In some puzzle sections, the player actually takes direct control of Shadow to reach areas that the human character cannot (although this only happens twice in the game).

One night while on a routine patrol, Jack responds to a call at a construction zone, only to find his own father murdered.

He is eventually framed for another murder by the corrupt police chief Richard "Dick" Hennesey, in a bid to stop Jack before he undermines the status quo.

After seven months in prison, Jack escapes from imprisonment by putting battery acid on the electric chair wires and hunts down Hennesey, clearing away the city's crime lords in the process.

She takes the files, but doesn't harm Jack who follows her to an abandoned Air Force base that is Fahook's hideout.

Jack then gives the files to reporter Kip Waterman to put on the news before he heads off to get his revenge on Hennessey.

At the end of the game, Jack kills Hennessey in the boiler room of an apartment building and leaves town, stating that while he has justice for his father's murder it will take more than him to clear the city of crime.

Jack states that with Hennessey, Blatz (the man that he was framed for murdering) and Fahook, the city's three major crime lords, dead, there will be a struggle for power among the criminal underworld.

[42] Maxim gave the same console version a perfect ten: "The body count is rivaled only by novel game-play features and production values that make blood spurts akin to snowflakes—no two are the same.

[43] Playboy gave it a score of 85%, while The Cincinnati Enquirer gave it four stars out of five, both saying that "taking it for what it is -- a fast-paced, story-based action game with plenty of enemies and violent ways of eliminating them -- Dead to Rights is a highly enjoyable adult diversion for Xbox owners".

[35][44] However, AllGame gave it a score of three-and-a-half stars out of five, calling it "one of the few tough-as-nails games with the power to keep drawing you back to it, long after you've screamed enough words at the television screen to make a sailor blush".

[45] Entertainment Weekly gave it a B−, saying that the Xbox version "is weighed down with too many bad minigames, most of which seem designed with the sole intent of inducing repetitive-stress injuries".