Slot Dojo — Game Review

GoNintendo ‘End of Day’ thoughts — Photo Dojo review by RMC

I bought a new alarm clock yesterday. It’s one of those clocks with the bells on top…where a hammer actually clangs away. I need a super loud alarm to wake me up, and I think this one will do the trick. If all goes well, I’ll see you earlier than usual for Tuesday! One way or another, I’ll see you in a few, short hours.

Photo Dojo is the best use of the DSi camera technology to date. It also happens to be one of the best free software downloads that Nintendo has offered, right alongside Flipnote Studio.

Do you know why Photo Dojo is free for a month? It’s because the game is awesome. Nintendo knows how ridiculously fun this title is, and it also showcases a fantastic use of the DSi cameras. Rather than put it on the DSi Shop service and let it get covered up week after week, Nintendo plopped it down at the low, low price of zero dollars. That’s going to open the door to all sorts of customers that would never pick up a game like this. Of course, once those people grab it, nary a one will feel the download was a waste of time or space. The word spreads from there, and eventually that month of free downloads is up. Then, the people that see how awesome this game is will have no problem ponying up the 200 Nintendo Points it will cost. The best part is, this game is still an absolute steal at 200 Nintendo Points.

There have been other games on the DSi that utilize the cameras, but we haven’t really seen one in the states that offers up something meaningful. While technically the camera isn’t necessary to play/enjoy Photo Dojo, nearly all of the game’s charm and content come from your photo taking. Before I get into that fun, how about I give a quick little rundown of how this game works?

Most of you have played 2d beat’em ups at one point or another. Photo Dojo is just that. It’s a 2d beat’em up with one major difference. You create the backgrounds, characters, and even sound effects. Rather than drawing your assets (although technically you could), Photo Dojo utilizes the DSi cameras. You snap pictures of friends, family and objects to stick into the game. Now instead of nameless characters, you’ll play as yourself, and you’ll be fighting down wave after wave of all your friends. Top it all off with a custom background that you snapped, and you get an ultra-interesting scrolling landscape. You’ll be punching and kicking, all while laughing your ass off.

Using Photo Dojo couldn’t be easier. Mom Brain and I gave it a test run earlier today. All you do is align your body into various body outlines, with each template telling you what the picture is for. There’s a jump template, a crouch template, a couple for walking, and so on. You can even take the pictures without the help of a friend. One way or another, you’ll make it through all the pictures needed to created a 2d animated version of yourself for gameplay. Throw in a face profile, as well as a win/lose/victory/taunt post, and your photo session is all over. As far as the photo-snapping goes, you’ll spend about 10 minutes or less grabbing all the snapshots you need.

From there on, you’ll be using your own voice to create sound effects. Once again, the game tells you what kind of phrase you’ll be saying. For example, you’ll have to create a sound for your taunt. It’s up to you to decide what that taunt is. Record a line of dialog or some other sound effect that you create, play it back, and save it to the template. Once you’re done recording all the sounds you need, you’ll take one more picture for your level background, and then it’s off to play!

There are two gameplay modes, and while both are simplistic, I guarantee that you’ll have a blast with them. The single-player mode puts you up against 100 foes. The more friends you take pictures of to create in-game characters, the more enemy types you’ll to face. For example, if you have put together profiles for 5 different fighters, you’ll take on 4 of those fighters in single player, while you control the 5th. Obviously, it’s a lot more fun beating up a bunch of your friends than it is just one!

Multiplayer gaming sessions actually take place on the same DSi unit. You’ll sit side-by-side with your opponent, and use the dpad/L button or face buttons/R button to control your character. D-pad will move you while L will attack, or vice-versa for the face button/R button layout. This mode plays out just like an old-school fighting game. Beat each other up until someone’s health bar depletes, and then the other becomes the victor. Simple, fun, easy and very effective.

I can’t tell you how much fun Mom Brain and I were having with this game. I couldn’t stop laughing at the sound effects that we made, especially when paired up with our taunts or special moves. Throw in the special scrolling background that I created, which consisted of Betty White sitting poolside, and the tears were rolling down my cheeks nonstop. This game is a must-have for when friends are over. The more the merrier, and I promise that your buddies will have fun getting themselves into the game. If friends aren’t available, convince mom, dad or your siblings to jump in on the action! No matter where you take your DSi, you’ll always have someone willing to give the game a shot. Once people see how the game works and how funny it is, they won’t be able to stay away.

If you have a DSi, you should absolutely get this game. You have no reason to avoid it whatsoever. If you have your DSi slots all filled up, delete something and pick up Photo Dojo. Of course you’ll want to get this game while it’s free, but you shouldn’t hold back from the download even when that 200 Nintendo Point price kicks in. Much like Flipnote Studio, Photo Dojo is a perfect example of unique content that the DSi allows, as well as the Nintendo charm that we’ve all come to love.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take on Mom Brain’s avatar in a duel to the death, reffed by Betty White.

Slot Dojo — Game Review

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SuperMash Review

SuperMash is a perfect example of a game that has a good concept, but squanders that concept in execution. The idea is simple: take two classic video game genres, and put them together with random results. A simple concept, but one that has promise. Combining a platformer with an RPG? Hot dog!

Sadly, the results SuperMash leaves the player with don’t even begin to realize the potential of any of the genres they represent. And the initial delight you might have with your first game or two rapidly dissipates as you realize how shallow and clunky these combinations become.

Now, to be fair, SuperMash does inform the player from the get-go that the “fun” of the game is seeing the randomized results of these combinations more than the actual gameplay of them, and emphasizes that the results are intended to feel like “something that was programmed by a computer, and not people.” That might fly if the games produced were ironic and funny, like Goat Simulator or Octodad. But they just end up feeling like half-assed attempts at representing classic game genres. They’re not enjoyable in either the genuine or ironic senses of the word.

The setup is simple enough, the game provides six genres to work with (which seems like fewer than there should be): Platformer, Adventure, RPG, Shoot-em-up, Stealth and Metroidvania (called “Metrovania” here, for obvious legal reasons). How in the world falling-block puzzlers, racing and beat-em-ups didn’t make the cut, I don’t know.

The first genre you pick makes up the brunt of the game, while the second will add elements of that genre to the first. And yes, you can even combine the same genre with itself, which you would at least hope would provide more structurally cohesive games, but sadly they don’t.

What immediately becomes apparent is the lack of substance with the merging of the two genres. The first one I attempted was a “Platformer + Shoot-em-up,” which resulted in a very basic platformer in which the character could also shoot. While combining those two genres should bring something like Gunstar Heroes to mind, literally all it was was a bare bones platformer where the character just so happened to be able to shoot things. Some of the enemies were things like fighter jets, I suppose, but all that accomplished was making the game feel like something out of Action 52 with random-ass enemies and sprites. What’s worse, the platforming wasn’t even any good, and featured several areas that required blind leaps of faith.

I gave it the benefit of a doubt, and thought maybe I just got a bad result. But then I tried the reverse combination (putting shoot-em-up in the primary slot and platformer in the secondary), and the result was even more nonsensical. Sure, it looked like a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, and featured a cute, platformer-esque character (who was already very similar to the character from the first game, revealing SuperMash’s limited assets), and the character could potentially jump on enemies and higher areas (key word there being “potentially.” You try to jump on a bad guy that moves in an erratic pattern while the screen scrolls upward). But this game suffered an even worse fate because, despite the screen constantly moving upwards, and enemies spawning from the top of the screen, my character could only fire projectiles downward. As you can imagine, it wasn’t fun.

I tried several other combinations: Platformer and RPG (which resulted in another stale platformer that broke up the gameplay with random encounters. Because random encounters are certainly the aspect of old RPGs that needed to be revisited), Stealth and Adventure, Adventure and Shoot-em-up, “Metrovania” and Shoot-em-up, Metrovania and platformer (how do you mess that up?)… But no matter what I picked, the results were basically the same. Half-baked attempts at the primary selected genre that just so happened to feature an item or enemy that looks like it was vaguely inspired by something from the secondary genre.

There’s so much more to a Metro(id)vania or an RPG than the items that come with them. And simply adding a cute-looking character doesn’t give a game elements of a platformer. But that seems to be the extent at which SuperMash combines these genres together. These are as shallow of genre-crossovers as you can get.

What’s worse, the games you play will provide randomly-selected “glitches,” which come in the forms of random buffs and nerfs. For example, one of the “glitches” I experienced was random encounters becoming more frequent in a platformer if I took too long to collect any coins (and by “too long” I mean about ten seconds, if that. I’m not kidding). Another one saw certain enemies in my Stealth-Adventure become needlessly strong. I’d go through several enemies easily and then one enemy would show up – indistinguishable from the others – that took forever to kill. How are these “glitches” supposed to make the game more fun? They’re just cumbersome, and you can’t turn them off.

If you’re wondering what the goals of these randomly-generated games are, well, you’ll find out the full list of possible goals within minutes. Every game you produce is finished by either finding a particular NPC, defeating a certain number of a particular enemy, or collecting certain items within a time limit. That’s it. That’s all of them. Not exactly a deep pool of content.

To make matters even worse, in between games, there are entirely unnecessary segments where you play as some dude in a video game store. There’s some kind of plot line here with attempted emotion, but who cares? All I know is not only are these sections completely pointless, but the character you play as while you aimlessly walk around this incredibly limited space is just annoying. The developers could have done something clever and meta like having a platforming mascot character, an RPG heroine and a space marine from a shooter game team up for the characters, to play off the motif of genres clashing together. Instead, you play as some dude who looks manufactured to appeal to Millennials (but in a most ineffective way). He looks like one of those irritating animated avatars that YouTubers use to represent themselves in their video thumbnails (you know, the kind that are always standing with their arms crossed because it’s an easy pose to draw, and are always accompanying some annoying video explaining why some popular game or movie sucks because the YouTuber in question so desperately wants attention). He’s annoying in a way that reminds me of Lester the Unlikely, but this guy might be even worse, seeing as Lester was intentionally a dweeb, but I think SuperMash legitimately thinks its hero is cool.

Don’t believe me? Just check out his obnoxious walking animation.

Geez, I can’t remember the last time I just wanted to punch a video game character so badly.

Simply put, SuperMash is a game that has a neat concept, but one that could have, and should have been polished into something way better. The genres available are not only limited, but they seem to just barely have any semblance of an understanding of what these genres are. The combinations (or “Mashes” as the game so dearly wants us to call them) have no substance, and never feel like a proper coming together on any meaningful level. The glitches are a needless concept that make already tedious games all the more tedious. Combine that (or “Mash” that) with the fact that the games provided simply aren’t good – and not even in an ironic sense – and the utterly pointless in-between segments, and SuperMash is little more than a neat concept being butchered in execution.