Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death

"The best Judge Dredd game ever" is hardly a high bar, let's not kid ourselves. It's a fine game, but even at its time of release way back when, it could have done far better.

Just for the record, I have never read any Judge Dredd comics, but I know the movie which Sylvester Stallone started. Starting with graphics, for a game in 2005 it doesn't look so bad, in fact i like the textures used to give the comic artstyle for people in this game, but Dredd himself looks almost like an old man. I do like the design of some of the Judge Deaths, the animations are meh though and in some moments it looks awkward in motion. Audio: The strongest part. I love the voice actor of the Dredd, it is less cringey than Stallone's inperpretation and sounds badass. The music is most of the time techno-based and can pump you into some good action, it's so good to listen. Gameplay: Now this is where the game can be....disappointing. You see the enemies are stronger than you and can eat up more HP, the shield doesn't help much, medkits are very scarce and you can only hold 2 weapons, the multi-functional pistol used by the Judges and a secondary weapon. So far I have seen only the pistol to have multiple uses and most of em suck with the exception of the standard mode. Amazing enough, a normal pistol is STRONGER than the one used by the Judges! You can also use a melee button but the cooldown is so slow you might as well use it as a finisher against slower enemies or just rely on those who use melee only. The AI is stupid, their pathfinding is so bad, even when escorting the NPC into the safety is a pain. They get stuck even though there is a room for them to turn around, enemies may stand still confused during the fight and in case of zombies, can even instakill you if you are not careful. Arresting is satisfying though and can be easy to perform, just shoot their stronger member or weaken him a little to comply while shouting "Freeze!", some won't though. Also you can unlock stuff depending on your Law bar, the higher it goes, the bigger reward which are maps, models, challenges etc. There is an issue with the jumping as it's tied to your framerate though.

The way I found out about this game is trough a youtuber and it seemed interesting so I gave it a shot. Im so so positively surprised, it might be just a budget shooter and it might be,to my sadness, very short but I still had so much fun with it. I played it a little each day before work and it fixed my mood up for the day. Amazing game, in my opinion. Great purchase for the winter sale!

Not even sure how quite to begin here. Well, first off, its a budget FPS from 20 years ago that was mainly designed for consoles. The PC port is fine, nothing wrong here, but there is a certain "clunkiness" that you notice when playing these types of games. So the best part of the game, from my perspective, was the soundtrack. Either super chill tunes and pretty pumped up tracks. Secondary of note would probably be the setting. I know Judge Dredd is pretty much forgotten by people nowadays, but its still a pretty interesting setting about a cop trying to keep order in a super over sized semi-dystopian city. But in the game you dont really get to feel the gritiness of the city as it is portrayed in other media. It feels like just some futuristic city. The game offers 3 main game modes - story, arcade, multiplayer. I only played through the campaign. Its rather short, beatable in about 4 hours, give or take. The main goal of missions is to achieve a higher score. You do that by fullfilling objectives in a mission and being a good cop. That means arresting perpetrators, saving citizens, avoiding extra casualties. And its less fun being a good cop than just shooting down enemies. You could just ignore the scoring and go around taking down enemies. It wont effect the story. I understand they wanted to incorporate being a cop into the gameplay, but I cant say it worked out. You have your main gun for fighting, which has several ammo types. Some of them I didnt bother using at all. And you can pick up a secondary, which is useful as you probably wont have enough ammo to deal with everyone with your main gun. Your health can also go down quickly if you receive too much melee or sustained fire. Levels can feel a bit too "coridor" if you know what I mean. The story is alright, but too compresed to be truly entertaining. While its alright as a budget game of its time, nowadays only people who are interested in Dredd or the atmosphere of early 2000s games should bother.

Coming from Rogue Trooper (Rebellion's other 2000AD shooter), I was pleasantly surprised they put in the same effort to craft an immersive world full of neat little details and atmospheric lighting, coupled with dark humor and good voice acting. Gotta love Dredd's one-liners! My recommendation would be not to rush ahead too eagerly, look around and take in the scenery once in awhile. There's many tiny pieces of world-building to find if you keep your eyes open. And well, the SP campaign is rather short... From a gameplay perspective, I've found it to be pretty comparable to other XBOX games circa 2003. The HUD is large (transparency can be adjusted), the field of vision narrow, and the gun models huge. Sometimes one can find side-routes in certain levels, but it's a pretty linear experience overall. Gunplay is also pretty typical; a cone-of-fire type of affair with random spread depending on the weapon and your stance. There's a good variety of weapons (some more useful than others) and also various ammo types for your police standard-issue sidearm, like ricochet or incendiary. The developers also went the extra mile to put in nicely detailed reload animations, but reloading in general is pretty slow! As is weapon switching, so better think ahead. Arresting criminals is an interesting mechanic, though largely pointless other than the admittedly hilarious flavor text and Dredd's voice lines. As far as higher difficulties are concerned, health and sometimes also ammo seemed to be in short supply. Enemies generally hit hard and Dredd can't absorb too much damage despite his self-recharging personal shield. I did like the balance on Normal. Main complaints of mine: - Mouse aiming and look felt a little loose and imprecise, especially in close combat. - Too many escort missions coupled with pathfinding issues. - Only one autosave/checkpoint slot. Don't press Restart by accident! If you liked Rogue Trooper, you may want to give this one a try.