Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death

My knowledge of the 2000AD comics ends with the two Dredd films, so I enjoyed a more hands-on depiction of that world. The game is fun if rather short (4-5 hours for the story mode plus some bonus modes, depending on the difficulty setting and your willingness to explore). I strangely enjoyed the arresting mechanic: in the first half of the game, you can intimidate most enemies into surrendering (by shooting the weapon out of their hand, wounding them close to the point of killing, or eliminating the elite enemies first) and arresting them, at which point you see a brief report with their name, charges and sentence. Additionally, every mission ends with the total number of years in prison you've sentenced people to. I ended up going out of my way to disarm and intimidate as many enemies as possible and found it very satisfying. The aged graphics and imperfect gameplay are nothing new to people who play the classics, so they should be too much of a downside.

This title was bought knowing not to expect much, but when I played it was surprising how much time I spent in the game. The aiming of weapons was fairly easy compared to some other shooters making a headshot a little easier, and the story was not too bad I liked the Dark Judges very much. there are some weird bugs such as I seem to lose judge meter points when I shot them from an extreme distance and I even failed a mission for shooting enemy snipers who never surrender with my flame rounds! I mean should I walk up to a sniper then shout for immediate surrender then shoot them? Headshot Zombie action makes it worth it and who needs a Sniper Riffle when the main gun can zoom and shoots perfectly. Fun enough and not too short.

I remember playing the demo for this when it was originally released, and remembered it as lots of fun playing around and executing the peps i put in cuffs and so on. When I saw it here on GoG on sale, I thought why not try out the full game since I never did that back in the day. But this was a major dissapointment, because this game was not nearly as fun as I remembered it. The level design is HORRIBLE, large flat surfaces all the time, wierd corridors that don't lead anywhere and confusion as to which doors are openable and which are not. The AI is crap, it just follows you around and shoots straight at you (with deadly accuracy - making it more luck than skill if you survive). The mouse response feels uneven and not good at all. It has some pretty cool weapons, but they feel unbalanced in power. Theres no feeling at all in the game, you simply aim at an enemies head and hold the mouse button down until its dead. And the story... it's not that interesting at all. If you are a fan of Judge Dredd and corious about this game, then by all means try it out. It's definately playable, and enjoyable to some extent, but it's no game you will come back to.

Judge Death, one of the most powerful Judge Dredd's enemy, makes the climate of this game very interesting. I think that you can find lot of fun in this FPS, but only if you're the Judge Dredd universe fan. Othwerwise, you will think for sure, that it is only common shooter with bad graphic and nothing more.

I actually played this game quite sometime before I began reading the comic books, or rather the collections that they released of certain storylines in the Judge Dredd universe, and I had a lot of fun shooting the punks, zombies, vampires and other nasties you encounter in Mega-City One. Not to mention, Toby Longworth who did the voice for Dredd in the game delievers an outstanding performance as the Law himself. Of course, you being a Judge means that you MUST uphold the law and thus you simply can't go around and kill any perp you see, you gotta make them give up by either shooting the guns out of their hands, toss a gas grenade or just make them give up with Dredd saying things like "There's ISO cube with your name on it", "Stop in the name of the law!" and other phrases that might sometimes work into forcing the perps giving up without a struggle, which doesn't happen often by the way. And of course you also have the iconic Lawgiver pistol that every Judge is equipped with, that also comes with several firemodes including ricochet, incendinary, hi explosive and others that can provide a much needed edge in the battle against the lunatics that roam the city. If you're a fan of the Judge Dredd comics and wanted something that is true to the comic books, then you really gotta check this game out as it offers just that.