Posted July 29, 2009
The game's based on the popular, long-running 2000AD series of comic books rather than the aforementioned unpopular Sylvester Stallone movie. You, of course, play Dredd, a cop of the future who acts as judge, jury, and executioner in a fascistic consumer dystopia called Mega-City One on your quest to recapture four escaped "Dark Judges"--Fear, Fire, Mortis, and Death.
You can expect to be badgered by a lot of vampires and zombies. Though there are some token human lawbreakers to execute here and there, for the most part, the game's 11 short levels pit you against swarms of the undead. In what might have been an attempt to spice up gameplay, you can arrest human lawbreakers rather than kill them. Sometimes they'll surrender on sight, and sometimes you'll have to wing them first. The problem is, unless it's a very occasional part of a mission goal, or unless you're deeply into role-playing Judge Dredd, there's basically no reason to do this. Arrests do boost your "law meter," which is a stat bar that tracks your success as a judge. Unfortunately, the law meter isn't tightly integrated into gameplay. So unless you willfully ignore instructions, it rarely dips below maximum and can be safely ignored.
As you complete the single-player levels, 11 "arcade" levels become unlocked. These feature small, goal-oriented tasks that usually require you to either kill a certain number of enemies as fast as possible or survive an onslaught for a given amount of time. In short bursts, these levels are actually more intense and entertaining than the campaign. Two people can tackle the single-player campaign cooperatively. This is a nice feature that would have been a lot more exciting in a better game
The environments are colorful but geometrically simple. They're not attractively stylized simple, either; they're just simple, with lots of big, flat surfaces. The game also features what appears to be some of man's first experiments in rag-doll physics. Characters crumple and tumble but are completely out of sync with the force applied to them. Shoot an oncoming zombie in the foot and it's just as likely to be blown 20 feet in the air and forward as any other direction.
Success in both the campaign and arcade modes unlocks a bunch of extra character models that can be used in multiplayer. Game can handle up to 16 people over a LAN or the Internet, unfortunately game doesn't include a built-in server browser for anything but LAN games, so you'll have to hop out of the game and use an external browser to find servers..
I axpected something more from this game when I played it, but someone would have more fun from it. Price isn't high so you might consider buying it but don't say I didn't warn you!
You can expect to be badgered by a lot of vampires and zombies. Though there are some token human lawbreakers to execute here and there, for the most part, the game's 11 short levels pit you against swarms of the undead. In what might have been an attempt to spice up gameplay, you can arrest human lawbreakers rather than kill them. Sometimes they'll surrender on sight, and sometimes you'll have to wing them first. The problem is, unless it's a very occasional part of a mission goal, or unless you're deeply into role-playing Judge Dredd, there's basically no reason to do this. Arrests do boost your "law meter," which is a stat bar that tracks your success as a judge. Unfortunately, the law meter isn't tightly integrated into gameplay. So unless you willfully ignore instructions, it rarely dips below maximum and can be safely ignored.
As you complete the single-player levels, 11 "arcade" levels become unlocked. These feature small, goal-oriented tasks that usually require you to either kill a certain number of enemies as fast as possible or survive an onslaught for a given amount of time. In short bursts, these levels are actually more intense and entertaining than the campaign. Two people can tackle the single-player campaign cooperatively. This is a nice feature that would have been a lot more exciting in a better game
The environments are colorful but geometrically simple. They're not attractively stylized simple, either; they're just simple, with lots of big, flat surfaces. The game also features what appears to be some of man's first experiments in rag-doll physics. Characters crumple and tumble but are completely out of sync with the force applied to them. Shoot an oncoming zombie in the foot and it's just as likely to be blown 20 feet in the air and forward as any other direction.
Success in both the campaign and arcade modes unlocks a bunch of extra character models that can be used in multiplayer. Game can handle up to 16 people over a LAN or the Internet, unfortunately game doesn't include a built-in server browser for anything but LAN games, so you'll have to hop out of the game and use an external browser to find servers..
I axpected something more from this game when I played it, but someone would have more fun from it. Price isn't high so you might consider buying it but don't say I didn't warn you!
