Forgotten Game Greats: "Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death" (2003)

- by Ninja Ross, 8 May 2013

We all know Judge Dredd by now. He’s one of Britain’s best known comic book characters. He’s the law man of the future, the Judge Jury and Executioner. He is NOT Sylvester Stallone. But let’s not forget that there have been several games based on the character. All of those games (except the new zombie one, which I haven’t even taken a look at yet) sucked. Except this one. This little forgotten game that got reviews ranging from bad to average.

Well, past reviews aren’t everything. Remember when Weezer’s Pinkerton album got terrible reviews? And now it’s called one of the greatest albums ever. The most important thing, of course, is that you pay attention to MY review. This one, right here. The one you’re reading riiiight now.

DREDD VS DEATH

Dredd vs. Death’s story is about as complex as the title suggests; the dark Judges, led by Judge Death, escape from the psychic prison and do what it is they do. They judge people for the crime of living.

They would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling Dredd.

The Dark Judges are, of course, four of Dredd’s best loved enemies. They’re rumoured to be the villains in the third of the Dredd movie trilogy, although that probably won’t happen, considering Dredd 3-D didn’t do so well at the Box Office... But let’s not mope around, pining for more films!

Dredd starts the game breaking up a peaceful protest, arresting people for holding signs outside the Hall of Justice. It’s the kind of thing we’d scorn in real life but celebrate when it’s Judge Dredd. Because, you know... It’s Judge Dredd.

Thankfully, it's not a very large protest to take care of.

You then play Dredd as he continues an average day, arresting citizens for having a fish without a license and smoking in public. As first levels go, this is a pretty entertaining one. You can choose to arrest civilians for these petty crimes, which gets you a better rank at the end of the level, or you can just focus on the main goal. Both are acceptable in the eyes of the law but killing civilians will cause the rest of the judges to try to take you down.

The arresting feature is, in my opinion, the feature that makes this game stand out from most of the generic shooters that started flooding the market after Halo.

You press a button to warn the scumbag, and then they either get on their knees or attack. If they get on their knees, you arrest them, obviously but if they fight, you can choose to kill them or shoot them in the knees and arrest them anyway. Because you’re Judge Dredd!!!

It’s only the first level where citizens will gladly accept the arrest, mostly because citizens aren’t in it much after the vampire attack. Yeah, you read right; Vampire. Judge Death doesn’t get his hands dirty if he can get vampires and zombies to do his work.

This brings me to another fantastic part of what makes this game great; the style. Vampires and Zombies make up a large amount of the cannon fodder in the game. They help add to the quirky style that the 2000AD comics are known for. Don’t try to arrest them, obviously. Arrest cultists, protesters, graffiti artists and innocent people but vampires and zombies don’t do hand cuffs.

Mega-City 1 itself is nice to look at, mostly because it’s quite reminiscent of the comics; lots of buildings, lots of dirt and a surprising amount of bright colours. Although, not a lot of variety in people. Despite it being fun to arrest people, you’ll notice there are only a few character models and some places will be filled with identical characters.

As I suggested before, there’s not too much to set this aside from an average first person shooter from that generation. There are guns, you can punch people and you can run around and stuff.

Pretty simple stuff.

The levels are also pretty simple and relatively easy to navigate. They’re not too big but offer plenty of places to explore (mostly just so you can see more aspects of Mega City 1) and there’s plenty of things to kill and/or arrest. There’s really no criticisms to be had over level design at all. It would have been cool to have a GTA style Dredd game, though. Maybe there will be! Probably not, but hey.

So the game’s a little simplistic in its design but the main thing is, it’s fun. It looks nice, although graphics and character models are far from the best for the generation. It plays well, too, which is the most important thing a game needs to do, am I right? It’s smooth, controls are easy to get used to, not too and enemies are fairly well balanced. Although, the vampires in the first level can come as a shock if you’re not prepared. They’re not easy.

The game is still available second hand for Ps2, Xbox and Gamecube and is pretty cheap on Steam so why not pick it up, since it’s unlikely we’re going to see a Dredd movie sequel any time soon.

So, have you played the game? Planning to play it? Let us know below!

Tagged: video games, Forgotten Game Greats.

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