Arriving in the mail all the way from the UK, a marble dyed package. Within, a cool smelling copy of The Making of Dredd: Dredd versus Death. Rebellion's take on their tale of the efforts that went into the making of the cross platform game, Judge Dredd: Dredd versus Death. On the subdued and shiny cover, a transitional image of Judge Joe Dredd from the wire frame into the model used in the game and as a way to bring in the core of the book.
First off, the sheer weight of it all cannot be escaped. Killing someone or at least knocking them out cold shouldn't be too hard with this book. Rather cumbersome, casual reading isn't an easy option here. The binding and the thickness of the book makes for hard reading supported on arms or being held up in the air. Pages clinging together in an atomic sort of way, their bulk puts in the fear of having to react to the pages as they tear away from the spine. A table is what's needed to do away with the numerous impressions left on the forearms from cradling the hardcovers.
Hardcovers do away with the secondary fun of page turning at rapid speed. Pretty much on every right page are small images of Judge Dredd in slightly different poses. Flicking through the images in an attempt to animate Dredd through old flicker animation was a little hard. The pages are pretty thick and with the aforementioned problem of holding it up, a little jarring occurs. Not easy due to the stock and there's something in the mix that makes it a little sticky, catching on the thumb. Softcover would have been nice. The actual animation itself, when run in a smooth course, makes a dramatic entrance only to stand around for a few seconds. Anything could have happened, but nothing did until the righting up of shuffling feet and BLAM!
The Making of Judge Dredd: Dredd versus Death
The first few chapters detail how the game itself came into being suggested. Not overly important to the essence of the book itself, it's adequately quick and jumps straight into the behind-the-scenes moves that went into securing the rights and a little history of the other incarnations of Judge Dredd on the various consoles. The greatest section of the book is spent fleshing out the flesh of the characters that appear in the game and brief character studies.
Lay out and design of the pages are nicely done. The chapter breaks parallel the action explored in the sections as the game moves from rights acquisition to modelling to packaging. Wide as it is, there seems to have been no qualms going deep into the character sketches, models and final game images. This makes for a beautiful scape of visuals breaking down the information to serviceable chunks. Even though most of the paragraphs were single sentences that didn't seem to stop, it didn't read like that at all. There's no forced humour, had there been it would have killed the book entirely.
The admiration and respect Rebellion have for the rights of the most famous 2000AD property comes through in the words. Depth is given more to the side of what decisions were made into the final look and feel of the game. Omissions and concessions were often explained away by the fact that time and memory constraints reared ever so often, which bleeds a little into the wish list that appears in the back that gave much kudos to the Grand Theft Auto style of game play.
Not having an in-depth knowledge of the world of Judge Dredd isn't a problem. Insightful and informative, this is a pretty fun and enjoyable book to read. This book could easily have been pissed down as a bios compilation with a slight expansion of the copy in games manuals and such. When the game is forgotten, the book itself could do as a pretty neat rundown or catch-up of the comics history of Judge Dredd and a little on his supporting cast, including Mega-City One.
With all the crew of Rebellion and 2000AD in the back photo gallery, only one was a woman.
2000AD list the cover date as being November 1, 2003. On Amazon UK it's down as September 25, 2003 (with a review that jumped the book by two days). The book itself lists a publication date of October 2003. This copy arrived on January 20, 2004. Posting this review sometime in March would have been excessive beyond itself.
Reviewed on Thursday, 29 January 2004