Dredd vs Death was another game purchased recently just for the pure co-op lulz. Originally made over 10 years ago back in the heady days of the sixth console generation, the game feels a little clunky by todays standards but is still worth it for a decent co-op shooter romp.
Mega-City-One is again under attack from a malevolent force. This time it is the Dark Judges, a group of 4 undead Judge spirits from a parallel dimension who see all life as a crime to be judged. At the start of the game, they are safely imprisoned but manage to effect an escape and it is up to Dredd to find and stop them before they can destroy the city.
The game plays like any early 2000s FPS in that you move like a tank at a pretty much constant sprint. There are the usual plethora of different guns to pick up like shotguns, machine guns, grenade launchers and such, but the Judge's signature gun, the Lawgiver pistol is one of the best throughout the game due to it's ability to fire a wide range of munitions ranging from armour piercing to ricochet high explosive. This gives you a wide variety of options for different situations, but sometimes finding the right ammo quickly can be troublesome so it is not without it's disadvantages.
The game also gives you the ability to Judge people who surrender to you willingly. Once they kneel down with their hands in the air, you can cuff and Judge them where it shows the perp's crimes and sentences. These can be quite amusing as it seems damn near everything is a crime with such things as "Owning a goldfish without a license" popping up on some perp's details. You also get a law meter which shows your adherence to the law. If you only fire in defence and arrest rather than kill when you have the chance, this meter will stay high. If you shoot and kill everything without asking questions, then this meter will deplete and if it totally empties, it's game over. But I shot almost everyone I could see and this rarely happened so you need to be very very unlawful for this to happen.
One downside, which is common with older games like this, is that due to limited graphical capabilities and such, many areas look the same and are not sign posted. Combine this with often ambiguous and poorly explained objectives and it can result in a lot of time spent wandering around trying to find your next objective or simply ascertain exactly what the next objective is. Checkpoints can also be quite sparse which again, was quite common at the time but co-op adds to this problem because if one of you dies or fails an objective, you are reset to the last one. These are small annoyances though and usually didn't detract much from the murderous fun and hilarious no-nonsense gruffness of the Judge. Who is monstrously ugly in this particular incarnation and I wonder how his fellow Judges do not often shoot him mistakenly thinking he is some form of hideous monster.
Dredd vs. Death provided fairly standard issue but still entertaining co-op FPS action through and through with some minor annoyances along the way that are easily over-looked. A blast in the face from the past to be sure. Nothing new or shocking here, but still fun for those who like shooting dudes in the face.
No comments:
Post a Comment