Review: 3D Dot Game Heroes - PS3

by Steven Williamson on 13 May 2010, 12:13 3.0

Tags: PS3, Action/Adventure

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaya3

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There's a storyline too

The story is the other big aspect to the game, and in truth it feels utterly confused. Part of it wants to be a pixel-for-pixel recreation of old Zelda games, whilst the other wants to parody them. So you’ll sit through nauseating endless conversations with NPCs (in typical letter-by-letter text-box fashion), and trawl through some truly awful humour. When the 2D picture is swapped out for the 3D, you’re told that Dotnia Kingdom decided to upgrade to 3D for the sake of the tourist trade. And at one point you find an empty room, with one NPC who informs you that the devs ran out of time, and were unable to finish this part of the game. I’ll pause for a moment to let you to climb back onto your chair. Sometimes as little easter-eggs, poking fun at rival games, this sort of thing can work, but having such prominence in the game it just falls flat.

I could go on for a while here. The retro menu system is extremely cumbersome, and best ignored where possible. Each unit of screen loads separately and shifts unnaturally when you reach the edge of the previous one, so after traversing 20 fields to reach the other side of the map, your eyes feel like they are going to drop out. And this is made worse when the game neglects to tell you what you’re meant to be doing, leaving you with long spells of inane wandering, and consequently less control of your eyeballs. You get the picture.