Dead to Rights' day of Reckoning

No matter how many times Detective Jack Slate makes his rounds through Grant City, the city just can't stay clean. Bad news for Grant City citizens, good news for fans of the Dead to Rights franchise.

Slate is back with Dead to Rights: Reckoning, the first appearance of Namco Hometek's franchise on the PSP. Reckoning is now available in stores for $39.99 and is rated M for Mature.

Reckoning takes place before the original Dead to Rights, which debuted on the Xbox in August of 2002. In the single-player campaign, Jack Slate and his canine companion, Shadow, must scour the crime-ridden streets of Grant City and locate a missing police informant. Slate will be able to select from a variety of weapons as well as hand-to-hand melee moves.

In a first for the series, Reckoning offers a multiplayer mode pitting up to four players against each other in deathmatch or last-man-standing games. The multiplayer games play over the integrated wireless capability of the PSP, and new multiplayer skins and other content are accessible by progressing through the single-player game.

On the business side of things, Namco finally made its merger with Bandai official yesterday. The two companies will be known as Bandai Namco Holdings, and no staff restructuring is expected from the deal.

For more information on Dead to Rights: Reckoning, head over to GameSpot's previous coverage, or check back later this week for a full review.