Dead to Rights: Retribution 360/PS3

I picked this game up after being reminded it exists. Damn it is fun.

It is a 50/50 cover shooter and melee combat game. The shooting is standard. Ammo is low so you have to place shots and scavenge similar to uncharted.

The melee combat is what really surprised me. This is not an Arkham style game, it is real combat where you have to guard, dodge, and position yourself properly. There is a counter, grabs, throws, human shields, guard breaks, and finishing moves. Stylish moves like finishers or headshots refill your meter which you can use to activate a mode for increased damage, it works for melee and shooting.
There is a big list of combos as well to learn.

One interesting thing is when you dodge left and right those directions have different specific combos you must use if you want to combo. IE if you dodge left you can't use the normal BnB combos you would use at neutral you have to do a specific one for the left dodge. Not sure why they did this, maybe balancing against button mashing.
It treats forward and back dodging as being neutral so you can follow those dodges up with any combo.
None of this was explained and it was very confusing trying to figure out why sometimes after a dodge I could only swing once, leading to me getting hit.
This game is a lot like tekken where you can't just spam Y, you have to learn the combos if you want long strings, the longer the string the more likely you are to get a finisher.

You have a dog you can use as well to pick up weapons or help in combat. He does the best with solo mooks in cover that are preoccupied, if you send him in on a group they will probably shoot him.

This game to me is what Devil's Third should have been, as far as the dance between melee and shooting.

Couldn't find much on the team that made this game. Seems like a one hit wonder.

I've played it but not much. Still remember most of the mechanics you've mentioned.

Coming from AI partner games like Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose, Shadow is the main reason I picked it up.

I remember vaguely being annoyed by something. Not sure exactly but I remember hitting an enemy and tgem clearly being in stun, then follow up hits would connect but not create a new stun. The enemy would just stay in position. Then they'd just punch through what I was doing.

Again, I didn't play it much so maybe I didn't understand some aspect of the mechanics.

>follow up hits would connect but not create a new stun

They can start guarding out of nowhere so that could have been it.
Haven't had much issue with this though, there are some long 8+ strings that keep people stunned pretty well.
Also anytime you finish a combo, they are free to start something, so you have to do some dodge canceling to keep them locked down. The load screens actually mentions dodge canceling.
There are also heavies that take no hit stun.

Will have to look into that. If I see a used copy I'll grab it.