Dead to Rights II

Dead to Rights II is a neo-noir third-person action video game, developed by Widescreen Games, published by Namco, and released in 2005. Serving as a prequel to Dead to Rights, it tells the story of Jack Slate and Shadow before the events of the original game.

Plot
A reputable judge uncovers a citywide crime syndicate, and is kidnapped. The judge was a friend of Jack's father, so the cop is obligated to send a few hundred men to their graves in order to make things right. Before long, all hell breaks loose, so Jack and his K-9 cohort Shadow must take on a powerful mob in the fight of their lives to break the city’s spiral of betrayal and corruption

Good Qualities

 * 1) Good gunplay that has you switch between cover and Max Payne action shooter play style.
 * 2) The gameplay is an improvement from the first as it's a lot more challenging and has the player have to think more strategically when in a firefight.
 * 3) Decent voice acting especially Steve Blum as Jack, who this time gives a performance that makes Jack a lot more emotional.
 * 4) A large variety of weapons to use.
 * 5) Good bullet time that can't be exploited like in the first game as you have to kill people to build up bullet time.
 * 6) Shadow can be used to grab health items which is helpful if you're pin down by enemies and are in need of health.
 * 7) Good graphics that have nicely detailed environments for its time.
 * 8) Decent soundtrack.
 * 9) You can unlock weapons depending on what difficulty you beat the game or Instant Action.
 * 10) There's Instant Action which is where the player has to survive for 20 minutes against waves of enemies.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Just like the first game, the only thing you do is shoot people and chase a guy to a boss fight.
 * 2) The boss fights are pretty easy since much like the first game, you just run around and shoot them. Unlike that game, however, they all play exactly the same with no variety.
 * 3) Anti-climatic ending: After taking out his Dragon (in a much more epic gun battle), a cutscene activates showing Jack casually walking up to Blanchov and shooting him in the chest and then the game ends.
 * 4) The beat-em up levels feel like an afterthought since the game will abruptly switch to exclusively beat-em up in certain stages and take away the players' weapons.
 * 5) On that note, the beat-em up mechanics are as basic as they were in the first game since all you do is punch, kick, and hit enemies with weapons.
 * 6) The story is so barebones it might as well not exist. It's just Jack looking for some crime lord without any stakes or anything remotely interesting happening and feels more like a B-action movie plot.
 * 7) The cutscenes have stiff animation which causes the characters to move is strange ways.
 * 8) One dimensional characters with Jack being the worst offender since the game tries too hard to make him seem like a badass.
 * 9) There isn't a proper tutorial to teach the mechanics as you have to watch them through an option in the menu. On that note, there is no tutorial for the beat-em up mechanics period.
 * 10) The game is only 4 hours long.

Reception
The PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions received "mixed" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.