Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death
5
10
1
1
A Game that I Dredd to Play
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Story
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The story isn't all that clear to be honest. It appears that two plots are going on at the same time, but they aren't explored in enough detail to be all that interesting. The main story involves the dark judges, but unless your familiar with the comics you've probably never heard of these characters before. The other plot line involves a mad scientist that has created a regeneration formula that turns peoples into mindless vampires or zombies. The game also offers rather few cut scenes to help illuminate the plot.
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Gameplay
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Judge Dredd is a rather run of the middle first person shooter. The games main campaign is to short in the hands of an experienced fan of shooting games seeing as it can be beaten in a single afternoon. In fact, most people admit that you can beat the game in 2 or 3 hours and that is with slowing down to eliminate all of the enemies. And, the enemies of the game are a rather mixed lot. The main enemies are zombies and vampires that will rush you in attempt to melee you, but the zombies and vampires are too slow to keep up with you. So, you can simply run past a large majority of the enemies with little or no consequence. The only enemies that pose any real threat are the human enemies, but many of them are rather poor shots at distance and can be easily picked off one at a time if you know what your doing. The only real problem is managed to bring in perpetrators alive.
The game also doesn't allow you to increase the sensitivity of the controls. This may prove maddening to people that are used to play games such as Halo. The game also suffers from the fact that you can never change your primary weapon. You always have to keep the judge's pistol, but you rarely find ammo for this gun in the stages. So, it can become completely dead weight do to a lack of ammo, but on the bright side the game comes with a variety of ammo such as standard, incendiary, and ricochet.
I also feel majorly disappointed with the boss battles in the game. Since, you never really defeat the bosses by out shooting them. You defeat two of the bosses by pressing buttons and turning valves. And, the last boss fight is won, by simply providing a distraction so the psi-judges can take care of Judge Death.
And, the game also suffers from a poorly implemented idea with the law meter. If the meter reaches zero the special judges will be called in to deal with you, but the meter is rarely at risk of being at a low level. The only major way to decrease your law meter is by setting civilians on fire or damaging friendly units, but your law meter goes up every time you perform an arrest or complete an objective. The meter would have been more interesting if you were given a choice in assigning out punishments to the various criminals that you bring in. This would allow the mechanic to be more robust and introduce an additional way for the player to interact with the game.
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Graphics
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Graphically the game is sort of hit or miss to be honest. Most of character models are decent, but the limited number of models is rather disappointing. You spend most of the game finding hordes of vampires and zombies that come in a handful of forms. The vampires are only distinguished by gender while the zombies are comprised of six distinct designs.
The game also seems to take a look more inspired by comic books, but if you aren't interested in that style or design then the game may come across as ugly or a rushed budget title.
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Sound
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None of the songs in the sound track annoy, but they rarely add to the atmosphere. They don't detract from it, but they don't enhance the mood. The voice acting is a bit missed. The voice of Judge Dredd feels rather fitting, but some of the other characters feel a bit weak or off.
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Lasting Appeal
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The game does offer a few things to maintain appeal after beating the game. As you beat stages you unlock character models and arcade stages. The arcade stages can be comprised of missions to arrest people, exterminate all enemies, escort, killing enemies in a specific manner, and endurance missions. You can also mess around in battle mode against human or AI controlled opponents. The game also offers split-screen co-op though if you can find someone to play with is beyond me.
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Scores
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Story: 2
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Lasting Appeal: 7
Overall: 5.4
11/10/12