness can be reveled in. They’re essentially fatalities from the Mortal Kombat games and melee takedowns will be included as well.

Several other combat tactics will be at your disposal. You’ll be able to grab helpless opponents as human shields, slow down time with your adrenaline meter and essentially enter the tried-and-true “bullet time” and there will be a reworked cover system to help you out with the bigger fights (though every piece of cover you use will be destructible by the enemy, the developer’s way of keeping you on your toes). Shadow will also be constantly present and ready to roll, but this time the K-9 unit is getting a bigger spotlight.

Seeping into Retribution’s fast-paced nature will be some stealth missions courtesy of your dog. Throughout the campaign you, the player, will be given the reigns of the hellish pup, tasked with scouting ahead while Jack recuperates from some wound that’s halted his mobility. Bathed in a bluish hue to immerse you in what a dog actually sees, you’ll sneak throughout the level and maul any enemies you come across while securing the area for your owner. Right now this element of gameplay seems a bit odd amidst all the running and gunning but it could wind up being a nice change of pace should all the fights and explosions become too dulling and repetitive.

Sticking to Your Guns

And that, essentially, is Retribution’s one gigantic hurdle: the flat-out fun factor of the action. A game like this exists for one reason and one reason only: to be enjoyable. Though all games, to some degree, have that task ingrained into their digital souls by definition, Retribution is designed to be mindless entertainment, to let the player kick a lot of ass and allow him or her to have a damn good time while doing it. Would Michael Bay’s Transformers have been as watchable had the giant angry robots been not so giant and not so angry? No, and that’s why Retribution will hopefully focus most of its attention on the singular aspect of destroying lots of things with lots of weapons. The story is cookie-cutter stuff – Jack Slate is a gruff, tough-as-nails cop who doesn’t get along with authority and is forced to bring down a city-wide conspiracy that goes down farther than he thought (yeah, ever heard that one before?) but that’s okay because a game like that isn’t here to create “feelings” and make people “think”. That’s what makes Retribution a student of the University of Blow S*!# Up, and hopefully the developers behind the game did their homework.