Review: Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death (GameCube)

In this review, we deliver justice in the GameCube game, Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death. We find out how well the first person shooter game plays.

This game was released in 2005 and would be one of a select number of titles that was sold in Europe first before being brought over to North America.

The story is that you are Judge Dredd. In a futuristic city known as Mega-City, you have the authority to not only arrest potential criminals, but also to convict and sentence them to “the cubes” (prison) right on the spot. So, basically, you are a law enforcement entity in a police state. It’s not just you that has this authority, but also anyone who is a judge. Psi-judges who have special psychic capabilities, say that they are sensing a storm approaching.

You eventually discover it is the dark judges you had already sentenced to eternity breaking out of their special places of imprisonment. The dark judges are a cult that came from another world and believed that life is a crime and, as such, want to sentence the entire world to death. After killing all life in their world, they have apparently been after the world you preside in as well. It turns out that this suspicion was true and you eventually have to fight the dark judges and re-arrest them.

While this game does have the core mechanics of a first person shooter, a lot of what is found in this game differs from many other first person shooter games. You have a health meter and a shield. If you get hit a couple of times, your shield will deplete. So, ideally, you want to seek shelter so that the shield restores itself. If you keep taking damage, then you will lose health. If you lose all of your health, then it is game over. The thing is, this game also allows you to carry up to three medi-packs. Medi-packs restore your health to 100%. Even better, the game automatically uses them once your health reaches zero which works out very nicely.

The thing is, if you take damage, chances are, you are going to be taking a lot of damage. So, try not to take for granted that you have extra health. What’s more is that health is generally in sort supply in this game. There are two ways you can get health: picking the green and white boxes up from the ground or interact with a medical judge. Both are actually in short supply, even when this game is on easy mode, so your goal is to always try and reduce the amount of damage you take as much as possible.

You also have a standard assortment of weapons. Generally, you have a pistol that fires bursts of bullets at a time. It’s not a bad weapon, but do know that you don’t actually do a whole lot of damage with each burst. Chances are, you’ll be going through whole chunks of clips before taking down most enemies. In addition to that, you have a series of other standard weapons. There are shotguns (multiple ones at that), pistols, machine guns, a laser weapon you can charge for additional damage, and even a grenade launcher. The thing is, this game limits you to your primary weapon and only one additional secondary weapon. You can swam your secondary weapons out if another one is available, but you still have the storage limitation. The good news is that you can always pick up the last weapon you dropped with ammo still intact, so you don’t have to worry about grabbing the wrong gun unless you are in the middle of an intense firefight.

In all, there are 11 chapters. Some chapters are longer than others, but the larger levels generally are found in the first half of the game. The good news is that objectives are sometimes noted with an indicator. It doesn’t give everything away, but you have an idea of which direction the objective is located. In rare instances, you can even get a red indicator as well as a second point of interest in the objective. Otherwise, it’s generally just a blue indicator. The thing is, they only periodically pop up. Frequently, you have to figure out on your own where to go. On some levels, it’s not that big of a deal, but other times, it can be downright confusing.

Another mode that is available is arcade mode. This looked like something similar to the arcade mode in Timesplitters, but it’s actually a lot more stripped down then that. Generally, there are three mission types in this mode: kill a quota number of enemies, survive until time runs out, and escort missions. Note that completion of levels will unlock these arcade levels. The game doesn’t tell you what the threshold is for getting the different ranks, so you have to go by feel. Depending on the character, your health and weapons you use can generally differ. Another thing to note is that when swapping out weapons, you can swap out the primary or secondary weapon slot unlike the story mode. A high ranking will unlock a cheat.

Generally, that is it for this game.

I personally do like the idea of playing around with some of the features of a standard shooter. Experimentation can yield some groundbreaking concepts. This is especially the case if those features are well implemented. In this case, they aren’t. Even in easy mode, it felt like the shield didn’t protect me by a whole lot. It adds a very small buffer for damage, but doesn’t do more beyond that. This is because your health is actually quite small. This makes it much more difficult even on easy mode. In fact, I had a heck of a time trying to complete levels at times simply because of the low health you actually get.

Another problem with the game is the sometimes touch and go level design. Some areas look like they are where you need to go, but the reality is that it’s actually a dead end. This generally goes towards the touch and go objective indicators. Sometimes, they are present when you don’t need them, while other times, they are nowhere to be found when you do need them. It’s a little annoying in that regard.

While the arcade mode does add much needed gameplay to this (in that, it prevents it being considered a short game in our books), it felt like this mode was simply tacked on to the game hastily. Arcade levels, however few there are, repeat some of the same levels. The game could have nicely expanded this feature with a number of concepts like simple capture the flag or a number of other standard rule sets. Instead, it’s a slim number of levels that add only the minimal amount of gameplay to the game itself.

Another problem is the general lack of health to be found in this game. I can see this adding some challenge to the overall game for harder modes, but for the easy difficulty, it seems to artificially increase the difficulty of the game.

Finally, the checkpoint system can be a bit hit and miss. It’s great that it’s in there, but there are some levels where the checkpoints traverse large portions of a level, making the level require very good skill to not break much of a sweat, while other levels, it seems like every third hallway is a checkpoint. Bizarrely, it’s the later levels that have the large number of checkpoints. It’s more weird than adding a certain degree of difficulty as you progress.

Generally speaking, if you want a more cheap feeling game where you can more or less get a little lost in for a few days, this isn’t an absolutely terrible choice. At the same time, if you are hoping for a great and immersive gaming experience, then you’ll be sorely disappointed with this one. The checkpoint system is weird, the indicators are pretty hit and miss, and the arcade mode is seemingly a last minute thing that was slapped onto the game. A very mediocre play in the end.

Graphics is probably one of the biggest problems with this game. Had this been a launch title for the GameCube, I would have said that this games graphics are half ways decent, though nothing too spectacular. In this case, this game was released on the same year as games like Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ratchet: Deadlocked, and Robots. The overall scenery is, at best, mediocre, and more like a very mild upgrade to games like Duke Nukem: Zero Hour which was released a whopping 6 years earlier… on a previous generation console. The character models are even worse. They range from downright ugly to almost incomprehensible. I personally sometimes had a hard time distinguishing friend and foe because the models are so bad. The explosions are OK, but the effects are quite brutal. As a result, I can’t say it’s even passable for a game released when it was.

The audio is OK. I think the sound effects are OK, but nothing particularly amazing. The voice acting was OK, but the writing for the lines can be a little cringe-worthy. I’ll give some credit for attempting to add some humour in there, but that’s about it. Finally, the music isn’t really all that memorable. A lot about it wound up being rather repetitive because so little distinguished themselves from others. I’ll say the audio is passable, but only barely.

Overall, this isn’t the best experience I had with a game. The checkpoints can be a little bizarre, the difficulty curve is quite high – even on easy mode. Health is very scarce and your actual overall health is quite low, making this game that much harder. Meanwhile, the arcade mode felt like a last minute addition rather than a fun side feature. The graphics are almost a whole console generation behind and the audio only scrapes by. So, a barely passable game all around.

Overall

Beat the storyline on easy. Didn’t have any interest in playing on normal mode. In arcade mode, beat every one except visiting hours.

General gameplay: 15/25
Replay value: 5/10
Graphics: 4/10
Audio: 3/5

Overall rating: 54%

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.