Death By Degrees
Action adventure game for PS 2 with Nina Williams from Tekken series as the protagonist? I was intrigued, and tried it myself. We've got static camera angles like in Resident Evil series, but for the most of the time we can use manual TPP view as well. We control Nina mostly with analogue sticks - left is for movement and right is for combat. It took me some time to get used to it. What doesn't help here, is the usual problems with camera. If you move too far from one screen, you enter another one, changing the directions for the player.
There is light RPG element, because with all the combos we make, we add points that can be changed to useful upgrades, like longer combos, special movement, better usage of melee and range weapons. Adding stun batons, swords and guns was a good move, since enemies can overwhelm you easily later on, when their numbers are higher. We also encounter some puzzles and we gather a lot of items such as health kits and battle enhancers. But there isn't any space limit, so everything you find is yours to take immediately.
Game is rather small in scope, since we basically are operating on a ship and a prison. Thankfully backtracking is being kept to minimum, if you have a good memory, and there is also a map available as well. The most rage inducing for me though were the obligatory sniping sections. They were too long and the gamepad controls didn't feel precise. Plus we also change to first person mode while venturing through some ventilation shafts. And least used change of gameplay - Stingray, where we use a small floating device to push some button or read a password.
Overall it was ok - the story is rather banal, but if you are a fan of Tekken it will suffice for you. There are some boss battles included as well, to spice things up. Namco put a lot of effort to animate Nina, and her english voice actress is Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who I recognized from Silent Hill 2 and 3. Visually it holds up really well, if you enhance the graphics via emulation. Soundtrack is really good - the calm tracks during the exploration especially. If you are a Tekken fan, you should at least try it.