As an action game fan, this game is a literal slap in the face to me.
I could end the review right there and go off to play other games, but I need to explain myself, otherwise my review would not be beneficial to you, the reader, whatsoever. Dead to Rights: Reckoning is a PSP title developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Namco. Reckoning is a portable version of the console game series Dead to Rights, which was an action shooter with loads of stunts and gunplay. It was one of the PSP's first-year titles, and it clearly shows.
You play as Jack Slate, the protagonist of the series. Along with your trusty dog Shadow, you try to solve the mystery of a hostage situation. Or something. Most of the game's "story" is told through short cutscenes with only a subtitle and no voice acting. It appears the cutscene and storyline budget was cut at point in development, as 90% of the cutscenes involve either panning shots, seeing enemies run towards something, away from something, or a combination of all three. The storyline is so insipid and empty that I've seen rhythm games have better storylines.
The action in Dead to Rights was always considered to be the little brother of the Max Payne variety of action gameplay, but Reckoning just screws it all up. For one, there is a literal auto-aim system. The game will target an enemy for you, and just lead Jack into targeting that character. All you have to do is hammer on the fire button (X) and dive occasionally (triangle) to kill them. If you're close enough to an enemy, you can hit the circle button and disarm the enemy, but it's not really smart to do with a group of enemies as they will continue to take potshots at you while this stylish animation plays. You can also sic Shadow on an enemy (holding R and then square), and you can do this anywhere as long as there is a target icon on screen. That means you can sic your dog on enemies you CANNOT SEE. Diving is also somewhat problematic: If you tap it, you just quickly dive in a direction, which works for knocking enemies down. But if you hold it, even for a second, the game goes into slow motion, which could be useful if you want to get quick kills, but sometimes the slow motion happens at points where you didn't want it to (such as jumping to grab something), and you end up wasting adrenaline to do the maneuver. You can also target items and enemies with the R trigger, but why would you want to? The targeting is worthless since the game literally aims for you. You will be tapping R frequently to make it stop switching to an enemy and to the nearby barrel to shoot it, getting bullets riddled into you, which is a big problem in an action game like this.
Every time an enemy is killed, you score points. You get extra points for disarming an enemy, for targeting an explosive item (like a barrel or a car) and killing them with it, killing them while knocked down, even dog kills and other assorted items give you points and multipliers for killing multiple enemies in rapid succession. The problem is that the points don't matter: They only count towards a high score. They don't lead to unlockables or bonus features, you only get those upon completing levels in the storyline campaign. Except all these unlocks count towards multiplayer items and nothing else.
The worst offender of Reckoning? You can beat the single player storyline in a matter of 2 hours. I understand portable games can be given some leeway and be shorter than their console brethren, but TWO HOURS? I've played Game Boy games made in the early 1990s that have longer-lasting gameplay than Reckoning does! If you beat the game, you unlock a harder SuperCop mode and that's where you can unlock the game's cheats. The differences between the skill levels? Enemies take more damage. That's about it. There's no extra levels or challenges or anything like that. You also can play through the game in challenge mode and see how far you get through the game without dying, but it's kinda pointless.
The sound consists mostly of generic gunfire, forgettable rock music, and your foes shouting the same 4-5 screams over and over again when they die. As I mentioned, there is no voice acting, and I heard the series was known for its passable voice acting. Other PSP games like Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror have voice acting and marvelously done cutscenes. Why can't this game have that? The game also looks like a combination of a late-era PS1 game and a launch-era Dreamcast game. The backgrounds look bland, there's repetitive-looking areas, but some of the player models look a bit decent, but that's not saying much. This game also has loads of problems with the camera. There will be countless times you will be shooting at an enemy off-screen or an enemy will be shooting at you off-screen, and there's no way to adjust the camera at all.
Now, multiplayer. This game was made without Infrastructure (that is, playing it online from people around the world), so it's ad hoc (locally wireless) only. That means you have to find 2-3 other people who actually have a PSP and this game to go play multiplayer. Worse off, you're limited in what player models and maps you have unless you go through the single player campaign on both skill levels. I haven't played it myself (You try finding 2-3 other people with this game), but it's probably just as boring as the single player game.
Dead to Rights: Reckoning fails as a PSP action game. It fails as a shooter, and it fails as a Dead to Rights game. PSP owners should invest into other action titles instead such as the aforementioned Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, while fans of Dead to Rights should stick to the console iterations. It's sad that such a poor game had to come out in the early days of the PSP's life. We should have had better games than this.
Pros: Decent shooting, nice amount of unlockables.
Cons: Worthless FMVs, poor camera issues, barely any story, multiplayer is ad hoc only.