YOU. . . ARE. . . THE. . . LAW!!!!!
User Rating: 8.9 | Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death XBOX
I'll admit going into Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death, I didn't expect too much. I'd read the reviews and heard stories through word of mouth -- "This game stinks, stay away!" So, this game was never a priority for me to play. Then one day I was in the local video game store and saw it used for $5. So to make a long story short, I bought it. I took it home and started playing it. I was hooked. I'm not a big first shooter fan, to me they are all basically the same. With this game, I feel it is a much maligned title. There are little bits of humor spread throughout the game, you can arrest someone and charge them for illegal possesion of a hamster. Too funny. The graphics weren't bad. They have a great comic book feel, especially if you have ever read the Judge Dredd comics. Very vibrant and colorful in all the right places. A detriment is in areas that are meant to be dark is that sometimes it was too colorful. The designers paid close attention to the design of the main characters so that you knew if you were talking to Chief Justice Hershey or to Judge Anderson or to some random street judge. The bad guys (the Dark Judges) also had some interesting design to them that closely mimiced the comic book as well. One other thing about the graphics that I greatly liked is the design of the weapons. The Justice Department weapons, especially Dredd's handgun of choice the Mark !V, looked the way it was supposed to look. You just knew you were weilding powerful weapons by the way they looked. The sound is another story. The music mainly looped, never changing. The voice acting had the deadpan of a bad movie or noir story. And the afore-mentioned weaponry although looked cool, almost all of them sounded the same. This was the major disappointment in the game. The two major variations for Dredd that separates it from the first person pack is the types of ammo in his handgun and in the arrest mechanic. The heat seeking and explosive rounds make for some fun variation. Then there there is the encouragement that you don't shoot everyone, you are playing a futuristic lawman after all. There are perps walking the streets that aren't necessarily shooting at you. You can arrest almost anyone and helps to change up the running and gunning in that in order to arrest some criminals you have to challenge them and then disarm then. Which often is harder than sending a high powered round through their electronic brain pan. Overall, I would recommend this game to people. The only thing I would put as a disclaimer is that it is not based on the movie, so therefore you don't have to worry about Rob Schneider popping up every so often. It's based solely on the comic books and characters. You don't have to be a fan of the comics to like it, just don't go in expecting to be playing as Stallone.
