Dead to Rights II announced
Namco confirms homebaked sequel plans.
Namco Hometek is working on a follow-up to Dead to Rights, their third-person bullet and knuckle sandwich with added grisly cop drama cheese, which first appeared on Xbox at the end of March and subsequently on PS2 and GameCube in August.
Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay is not due out on GameCube, but will appear on PS2 and Xbox in late 2004, which is understandable when you compare sales figures in the US (well over a quarter of a million each for PS2/Xbox and just over 50,000 on the Cube).
This time out, hero Jack Slate and his canine (K9) partner Shadow will be picking apart Grant City's criminal underworld in a game that promises a forceful narrative and a few more gameplay innovations - namely a fast, 360-degree brawling system, proper melee weapon combat and a new spherical slow motion diving system. Hrm, that sounds familiar!
Although a Namco spokesman would only confess to being "extremely excited" about DTR2's gameplay, story and cinematic production values, one would imagine Namco Hometek plans to resurrect much of what made the first game good - human shielding, explosive canister attacks, disarms, mini-games, etc - in bringing Jack Slate back to our screens.