
	Platform Xbox Genre Action Publisher Namco Developer Namco ESRB M (Mature) Released April 12, 2005

- Lots of big gunfights - Sidekick helps out quite a bit - Some cool bullet-time effects

- Extremely repetitive gameplay - Uninteresting plot - Camera issues - Boss battles all feel the same - Dialogue is way over the top

Review: Dead to Rights (XB) Review: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (XB) Review: Viewtiful Joe 2 (GC) Review: Armed and Dangerous (XB)
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Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay

Score: 5.5 / 10

Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay is the sequel to the popular original, which originally released in late 2002. The original game was inspired by games like Max Payne and movies like Face Off. The sequel returns with many of the same features from the original game, but fails to make many improvements.

You reassume the role of disgruntled Cop Jack Slate and his sidekick Dog, who both slaughter hoards of enemies, one after the other in order to make the world a safer place. The plot is rather stale and uninteresting. A criminal organization has been discovered by a Judge (who coincidentally gets kidnapped) and it’s your job to bring

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him back alive.

Obviously, Hell to Pay is focused heavily on two things: gun play and hand-to-hand combat. The game does boast a fair number of guns from pistols to sub machine guns. There are also a number of objects such as knives and swords available to hack down enemies with.

All of the levels within Hell to Pay involve battles with large numbers of

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enemies. The gun combat has been handled with an auto targeting system and works quite well, but occasionally the camera has trouble staying on the action. One of the biggest inspirations from Max Payne has to be the bullet time effect. You can slow down the game’s motion and easily target multiple enemies more efficiently and effectively.

The hand-to-hand combat is nowhere near as enjoyable as the gunplay. The range of moves feels rather limited and the weapons such as the swords, broken beer bottles and knives feel underpowered.

One of the coolest moves Jack can execute involves disarming enemies. If you run up to an enemy and press the B-button, Jack will disarm the enemy in slow motion in a very cool, but brutal manner. There are some other cool moves that Jack can do such as use enemies as human shields (at the obvious expense of any stealth). However, you will sometimes see Bosses use there own men as shields which is rather quite effective and adds some more difficulty when battling the Bosses. The AI is fairly unbalanced. You’ll sometimes see enemies take cover and other times you’ll see enemies just stand out in the open asking to be shot.

You won’t be alone while blasting enemy after enemy. You’ll always have your canine sidekick Shadow to help you out. Shadow can kill or injure enemies at your command. Like the bullet time, there is a meter that shows when you can and can’t call Shadow in for help.

Hell to Pay’s biggest weakness is by far the repetitive gameplay. All the levels play the same:

Walk into an area.

Kill the hell out of anything that moves.

Rinse and Repeat.

The boss battles don’t change too much either. The boss battles always see you fighting the boss as well as a number of his men, who come in never-ending droves. Some of the boss battles are frustrating at first, but once you figure out where all the body armor and health pick ups are, you’ll have a much easier time.

Hell to Pay doesn’t particularly stand out in the graphical department. Many of the enemies in each of the levels look extremely alike. While the death animations are handled extremely well, the textures on the environments are rather bland. Hell to Pay certainly earns its Mature rating. The game is heavy on both violence and profanity. The dialogue for Hell to Pay is simply laughable and feels too over the top. Overall the production values are reminiscent of a cheesy police movie.

Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay is a fairly simplistic game with a very basic premise: kill anything that gets in your way and is probably not the sequel that you are hoping for, but it does possess some good qualities, even if they are small in number. If you’re a fan of the genre or just looking to blow off some steam then rent this title at the very most.

- Siddharth Masand
(June 15, 2005)