The next perp is... Precious Leglock? Even by Dredd standards, this is a pretty dumb name. I suspect they call him that because of the diamonds he seems to be covered in. If I can put on my Dredd Nerd hat on for a second, I wish they'd put Call-Me-Kenneth in instead, but I'm not in a place to complain. To the factory!



"Renegade robots! Cease and desist, metal miscreants!"

In a cheeky move, the game changes the controls without telling you! Now we're in run-and-gun territory, although with considerably less running involved. The Punch button now fires Dredd's Lawgiver, and the Kick button fires it too, but aims it diagonally upwards. Also, the game now plays on a single plane, rather than allowing you to move up and down the screen. This level's much shorter than the last one, and mostly involves you desperately trying to hit one of the two different robot enemies (one being an irritating pisser robot who flies around randomly, the other being a giant death machine with twin chainguns.) This is harder than it seems, because the flying robots move too fast for you to hit them most of the time, and the death machines aren't completely destroyed until you blow up the bottom half, which you need to duck for.



As well as this, you'll encounter some roof-mounted laser cannons, some incredibly ill-advised platforming sections (Unlike Smash Bros. Brawl, Judge Dredd's fighting game engine does not lend itself nicely to jumping around on platforms, as Dredd falls like a lead weight) and, of course, avoiding giant pincers that appear from nowhere. Truth be told, this level is the weak one in the chain, mostly because platforms + scrolling beat-em-up = horrible amounts of fail. It's a small mercy that it's the shortest level, then.

Now, is there any particular reason this level is a bit on the wonky side? Jake Simpson strikes again- 'The jumping level with the robots literally went in about a month before test. It was only because Eric had done some renders of robots and we looked at it them and went "What can we do with this?" - Eric and I built that alone very quickly... I'd never even attempted to code a platformer before and had no real idea what I was doing.'. Still, at least it's better than the platforming section in Growl.



At the end, this Mega-Vac grabs on to you, and dumps you into...



"My name is Leglock,
King of the Droids!
I'll smash ya!
I'll bash ya!
I'll crush ya like toys!"

Precious Leglock; so pompous, he made his own theme song.

Sadly, Leglock isn't a guy in a costume- it was a mannequin, made by the same guy who did the Goro models for Mortal Kombat.



In his personal wrestling ring, Precious Leglock challenges Dredd, mano e mano, just like in the comics! It'd be far too easy to point out how this is a blatantly unfair fight, as, well, Leglock is a man of steel, whereas Dredd consists mostly of puny flesh, and in Leglock's estimation, he counts as a pencil-neck geek. Fortunately, this is a video game, so we can toss such trivial things as 'common sense' right out the window. Leglock, being a robot wrestler, has a fair few attacks to dish out, but he'll mostly use a flying shoulder ram against you. His other moves are to swipe at you, slam the ground and shake it like Mean Machine, and throw you, again like Mean, even including the zero warning time. Hmm, suspicious. At any rate, this fight's not too hard, and although the ring randomly becomes electrified, it doesn't seem to do much damage, and it's interesting to note that Leglock can be shocked as well.



"Mega-City One... Is crowded enough."

And Dredd pins Leglock for the win! Not sure what his cryptic victory quote is supposed to mean, though.



Once again, we're whisked away for target practice after beating Leglock.



"Never a dull moment when you're a 22nd Century cop!"

This one's mostly the same as the first- 30 seconds on the clock, get gunning down those perps- but this time, giant red missiles appear, and if they hit you, Dredd gets injured. However, they don't seem to have too much of an effect on your score, and even stranger, there aren't enough missiles launched to ever kill you outright. Furthermore, the missiles are really hard to see, because they aim themselves straight at Dredd... Which means that Dredd himself covers up the missile, so you can't even see it half the time... This was a glitch that was fixed for the location-test version of the game, though.



"Objective accomplished. Learn about the law!"



Dredd's final mission is to break up a Block War, breaking out between the Jake Simpson and Tom Coman blocks. He's got 3:30 on the clock before they send the riot foam in.

Hop to it, Dredd!



At least they're telling you the controls this time.



Order will be restored!

Now, this level is really clever, in theory at least. The action takes place on a single screen, which scrolls left and right, with a different block on each side. Block warriors pour out of each block, with an seemingly indestructible 'block boss' guarding the door. The two towers also have bars representing their cannon's level of construction that's steadily lowering from 'safe' to 'critical' throughout the level. If it ever reaches the bottom, the level's automatically over, with one block getting completely totalled. To stop them, you have to shoot as many block warriors as you can- shooting red block warriors brings the Simpson Tower's meter up a little, shooting green block warriors brings the Coman Tower's meter up a little.

You have to keep this up for 3:10 (the 3:30 limit given in the briefing is a mistake which was fixed for the location test) so that Dredd can clear the way for the riot foam. During the fight, items drop down as on Stage 1, including four upgrades for Dredd's gun... Which, fact-fans, all happen to be actual Lawgiver functions from the comics.


Incendiary
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire! This simply sets the block warriors alight, which is always amusing.


Armour-Piercing
With this, Dredd's Lawgiver shoots out ridiculously large bullets, mostly for comedic effect. I think you can also use these to kill the 'block bosses', but don't quote me on that.


Ricochet
These green bullets bounce all over the place, although they bounce best off people rather than the walls...


Heat-Seeker
Obviously, these home in on the nearest enemy, although if there's no-one close enough, they'll usefully spin around in a circle endlessly.

So, what happens if the cannon meter drops all the way to the bottom...?



... Ah, well, that's not very good, is it?



If you do fail, Judge McGruder despairs of you, and you've got to repeat the level until you get it done.



The main problem with the Block War level is that, the first time around, it's very difficult to keep the cannon meter from fully depleting, so you'll almost inevitably have to repeat it. Fortunately, there aren't any serious penalties for having to do the stage again. In fact, it's practically an advantage, as while you lose the Block War bonus, you get a big concession in your favour; every time you have to re-do the mission, the timer runs quicker, meaning that while it still starts at 3:10, you've actually got to maintain order for a lot less time than that. By the third time you have to do the level over, you can probably just leave the controls alone, and still finish the stage.

The developers really struggled with the block war stage, as Simpson elaborates- The block wars thing was really hard to balance - I never really got it right nor did I get the multi-angle attacks working as correctly as we'd envisioned - if you had too many people they'd bunch up and bounce off each other, but not enough and there was no challenge.'

When the time finally runs out, you get to see the Block War brought to an end.



"Send in the Riot Foam!"

Ridiculous, isn't it? I'd like to say the foam animation was unfinished, but that's probably not the case. Sigh.



Incidentally, here's the Block War bonus displayed on the results screen. Tasty.



For the final time, we get to go to the target practice stage.



"Punish the guilty, keep the innocent nervous!"

Again, same-old, same-old, but this time, we get both missiles (which, as we've noted, are almost certainly going to hit you) and, new to this level, innocents! They're, well, innocents, so don't shoot them, OK? It's easy enough to spot them, as they're the only targets that show up in blue. If you do shoot them, though, you'll have 4 hits taken away from your Perp count, which is hazardous to your score. Aside from that, it's the same as always, here. This one has the best pre-training Dredd quote, though.



"Objective accomplished. I am good!"

And the best post-training Dredd quote, for that matter.

You will find naught but DEATH on the next page!!!