Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death (GameCube)

In the Judge Dredd comics, the United States has become a satirical exaggeration of itself. Most of the country was devastated by nuclear war but the east coast has seen such absurd urbanization that most of it forms the absolutely enormous Mega-City One. To deal with rampant crime in such an enormous sprawling city, the police force has been granted the authority to not only apprehend criminals but issue immediate sentences as they see fit. However, while these powerful law enforcement officers known as Judges can definitely take their job seriously to perhaps an absurd degree, condemning people to a month of prison for something as simple as owning a goldfish without a license, there are a group of Judges far crueler than them in their verdicts. Believing all living beings are guilty simply by being alive, the Dark Judges have all but abandoned any idea of sentences short of execution. As the Dark Judges would say themselves: “The crime is life, the sentence is death.”

 

Poised as a sequel to one of the Judge Dredd comic book’s more famous storylines, Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death begins with one of the normal Mega-City One judges, Judge Dredd, doing a fairly typical day of work issuing absurd sentences for even minor infractions. However, the sudden appearance of vampires lines up with a supposed plague expected to strike the city, and the Judges are sure the Dark Judges are somehow to blame. The undying spirits were supposed to be sealed up in the deepest of solitary confinements, but once they break free, they are able to zombify the citizenry and begin to push for all life in Mega-City One to go extinct. While Judge Dredd does mete out justice strictly, he does, in his own warped way, care for the people he presides over, and so he sets out to protect who he can, defeat the walking dead, and hopefully put down the four Dark Judges for good this time so this can’t happen again.

 

In this first-person shooter you play as a Judge Dredd, and while his world certainly makes it seem like he could probably easily justify blasting his way through every adversary in his path, one of the interesting aspects of this game is there is a layer of police work placed over your activities. Judge Dredd always has the option to threaten anyone with arrest, be they some passing civilian or someone filling him with lead. Depending on who they are they might require some coercing, that sometimes being a few shots to the leg or the death of someone else nearby, but if they do give themselves up, the player can arrest them instead of always going for kills. Not only does this play into a post-mission rating system to tell you how close you are behaving in line with Judge Dredd’s moral compass, but it adds a small but appreciable layer to most gun fights. You could try to go through the game just gunning down every adversary but the game does do a good job limiting your ammo to incentivize this alternate means of ending a conflict, and trying to get a large group of enemies to give up can make a firefight more engaging than simply trying to clear the room before moving on to the next area to do the same.

Not every character can be made to surrender, things like undead foes and bosses a no-go, but the game does include many gang members and cultists even as you start to move away from busting street crime to contending with the Dark Judges, so there are plenty of opportunities to try and force your foes to surrender. Abusing your power can actually get you in trouble with other Judges too, as harming the innocent can eventually have them turn against you as you are declared a criminal yourself, although this seems rather hard to do without directly attempting to trigger such a situation. The ability to arrest instead of always kill does do a lot to keep Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death’s action from stagnating though, as even if you come up against a familiar group of thugs, whether or not they’ll surrender can help it pan out differently than the previous firefight.

 

Luckily, the story does have a lot of different ideas for places to go and different missions can have objectives that keep the action fresh as you progress. In the chapter set at the Smokatorium, a resort for people to smoke cigarettes in a large enclosed nightclub, you actually don’t contend with many enemies beyond Judge Fire, but the burning Dark Judge is incredibly dangerous and you need to weave around oblivious citizens and his attacks to activate fire suppression systems. In another level you might do something simple like clear a hospital or mall of zombies, but these have civilians who needed to be guided safely away from danger or make good use of their interior areas for varied fights. The hospital has a lot more close quarters fights where you never know if a zombie might be in the room you enter, but the mall’s open areas mean many can be lumbering around and the number advantage becomes the problem instead. A prison under attack, city streets ruined by gang warfare, and underground facilities all have a distinct feel and the enemies present can often take advantage of them in some form, and the varying level layouts can make the player sometimes have to decide if they can afford to blow through ammo at a hard section. Arresting certain enemies can even be the harder route at times, so this first person shooter not only does a good job of balancing weapon availability to keep thing challenging while the different scenarios incentivize shifting playstyles to keep the action as varied as the environments.

 

The selection of weapons manages to stand out too through its economical approach. Judges can use all available weapons in the game’s arsenal while enemies will only bring a few to firefights, but the Judge weapons in particular seem to try and roll many functions into one firearm. The Judge’s pistol has a plethora of alternate modes, and while they are limited by things like ammo cost, this seemingly simple firearm can fire high damage armor-piercing rounds, explosive bullets, heat-seeking shots to increase accuracy, and more. You could almost say one of its limits is having to cycle through the different modes to get to some of the stronger ones, but Judge Dredd also gets to wield a fairly powerful shotgun that can blast a foe away at close range and perhaps most interesting of all is the Lawrod Rifle. Sniper rifles and assault rifles are practically polar opposites in their approach to combat but the Lawrod swaps between these with ease and fulfills both of its roles wonderfully. Restricting ammo availability keeps the Judge weapons from tearing through all opposition, but they are definitely the most satisfying weapons you can wield without being so powerful they trivialize combat encounters.

When you do need to pick up enemy weapons for replacements you’ll find even their simple pistols can pack a punch, and while a criminal’s shotgun can’t match a Judge’s, it’s still as effective as it needs to be for its expected role of slow shots with high damage outputs. The civilian weaponry doesn’t have too much conceptual overlap so there won’t be a lot of weapon shuffling, but there are a few features unique to guns you can grab off of perps. Laser weapons like a slow but strong pistol and a charge rifle exist, although the charge rifle is a high risk, high reward type of weapon that is often more dangerous in your enemy’s hands since they will take the time to build up its energy since it is the only weapon they have. The grenade launcher is a weapon that’s far easier to use for major damage and as such you only get to use it rarely, but having an ace like it in the hole can help since different foes utilize different tactics. Vampires are fast creatures who try to rush you, zombies take a bit to get moving but can deal heavy damage if they corner you, and gunmen can both use being spread out to force you to find your own cover or they’ll group up so their damage output is high. Dredd can carry healing kits that automatically replenish life when he’s out and while the checkpoints aren’t too forgiving they aren’t huge setbacks either, so it does feel like there’s always danger to be worried about while you still feel properly equipped for the job.

 

One thing that can be a bit hard to ignore though are the game’s graphics. Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death looks older than it is, character models rather rough and ugly and textures flat, muddy, and low quality. Judge Dredd flaps his massive chin like a ventriloquist puppet when he’s talking, and it can be hard to figure out what your enemy is meant to look like until you unlock them as a playable character in multiplayer and can see the absurd science-fiction design that was hard to parse due to the graphical quality. You can see things you need to see though and this game would have been fine on a weaker system like the original PlayStation or early computers, but the graphics serve their practical purpose and the game can throw in some funny sights or unique looking locations all the same. The game actually does a sound job when it comes to peppering in satirical barbs to match the universe it takes place in. Blatant rhetoric lacking any subtlety is used by companies in the advertisements you hear playing in Mega-City One and the judges can pretty much hold up any person besides a fellow judge and justify that arrest with some petty crime, although the fact civilians frequently say they were wrong about the Judges when you save them is part of the game simply having the societal criticisms but not doing anything with them. Dredd’s mission of stopping the Dark Judges is definitely a heroic one even if the problems with Mega-City One are only ever addressed with a humorous wink, but the backdrop is at least amusing while the action stays focused on the big picture. Judge Dredd himself is at least excellently voiced by Toby Longworth, the self-assured hero grizzled and assertive the whole way through whether he’s confronting Judge Death or breaking up a peaceful protest.

 

There are some unfortunate truths about Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death though, one big one being that the tutorial literally does not explain the controls but expects you to use them to complete it. Luckily Redditor VomitSnoosh has provided an image of the Gamecube controls so you don’t need the manual to get through the opener, so the only other big issue some may point to is the story mode’s length. It is a game that can be completed in a day without too much fuss and in some ways a brisk pace keeps the action exciting and lets the variation stand out more, but luckily the game does pack in a few ways to get more out of the experience. An arcade mode with a group of special missions exists with the reward for completion silly cheats like altered character models or extras like new characters for multiplayer. These challenges can take on different forms like needing to destroy an army of tiny robot toys as quickly as you can, arresting huge groups of perps, and surviving wave after wave of enemies. The story mode actually has side objectives as well to help you eke more out of the game, but arcade mode’s twelve challenges provide some bite-sized gameplay even if they’re often not as substantial as the main game due to simpler goals and limited battle space.

 

Multiplayer is probably the better bet for getting more from this first-person shooter. Up to four players and 12 AI controlled enemies can fight in a variety of maps that aren’t just recycled areas from the main adventure, the levels being built for the head to head action. You can play traditional races to the most kills, a last man standing arrangement with multiple lives, and even a mode where Judges and Civilians are opposing teams and get different weapon sets. The story mode can be played in co-op as well, although in competitive multiplayer it can sometimes be difficult to parse if your opponents are taking serious damage since character models don’t flinch when injured. There is a minor bit of shielding meant to weather hits in all modes of Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death that recovers once you’ve been free of danger for a bit but it is so minimal it almost isn’t worth mentioning save for the fact that even if the multiplayer opponents are sustaining direct health damage they still don’t indicate it any differently. Still, the firefights have a good set of rules and stages so you can draw more from the interesting weapons the game features, and while it can’t compete with the fun of a better put together shooter with more content like TimeSplitters 2, it still has its own appeal to make the mode at least worth dabbling in after completing the main game.

THE VERDICT: Its story may be short and the graphics are definitely quite rough, but Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death keeps its attention on interesting first-person shooting over those less important aspects. The story provides different goals and a good mix of areas and enemies on top of having an arrest system that lets confronting most enemies have an alternate winning strategy, and since ammo for good weapons is spaced out well you’re incentivized to utilize this option as a means of keeping your ammunition for the tougher situations. Arcade and multiplayer shore up the game a bit more and the weapons are a tight set of options that sometimes fill a wide variety of roles, so while it definitely does look like a budget game, Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death puts its efforts towards engaging gun fights and fun optional content to overcome its drawbacks.

 

And so, I give Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death for Nintendo GameCube…

A GOOD rating. Sometimes when I saw the character models or heard other opinions about the game I did wonder if I was giving it too much credit, but as I write out my thoughts on Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death it proved hard to point at any issues that would drag down the first-person shooting fun. The graphics need to convey important information of course and they do that job just fine even if you can’t get what a weird design is going for until you view it outside of a gunfight, but you still get some of the game’s tone coming through in the clearer designs, the writing, and Toby Longworth’s vocal performance. More importantly, when the gunfights do begin, you’ll find they test you in many different ways and use the environment to add additional considerations to battles that already have that consistent weighing of arrest vs. execute on your mind. Being able to wrap up a large fight early by barking out at the criminals is satisfying when you can pull it off and enough enemies resist arrest that you still get plenty of shooting action, especially since constant arrests would put you at too much risk and thus a balance must be achieved. Balance also ensures that you get a good spread of the more fun firearms while having to find ways to manage their limited ammunition or start picking up the other options that are still useful but not as powerful as your Judge-specific guns. I do think the multiplayer should have been given more love, mainly so that damage on opponents had some visual indicator so you can feel like you’re wearing down a foe, and Arcade’s challenges are simple but effective enough the game probably could have kept mixing and matching ideas to add more longevity to the game. As a purchasing decision perhaps some players will find it a bit lean if they pay more than a few bucks, but the actual gameplay is solid throughout and it keeps throwing new concepts around to ensure it’s not a repetitive ride.

 

Maybe people would have preferred if Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death had more to say like the comics it is based on, maybe they would have liked it to look nicer so it could stand more squarely beside contemporary shooters, but I do feel the game might have been unfairly dismissed in its time. A license can make gamers skeptical though, but conversely if this game had more visual polish they might have changed their tune since it would look more respectable. It may not be on the high end of first person shooters, but Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death squeezed a lot of good ideas into this concise package and an engaging campaign came out of the development team’s efforts to mix things up. Laying down the law in Mega-City One or fighting friends with the interesting weapon set both make for an enjoyable time, so don’t judge this game unfairly for its small faults.