Dead to Rights II

Many of you will undoubtedly find Dead to Rights II too unoriginal and repetitive to give a chance, but from my perspective this game is a great rental experience worth checking out on a rainy weekend.

This should've been more than just slightly better than the original. Rent it before buying at full price.

However, if you're craving narrative depth, sound reasoning, and believable motivation to sit firmly behind your violent malevolence, you might want to hold off for something better.

This is a game that has one virtue to call its own (i.e., highly redundant, brainless action in a single vein), but it lacks the sense of style and the production values that saved the first game from complete obscurity.

Reminded me of any given recent Steven Seagal film. Yeah, you'll have your guilty pleasure with it and like some moments of its over-the-top violence, but it really feels like the same old thing, like the after-effects of a good idea gone rather sour in production.

On the easier levels, it's a silly exercise in mashing buttons to spew ammo throughout a world of bad physics, cheap animation, and tinny sound. [June 2005, p.90]

It manages to stumble all over itself from the second you turn it on and never manages to recover. Simple control functions are handled clumsily, changing weapons is a chore and someone actually thought the dumb melee-exclusive levels would be a good idea. Like the rest of this stinker, it is not.