Judge Dredd: Dredd VS Death

To be brutally honest, you are as imaginative as dry, unbuttered toast. [July 2004, p.65]

Certainly not one that will turn heads or be remembered by anyone, other than fans of the series, after a few weeks. Wait for the bargain bin.

Dredd-fully underwhelming. [July 2004, p.75]

There's a very limited, repetitive number of enemy types (whose quickly depleted voiceovers get annoying), and the core combat is solid, but uninspired (circle-strafe, reload, repeat).

With the First Person Shooter marked being overcrowded and the standards being set pretty high by some excellent titles, it’s difficult for any new game in this genre to stand out of the crowd without outstanding graphics, realistic physics engine, above-average AI for the enemies or the hype to boost its sales. Unfortunately, Judge Dredd doesn’t have any of those.

It's a short, simplistic shooter that's not worth even its budget price.

Your main objective is the bane of the modern FPS: follow a little blue arrow while shooting things, with the odd escort or protect responsibility thrown in to make you turn around occasionally. It's average justice dished out to the licence, but nothing more. [Christmas 2003, p.121]

Rebellion has taken a sci-fi world tailor-made for an FPS game and created a title that feels like it could have been made six years ago.

Fans of the fiction will finally appreciate a style that keeps the faith, but will wonder how this game could have done its source material the same sort of disservice the decade old movie did.

But for the crimes of middling graphics and dull-as-dirt game play, we sentence Dredd vs. Death to eternal burial in the discount bin at Costco. Court adjourned.