Welcome to Mega-City One, a city of over four hundred million people and everyone of them a potential criminal. Stretching the length of the 22nd century American eastern seaboard, Mega-City One is the most dangerous city on Earth, for it is calculated that one serious crime takes place every second of every day. So dangerous, it demands a special breed of law enforcer.
Here, there are no police, no trials and no juries, only the Judges. It takes fifteen years to train a Judge for life on the streets of Mega-City One. Fifteen years of iron discipline, rigid self-control and concentrated aggression. Most feared and respected of all Judges is Joe Dredd, a man vested with the power of instant sentencing, a man whose court is the streets and whose word is the Law!
This game has been patched to the latest version 1.01
Age requirements: ESRB Rating: MATURE with Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language.
Minimum system requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista, 1.8 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM (1 GB recommended), 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended), 4GB HDD, Mouse, Keyboard.
Average customer rating 3.5 out of 5.0
Something for the weekend?
(by
darth_careful)
There's a lot to like about Dredd vs. Death. Just one look at the screenies should convince you that we're talking ancient tech here, but the dated visuals hide a smooth and capable engine. The environments are suitably Dredd-y, and the level design is varied enough to keep attention levels high for the duration of the campaign. The gameplay's pretty good, too; Dredd's regenerating... full review shield means that you can always soak up a few bullets no matter how precarious your health gets. As old-school shooters go, it's a solid, entertaining title.
There are a few quibbles: it's pretty short, and Mega City just seems so ....empty. Luckily, this is more than made up for by the Arcade mode, which adds some much-needed time to to the gameplay. Shooting zombies with shotguns? Works for me. And we're talking the old-fashioned, shuffling zombies here. Brilliant.
So, it's not a laster and not much of a looker. But if you have a few hours free at the weekend and you fancy some undemanding shooty fun, you could do a lot worse than to check it out.
LIttle disappointing budget shooter...
(by
sunny02)
The game's based on the popular, long-running 2000AD series of comic books rather than the aforementioned unpopular Sylvester Stallone movie. You, of course, play Dredd, a cop of the future who acts as judge, jury, and executioner in a fascistic consumer dystopia called Mega-City One on your quest to recapture four escaped "Dark Judges"--Fear, Fire, Mortis, and Death.... full review
You can expect to be badgered by a lot of vampires and zombies. Though there are some token human lawbreakers to execute here and there, for the most part, the game's 11 short levels pit you against swarms of the undead. In what might have been an attempt to spice up gameplay, you can arrest human lawbreakers rather than kill them. Sometimes they'll surrender on sight, and sometimes you'll have to wing them first. The problem is, unless it's a very occasional part of a mission goal, or unless you're deeply into role-playing Judge Dredd, there's basically no reason to do this. Arrests do boost your "law meter," which is a stat bar that tracks your success as a judge. Unfortunately, the law meter isn't tightly integrated into gameplay. So unless you willfully ignore instructions, it rarely dips below maximum and can be safely ignored.
As you complete the single-player levels, 11 "arcade" levels become unlocked. These feature small, goal-oriented tasks that usually require you to either kill a certain number of enemies as fast as possible or survive an onslaught for a given amount of time. In short bursts, these levels are actually more intense and entertaining than the campaign. Two people can tackle the single-player campaign cooperatively. This is a nice feature that would have been a lot more exciting in a better game
The environments are colorful but geometrically simple. They're not attractively stylized simple, either; they're just simple, with lots of big, flat surfaces. The game also features what appears to be some of man's first experiments in rag-doll physics. Characters crumple and tumble but are completely out of sync with the force applied to them. Shoot an oncoming zombie in the foot and it's just as likely to be blown 20 feet in the air and forward as any other direction.
Success in both the campaign and arcade modes unlocks a bunch of extra character models that can be used in multiplayer. Game can handle up to 16 people over a LAN or the Internet, unfortunately game doesn't include a built-in server browser for anything but LAN games, so you'll have to hop out of the game and use an external browser to find servers..
I axpected something more from this game when I played it, but someone would have more fun from it. Price isn't high so you might consider buying it but don't say I didn't warn you!
Expected more but Dredd comics fan may find game in some way interesting...
(by
igor8472)
"Judge Dredd..." is the first result of Rebellion's purchase of the 2000AD comic catalogue. There's such a wealth of beautifully realised characters, plot, action, suspense, comedy and drama held within this comic book institution that, given the state of technology and prevalence of freeform city-based titles in 2003, surely nothing much could go wrong. Surely.... full review
Story is little dumb: The Psi Judges of Mega-City One have predicted that a plague will ravage the city, something that seems to go hand in hand with the sudden outbreak of vampires in the city. Judge Dredd - the rock hard, square-jawed, law-enforcing legend - takes it upon himself to launch an investigation into locating the source of all the vampire action. Cue eleven chapters of watered down Halo on a budget. You set off as Dredd into the dank streets, issuing the odd warning to common criminals, waiting for them to get on their knees so that you can handcuff them and pass Judgement. Some perps will put up more of a fight than others, but only when you're fired at should deadly force be employed. Assault on an unarmed or unthreatening individual will decrease Dredd's LawMeter, which measures how adept you are at upholding the law and affects your Judge rank at the end of each chapter.
Rebellion's Asura engine seems to have the potential to render some genuinely impressive visuals, but its deployment in Dredd Vs. Death varies from the impressive to the downright awful. Firstly, the mixture of comic-style textures on the Judges doesn't sit well with the attempt to portray gritty realism in some areas of the city. The city itself is for the most part well constructed with its grimy exteriors and driving rain, and it conveys a proper sense of scale. Some of the interiors, however, lack the detail required to make the scenery particularly believable; at points it's clear that Rebellion were struggling with exactly how they wanted to present Dredd and his environment.
Still, credit where credit's due. The atmosphere does thicken from time to time, particularly in anticipation of Dredd's confrontation with the Dark Judges in the latter stages of the game.
But towards the end of the game, Rebellion suddenly gained the ability to strike genuine fear in my heart as the battle with Judge Mortis, the disease-spreading deathmonger, approached.
Multiplayer mode features an impressive complement of different modes, many of which are variations on already established FPS game types. Blockwar is a King of the Hill mode, with players attempting to inhabit specific areas for as long as possible. Bounty Hunter puts one player in Dredd's shoes with the rest hunting him down, and the player who manages to kill him fills those shoes, the twist being that players are only able to score as Dredd. There's also Informant mode, straight out of Counter-Strike, with one team of players attempting to escort an unarmed player to a safe house, as well as deathmatch, team deathmatch and even more besides. One particular mode which grabbed my attention was Vampire: each player's health steadily decreases on its own, and can only be replenished by hurting or killing other players. It's an interesting twist that increases the tension and frantic action of an otherwise regular deathmatch game.
Frankly I wasn't expecting the best from Dredd Vs. Death and there are many better shooters but if you are fan of Dredd comic you can add onep oint to score :-). I would give 2,5/5 but since tre is no half-points let's make it 3/5.
darth_careful)
sunny02)
igor8472)