Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death, GameCube

The Nintendo GameCube version of Dredd vs. Death was published by Evolved Games in North America and Sierra in Europe in 2003. It was developed by Rebellion, the owner of the 2000AD brand.

Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death is a first-person shooter that at least tries to make good use of the Judge Dredd license, and to a large extent it succeeds quite well.

You of course play as Dredd himself and a short training mission gives way to what appears to be a routine day on the streets of Mega City One. It soon becomes apparent, though, that this isn’t the case. A first you’re attacked by vampires, then the dead start coming back to life to try to eat you. This then leads to the fact that the infamous Dark Judges have escaped and are trying to take over the city, and it’s your job to stop them.

Dredd‘s primary weapon is his Lawgiver pistol, which can switch between six different types of ammunition. You can also carry one secondary weapon, which can be swapped with anything that you find on your travels. Dredd can also carry and throw a limited number of grenades.

Dredd vs. Death has a relatively short, but incident-packed, single-player campaign. This campaign can also be played as split-screen cooperative, which is nice. There’s also a single-player arcade mode, and a multiplayer versus mode. As you complete episodes of the single-player campaign new arcade mode levels, and multiplayer characters, are unlocked. And completing arcade mode challenges unlocks cheats and various other goodies. Multiplayer versus games can be played against other human players, or against bots.

Overall, Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death is a decent shoot ’em up on the GameCube. That is: if you don’t mind playing this kind of game on a gamepad. Personally, I prefer to play first-person shooters with a mouse and keyboard, so I enjoyed the PC version of this game far more than the console versions. The PC version also looks better, so if you’re only going to play just one version of Dredd vs. Death I’d recommend that over GameCube, PS2 or XBox.