Dead To Rights: Reckoning (PSP)

A scene from Dead to Rights: Reckoning.

Herald rating: * *

There's something special about playing your PSP at 12,700m as the cabin lights are dimmed and everyone else on the plane has to make do with the in-flight entertainment dished up to them. There I was, earphones plugged in, PSP nestled on the blanket the nice air hostess gave me.

Only two things stopped the experience being perfect: the game I was playing, Dead To Rights: Reckoning, was the worst beat-em-up, action fighter I've come across, worse even than Urban Reign. I also ran out of battery power after about an hour of game play.

The latter was probably a blessing in disguise. After labouring through the first few levels of Dead To Rights, I was starting to get distracted, my eyes flicking over to Walk The Line which was playing on my neighbour's TV system. I guess it's a bad sign when even a button-mashing, bloodfest doesn't hold your attention.

Dead To Rights is a highly-stylised, John Woo-influenced third-person shooter where hard-nosed cop Jack Slate and his killer attack dog Shadow take on legions of villains that are either impossible or far too easy to kill. The ominous title had me expecting a tense, exhilarating action game. I'd never, after all, seen the previous console version from which this PSP instalment is descended.

The game is dull, with reasonable graphics squandered on a half-hearted, cliched story. The clunky technique of displaying text at the bottom of the screen during the cut-away sequences just serves to show up the inane, pointlessness of the plot.

The camera angles swim around you, disorienting you and flicking into first person mode to completely throw you off.

The motion of the characters is clunky, not a patch on the much better-crafted Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. For me, the best games to have made it to the PSP so far are racing games, where your focused attention on that small screen pulls you into the high-speed action. But there is a place here for action role players.

Not every game that comes to the PSP can expect to scale the GTA heights, but at $90 a pop you'd do well to save your hard-earned dosh for the ones that do.

* 16+ $90