People act strangely when they're angry. Jack Nicholson, for example, gets his golf clubs out and smashes up people's cars. David Banner grows twice the size, turns green and becomes the Incredible Hulk - you wouldn't want to make him angry.

Jack Slate, star of Dead To Rights, is different. He's a copper in Grant City - "people aren't born here, they're forged out of broken bones and blood money” - where Jack has just found his dad. Fine, you might think, except that Jack's old man is lying on the floor with the crimson stuff pouring from a hole in his head. Jack's angry.

Jack's solution to the problem is to go on a gun rampage of epic proportions, laying waste to every crook in Grant City as he determines to get his dad's killer. And so begins Dead To Rights, although the plot will take you off your gun spree and into the clink as the game progresses.

Come to think of it, it's a nice premise for a game, all this avenging-your-father's-murder business. It worked very well in Sega's Shenmue series, and here it works in a more balls-out action kind of way. The game combines elements from another cop-gone-mad title, Max Payne and another Namco one, the lightgun shooter Time Crisis, to create some blistering third-person blasting.

In fact, there are loads of things that work well in Dead To Rights, lots of nice ideas crammed into the battles. There's a variety of techniques, like the slow-motion dive, or the ability to grab an enemy to use as a shield, or the way you can send your dog into the battle, that give the action a very distinctive flavour.

Rather than having to aim your guns manually, as with Max Payne, you lock on to targets with the R trigger, and can cycle » through the on-screen opponents by pressing the trigger again. This gives the action a very fast-paced arcade feel that differentiates it from the earlier game, as you lock on to one enemy - blam! - then another - kapow! - until they're all dead. There's far less emphasis on the slow-mo dives here, so it feels like a different game to play.

There are some other nice ideas thrown in, in the form of mini-games that are dotted about your adventure. While none of these are going to set the world alight, they do offer a few diverting moments, and it's nice to see that they've been well integrated into the action and have a good reason for being there. They're not all compulsory, either.

Not all is rosy with Dead To Rights though, because there are plenty of times when gun battles become... just battles. You see, Jack doesn't always have access to a pile of firearms - more's the pity - and when that's the case it's fisticuffs time. And that's where the game falls down, as bare-fist fighting isn't the man's strong point.

It's not that he's a weed or anything, far from it, as Jack is hard as nails. It's just that fighting in the game requires nothing more than repeatedly bashing the buttons to repeatedly bash out combos. It gets very tedious, very quickly, and the problem's compounded by the fact that the fighting sections tend to go on for ages. These parts effectively strip the game bare of all the things that make it fun - not a good idea in our book.

The game is definitely one to avoid if you're not overly keen on repetition. Even the gun battles go on for ages, and you wipe out seemingly hundreds of bad guys on each level, making it all a bit monotonous at times.

However, Dead To Rights pretty much manages to get away with it. There's something very likeable about the solid gunplay.

There are reminders of the classic lobby scene in The Matrix at times, with bullets producing showers of dust and splinters as they miss your head by inches. Quickly dodging in and out of cover and emptying guns of ammo in seconds is visceral, entertaining stuff. The thing is, this arcade gun combat somehow fails to sit comfortably with the weighty, po-faced plot the game takes you through. But the heart of the game - shooting, shooting, and shooting some more - has some great moments and several very good ideas.

Just at times, it feels like a great arcade title that has been shoehorned into a stodgy action/adventure.

1. Lots of cool attacking options
2. Fast, slick gameplay

1. Tedious unarmed combat
2. Cliched script
3. Repetitive repetitive

Power
It doesn't test your Xbox that much, but it loads quickly and there's plenty going on.

Style
The game has a fairly cartoonish style - a bit at odds with the noirish plot, if truth be told.

Immersion
Getting into the gun battles is fun, with loads of cool techniques to try out...

Lifespan
...but while there's plenty to the the game, it gets repetitive rather too quickly.

Verdict Some fun gunfights, but too much dull unarmed combat and repetition prevent it from being truly great.