Friday 9 March 2018

SNES Game Review 146: Judge Dredd

 

OK so today's game is an interesting one in that it is a game based on a film which was based on a comic. I first came in to contact with the character of Judge Dread when I was young when I was shown a copy of 2000 AD a weekly science-fiction anthology comic. I think it went a little like this. I was reading a Spiderman comic when a bigger kid went ''oh kid why you reading about a wimp like that look at this its got this guy in it called Judge Dread he is proper well cool.'' OK I don't have such a good memory so I might be making his words up a bit but they probably involved something proper 80's like references to one thing being rad and the other gay but you get the picture. I have to admit I enjoyed the comic and I have picked up the odd 2000 AD related comic since then but I am far from a hardcore fan but put simply Dredd is a law enforcement officer in the dystopian future city of Mega-City One. He is not just any law man though he is a street judge which basically means that he is a police officer a judge, jury and an executioner all rolled into one, in this world there are a bunch of Judges but basically Dredd is the meanest and toughest of them all.
Well Judge Dredd made his live action film debut in 1995 in the unsurprisingly titled Judge Dredd. In this film he was portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. When it was released the film was  totally panned by critics and well by almost everyone. It did receive praise in some areas these being its  its visual style, its effects, stunts and action sequences. One of the things the fans seemed to have the biggest problem with is that Dredd removes his helmet and is in fact helmet-less for the majority of the film. Apparently though despite all of the hate it grossed more than $113 million worldwide against its budget of $90 million so it at least didn't loose anyone money. In total honesty though I have to admit that I actually kind of like Judge Dredd, its not a world changing film but its a decent action film with a few laughs and its a good enough way to pass a few hours.

So what we have here then is a game which started out as a much loved cult comic became a not very well liked movie and then became a game which actually received reviews ranging from good to average back in the day. I need to admit something right now though, I might have seen the film back then but I never bothered with the game for the simple reason I just kind of decided it would probably suck and so just gave it a wide berth.

OK so lets start with the games story, well for a start if you saw the movie, well the story is pretty much the same, it follows the film very closely up until right near the end. You actually get a text crawl in the intro giving you the whole set up for the world telling you about Mega City One and the Judges and what life is like in this world. You have two levels where you basically get to be Dredd doing his regular job being an officer of the law. It is then here that you learn that Dredd has been found guilty of murder and is exiled from MegaCity One into what is called The Cursed Earth. After this its basically making your way through the cursed earth and then back to MegaCity one to prove your innocence, to get the guy who framed you and to basically kick his ass. Something critics of the movie will like is that the Dredd in this game never actually removes his helmet, your in the Dredd uniform for the entire game, what do I think about this? I actually think its kind of stupid, he gets exiled in full body armor essentially in his police uniform yeah like that would happen but yeah this probably makes some critics of the film a bit happier.

OK so now its time to talk about the gameplay. Controlling Dredd is pretty easy. You run around with a button for jumping, a button to kick, one for shooting, then you have a button to switch weapons and the last one I will mention is the arrest button. Something which doesn't seem to matter beyond points but is kind of cool given the character is not only can Dredd just waste enemies he can also sometimes arrest them. You will see enemies throw up their hands and surrender and if you approach them and press the arrest button then Dredd will cuff them and they will be floated away presumably to jail on a little platform.

One of the good things about the game is that enemies come along in all shapes and sizes, you have a variety of different looking criminals and then latter you get ABC Warbots and skinless clones, something called Judge hunters. There are a couple of boss battles, you even get to ride one of the judges bikes for a nice change of pace but things like this could have been done more often as this doesnt compare that well in the variety and keeping it fresh stakes as something like Indiana Jones's Greatest Adventures which I reviewed recently, in fact despite this games attempts at variety this game feels like it starts to drag on a bit and if you are anything like me then you will most likely begin to feel your interest just dripping away. Some of the level objectives also seem like more of a slog than anything, find this, blow so many crates up etc. You tend to find you can get a bit lost in levels and start feeling your doing a chore not playing a game, in this way the game reminds me of Spiderman and the Xmen Arcades Revenge with the bomb deactivating etcetera. The great thing about the character of Dredd is that he is an arse kicking bad ass and I just feel this game needed to be a little more straight up action, a little more Contra style. I will admit though that things get a little more fun when replaying levels as you know the layout and where to go to meet your objectives instead of feeling like your wandering lost.

OK so I just want to quickly go over the games graphics and sound. The graphics in this game look quiet good really. Nice character animation, the graphics are a little bit comic book visuals meet Flashback and in my opinion it really works. The scenery and characters are very colorful and I would say represent the source material well. Overall its not a bad game graphics wise at all. The music in this game is kind of generic action music but in honesty it has a sort of dark gritty theme to it all and it helps set the mood well, it certainly fits the charters and world and doesn't grate. The sound effects are all pretty much what you would expect, although seriously they needed to throw in a few voice samples in my opinion, having him occasionally say ''I am the Law'' perhaps when beating a boss or something would have been a nice little touch. 

OK so now is the all important score part of the review, what am I going to give Dredd? Well after much deliberation I have decided that what Dredd deserves is a 6.5 out of 10. Its a reasonably enjoyable game, much better than average but there are also a heck of a lot better games on the system. I spent £8 on my cartridge only Pal copy and for me I think that price is about right, that's this games sweet spot in my opinion. If you can get it for something around that point then id heartily say give it a bash. Looking online at the moment cartridge only pal copies tend to be about £12 to £15 with fully boxed copies going for £25 to £30.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Tales from the Crypt DEAD EASY aka Fat Tuesday the lost film

Ages and Ages ago I made blog posts about Tales from the Crypt Presents Fat Tuesday AKA Dead Easy and a few years ago I turned these into a...