Judge Dredd (SNES)

Adventures in Judge Dredd Games - Part 3

Today I'm playing... Judge Dredd, aka Judge Dredd - The Movie as it's allegedly based in some way on the 1995 Stallone film, and even has him on the cover.

By 1995 there had been already been two Judge Dredd games released, Judge Dredd and, uh, Judge Dredd, both of them only on computers and neither of them much fun. But now it's the consoles' turn to show off what they can do with the licence. This one came out on the Genesis/Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, and DOS, and I'm playing the SNES game. Will it succeed where the other games failed, or will it be as bad as the movie?

Well they've already tripped at the first hurdle by calling it Judge Dredd again.

Scrolling text sets the scene for the game, over the skyline of futuristic dystopian ultra-metropolis Mega-City One. Basically it explains that in the third millennium things went a bit dodgy for humanity, and the legal system was combined with the police force to create the Judges. Grim dark cops for a grim dark future.

Luckily I caught a shot before all those boring words appeared so you can get a good look at the artwork instead.

Incoming call from the bored floating heads. It seems they've spotted a block war going on and I'm to go in alone and sort the situation out. Like always.

I have to admit I can barely remember anything from the first Dredd movie, but this does sound like a thing that could have plausibly happened at the start of it.

Dredd's most impressive trait in the other games was his ability to leap incredibly high into the air, and here he does not disappoint. Plus you can probably guess from the screenshot that this is far better animated than the earlier games. In fact it's far better animated than most SNES games too, it looks bloody amazing.

Plus the music doesn't make me want to instinctively put a foot through my speakers, so it's got that going for it as well. So far it's beating the other two games in every department.

Ow, that did not look good for poor Dredd.

But you know what does look good? The reflections in the HUD at the top of the screen. It's amazing attention to detail, and I can't remember ever seeing that in a game before. Also I'm giving the game +500 points for not having a time limit.

I'm still trying to get the hang of combat in this. Right now I'm just trading bullets with the perps until one of us falls down (and they are all perps this time, no innocents). I've got a number of melee moves available to me, activated by hitting punch while pressing in a direction, but I'm not sure yet why I'd want to headbutt someone when I can just shoot them with my infinite bullets. I mean besides from it being a laugh.

Oh and by the way, enemies just evaporate in this when they're killed, even if I just gave them a good kick to the face. No corpses and definitely no blood. I guess they wanted it violent, but not too violent. 

Well this isn't working. I guess these brightly shaded obvious looking crates are just part of the scenery.

I like how it's scrolled over to give me a good view of what's in front of me though. It's the sort of thing I end up taking for granted in games, until I find myself playing something that has my hero's nose pressed up against the right side of the screen, trying to react to things I barely have a chance to see.

Hey, it seems that criminals actually surrender in this occasionally. If I stop firing and arrest them, they're taken off on a little flying disc. There's no harsh penalty for just shooting them some more though.

I wonder if I can use that computer terminal he's standing in front of. I wanna see if I can play Snake.

Current progress 0.0%. I guess I was supposed to break the obvious crates somehow, though it's not obvious how.

Oh crap, this is going to be just like the last Dredd game isn't it? I'll have to search every corner of every level for boxes, or switches or whatever it wants me to find next. That's a clear sign that they didn't put many levels in, and they want to drag things out.

It turns out that I'd somehow picked some grenade rounds for my Lawgiver pistol along the way, and they sorted out the boxes just fine. I only found enough to destroy this pile of ammo crates though, and surprisingly they didn't leave behind any extra ammo for me when they exploded.

Fortunately I found some more grenade rounds lying in the road on the way back to the other boxes. I guess the game took pity on me. Turns out the mean streets of Mega-City One aren't so mean after all.

These C1 crates on the other hand aren't mission critical items, but can be destroyed with a couple of bullets so I can collect the treasure inside. Though I've got a another, slightly more ingenious plan for this pushable box. It involves that wall I can't jump over on the right.

Using the box as a ledge got me over to the secret treasure room. Full health, an extra life, and... uh, money. To be honest I don't know much about Judge Dredd or his views on money, but he doesn't seem the type to go out of his way to pocket bags of cash he found lying in the street.

More street money! Plus a thug with a fire trail. Probably not a good sign.

I feel like this guy might be someone a Judge Dredd fan would recognise, but if it didn't show up in the 1995 film I don't have a clue, and the game isn't giving away any hints.

Uh, I guess I exorcised him with my boot? A little floating skull cloud thing came out and starting flying around, which I thought was a bit weird, but it didn't lead to anything. I just walked off and left him to haunt in peace.

And that's all the enemies and all the boxes for level 1. Primary and secondary objectives complete, and I can finally head for the exit and move on.


LEVEL 2.

Level 2 was basically more of level 1, right up to the point where the floor collapsed and I was dropped into a fight with Dredd's evil yellow doppelganger. So far this is turning out like every other fight though, a war of attrition with each of us soaking up damage. Except he's taking a lot more damage than the average enemy, and I'm a lot more on fire than usual.

I think I'm getting better at dodging his Molotovs though. Well, I haven't actually dodged a single one yet, but feel like I could manage it any time now.

I got bored with being set on fire and decided to confront him head on. This turned out to be a mistake. Well okay fine, my new tactic is to unload infinite bullets on him and see which of us runs out of lives first.

I'm not really a fan of bosses in general, so I often find it hard to tell whether it's the boss fight that's rubbish, or just me. But this time I'm leaning towards this being a crap fight.

Success! The bored heads in the sky give me a new mission, tasking me with ending a prison riot by closing security doors and arresting perps. Then they wished me all-good luck and sent me on my way.

Well Dredd did end up heading to Aspen penal colony in the film, but not exactly like this. You know, I'm starting to suspect that this actually doesn't have a damn thing to do with the movie.


LEVEL 3.

Straight away I walk into a fire jet some idiot thought they'd install into the wall. I thought I'd left crap like this behind when I left the city. The future truly is a harsh place, full of baffling architectural idiosyncrasies.

I gotta say though, the future also looks awesome. Very nice pixelwork.

You know, I've noticed it's rare I have to fight more than one enemy at a time in this, at least so far. They've gone for tough enemies over a screenful of cannon fodder (like the 1991 game had).

Fuck. Well there goes life #2, I really need to get my head around the combat in this game, because I'm sure there must be a way to kill these enemies without taking a chunk of damage in the process.

Well there goes life #3. Beautiful backwards dive though.

The problem I'm having is that Dredd has all these moves, but he's just not very nimble or responsive. I have to tap down to crouch or else he just fires his gun into the ground, I can't duck while moving, and even when I manage to do it right, it still takes just too long to actually dodge anything.

I lost life #4 a second after this screenshot and that was that. You know, it occurs to me that I'd totally forgotten to look for security doors to close, so I was doing pretty terribly anyway.

Dredd is pulled in to answer for the crime of being shot too many times. They judge him guilty, with the sentence being 'game over'. Seriously, that's what it says! Also, no continues. Didn't even give me a password, even though there was a password option on the title screen.


Well that's the SNES version of Judge Dredd (3) then. Slick, well made, and incredibly pretty for its time, but not so attractive in the gameplay department, unless you really like searching a level for the last box/switch/whatever. Definitely better than the last two games though by far.


But wait, there's more!

Adventures in Judge Dredd Games - Part 3.5 Game Gear The game was also released on the portable systems: the Game Gear and Game Boy. Or at least it's supposed to be the same game. It's got the same box art, the same name, the same missions, the same enemies, pretty much the same gameplay. But the mechanics are slightly different, and the levels are entirely different, and to me that makes it a separate game. So yeah, that means we're up to four different games now all called 'Judge Dredd'. Game Gear At least now I've started doing a little better in the fights. My trick is to hit them from a place they can't hit me back. I have eight-way aiming, and they don't, and I hadn't been using that to my advantage as often as I could in the SNES game. Game Boy Of course there's also their Achilles Heel, which in this case is actually is their heel. They can duck all they like, but they can't shoot me here. And if that doesn't work, I just spray some grenades around and hope I can find more before the next set of boxes. The Game Boy version has the gameplay stripped bare, without the pretty graphics to cover it up, and it reveals there's really nothing that interesting going on here, in any of the versions. Every level is a maze of platforms and ladders with no map, and I have to explore it all before I can move on. If there's any imaginative platforming challenges or clever concepts in this, they've got them all hidden until after the missions I played. Though on the plus side, no Rob Schneider character following you around. Can you imagine if they'd made this one long escort mission where you have to keep him alive?

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If you've played the game and have an opinion, have a game request, or just want to yell at me for wasting your time with so many Judge Dredd games, comments are always welcome.