tomi1kenobi on 21/9/2003 at 21:44

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(http://www.3dgamers.com/games/dreddvsdeath/)
(http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=3693)
(http://www.gamershell.com/news_BDreddvsDeathBPre-releas.shtml)
(http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=13126)
A couple other sites to try getting it from;)
Yes, this baby really needs a regular powerhouse box to run it; especially your graphics card has to be top-notch.
Tried it, didn't like it, pass it. Very straightforward Doom shooter. Only good things are OK graphics, music and an interesting feature that you should try to arrest as many people as possible, by wounding them or by shooting guns of their hands. That gets pretty boring too. Bargain bin purchase.

Shadowcat on 22/9/2003 at 02:44

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I disagree with the "powerhouse PC" requirement, as these days that suggests something more than my 800MHz CPU and 256 MB RAM (the GeForce4Ti 4200 <i>might</i> qualify), and the demo ran totally smoothly on my machine. Maybe it's my video card, but I'd actually say that this is a shooter that people with slower systems can probably play okay!

As for the game itself, well it appears to be a very standard shooter for the most part, with none too exciting A.I. apponents (haven't tried hard difficulty admittedly); BUT if you want to play Dredd and you're happy with that, then the game seems to do a good job of it.

The only gameplay element I could see that added anything to the basic shooter formula was the ability to arrest people. You have to make sure you arrest rather than attack people who have surrendered, and if you try to only wound them then you're more likely to get more arrests, which seems to garner you commendations from Judge Anderson. It definitely puts you a little more into your role of a Judge, but I wouldn't describe it as a super-enthralling feature. Also, I didn't see any way to arrest someone without getting brutal (and melee attacks seem to be instant death for the general populace), so even for Dredd I felt a bit overly vicious at times. Lastly, the sentences you dish out sometimes seem a bit random, but hey.

The game looks very pretty IMO. I think they did a great job of making the world look like a comic -- without going down the cell-shaded route, of course -- and although it's been many years since I read any 2000AD, that introductory cinematic really does look like Dredd come to life to me. The character models aren't the most detailed around, but they look okay.

The Lawgiver gun is fun. You get standard, armour-piercing, ricochet, incendiary, hi-explosive, and heat-seeking rounds to play with. In addition you can carry a single secondary weapon (and swap this with anything you find), which makes the game one of the rare ones that doesn't pretend you can actually carry all that crap at once :)

I liked the way that the melee attack animations changed depending on the weapon you were carrying -- when holding a two-handed machine gun, I whacked people with the butt of the gun. Nice.

Physics are sometimes a bit cartoonish, but hey -- I guess that's okay in this instance :)

The story could be okay, but it's hard to tell. Dredd sounds enough like Dredd for my liking, too.

Lastly, there are a couple of non-story skirmish type modes of play included in the demo, which make for a brief diversion. I think they'd get kinda old kinda fast, though... I found the AvP skirmish mode much more fun.

I've read enough comments on this demo to think that a lot of people were hoping for a more complex game including riding the Lawmaster, and such. As such I think it's being trashed unfairly in some forums for not being something it was never intended to be, and that it's probably quite a decent shooter given the constraints. Anyhow, it's your call -- that's what demos are for! I don't think I'm going to buy it, just because it doesn't seem to offer enough to elevate it over the (too many) other games I still have to play, but I'll probably arrest a few more creeps before removing it from my system :)

Muzman on 22/9/2003 at 04:37

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There's this bloke who lurks around every conversation based on Duke Nukem Forever rubbishing 3drealms and accusing them of all kinds of things. Then he turns the conversation to Dredd vs Death (without fail, in every thread he appears in around the net) and he has proclaimed numerous times that he thinks D vs. D will outsell every game in the history of the world combined. And he appears to be dead serious.
Apparently this is because the game will be very open ended and offer unmatched freedom, character and replayability, or something.
Any evidence the real game might turn out like that in the demo?

twisty on 22/9/2003 at 10:05

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Hmnn...I've been looking forward to this game for some time as I used to be a big 2000AD fan. However, going by some of the comments that I heard so far, I think I'll wait until a demo get released on a gaming mag cd before I consider buying the full game, as I'm only a 56ker.

buglunch on 22/9/2003 at 19:35

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I finished Will Rock and that's probably enough simple shooter for a while (and the graphics are very nice).