Forum > Gaming Discussion > 3D Dot Game Heroes Mega Hype Thread!!!
3D Dot Game Heroes Mega Hype Thread!!!
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Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:48:11
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Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:05:57
Dvader said:

And of course the one everyone will be using:

111p0xz.png

 Lawsuit in 3...2...1...

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Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:53:49
It looks brilliant except for all the loading.

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Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:04:48
Jeez man, is this game going to run into a legal minefield? LBP had the online content removed if it infringed on copyright. I suppose if you make it yourself its okay. This walks the line though.

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Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:23:28

gamingeek said:
Jeez man, is this game going to run into a legal minefield? LBP had the online content removed if it infringed on copyright. I suppose if you make it yourself its okay. This walks the line though.

The bonus disc is the issue, they have nothing on the user creation stuff. You cant share it online, people have a right to create whatever they want. This game will be fine as long as they dont include those bonus costumes.

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Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:56:53

Dvader said:

gamingeek said:
Jeez man, is this game going to run into a legal minefield? LBP had the online content removed if it infringed on copyright. I suppose if you make it yourself its okay. This walks the line though.

The bonus disc is the issue, they have nothing on the user creation stuff. You cant share it online, people have a right to create whatever they want. This game will be fine as long as they dont include those bonus costumes.

Yeah as long as its not online its okay. But the actual game features many, many similar aspects to zelda itself.

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Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:25:21

gamingeek said:

Dvader said:

gamingeek said:
Jeez man, is this game going to run into a legal minefield? LBP had the online content removed if it infringed on copyright. I suppose if you make it yourself its okay. This walks the line though.

The bonus disc is the issue, they have nothing on the user creation stuff. You cant share it online, people have a right to create whatever they want. This game will be fine as long as they dont include those bonus costumes.

Yeah as long as its not online its okay. But the actual game features many, many similar aspects to zelda itself.

Golden Axe Heroes or Neotopia, they are ripoffs. You cant have control of a genre. Nintendo has nothing on this game.

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Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:30:21
Dvader said:
gamingeek said:  

Yeah as long as its not online its okay. But the actual game features many, many similar aspects to zelda itself.

Golden Axe Heroes or Neotopia, they are ripoffs. You cant have control of a genre. Nintendo has nothing on this game.

Why are you arguing this when I already clearly explained the legal ramifications.  You word means nothing Nyaa

The issue is with trademarks, such as a character, and not game design in general.  Link officially provided in the game would be a legal problem; releasing a game with all the same gameplay and features while using original assets, is not.

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Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:48:50

Eurogamer review 3D Dot game Heroes

If an artform comes of age when it starts getting self-reflexive, then games like this, Half-Minute Hero and Retro Game Challenge suggest that we're definitely getting there.

Equal parts homage, pastiche and straight rip-off, 3D Dot Game Heroes takes a decades-old game concept - the original Legend of Zelda, to be precise, though there are more subtle nods to numerous other NES-generation classics - and reimagines its pixel art in gorgeous 3D. It's a naked, nostalgia-soaked appeal to a lost generation of Japanese gamers in their mid-thirties, a generation that has fond, fuzzy memories of the 8-bit looks, music and simplicity that 3D Dot Game Heroes carries off very well.

It's astonishingly beautiful, and that's not pure nostalgia talking (I'm too young, for a start). Seriously, just look at it. Everything is constructed from tiny 3D pixel cubes. Monsters and plants disintegrate back into them when hit with a sword, exploding in a shower of little pieces sent careening across the screen. Water-effect cubes glimmer in the light and little 3D pixel people do their two-frame animations in their pixel houses.

'3D Dot Game Heroes' Screenshot 1

Dungeons you need to get to are marked on the map, but nothing else is - in true retro style, it's possible to get lost for hours wandering without a clue, looking for the right path or person to talk to.

The music, meanwhile, is joyful, ear-infesting chiptune that's about four or five notes away from the Zelda overworld theme. Sound effects are straight from the NES. But there's enough love in the game's look and feel to make it effortlessly likeable. It's more than a hollow facsimile.

It doesn't take long to realise that developer Silicon Studio has left the decades-old gameplay under the hood practically untouched as well. When you open your first chest in your first dungeon and find a boomerang, it's difficult to suppress a smile, but by the time you get to the third or fourth dungeon and find bombs, a hookshot and a fire wand, the joke starts to wear a little thin.

3D Dot Game Heroes doesn't embellish or ironise its gameplay inspiration in the same way as its looks and sound, which makes it difficult to tell exactly what the game is shooting for. Beautiful as it is, it lacks inventive spark, and doesn't display the consistent self-awareness that would elevate it from accomplished homage to creative satire.

'3D Dot Game Heroes' Screenshot 2

Atlus' interpretation of the tone for translation is going to be crucial.

Most people will care more about whether it's fun than about how aware it is of its own irony, though, and it certainly is fun. Simplicity is all - one button sends your sword shooting out in front of you, another uses your current item or magic.

You wander a sizeable overworld with one of several pre-fabricated pixel heroes (or you can create your own - more on that later), hitting monsters until they disintegrate, blowing up walls to discover caves and making your way to six different dungeons, where you solve block puzzles and defeat bosses in order to reunite six magic orbs and save the world. Every dungeon contains an item that lets you explore more of the map. Sound familiar?

It does add its own spin to the combat, giving you a sword you can swing in a full circle with the analogue stick and upgrade at blacksmiths for extra reach, width or power. Swords are hidden all over the game with out-of-the-way merchants, in caves or dungeons or in little secret nooks of the map.

There's far more to the kingdom of Dotnia than it first seems; you're free to wander around at will from the beginning, and exploration always yields rewards. Villages hide side-quests, sub-stories and even tower-defence mini-games. There's nothing to guide you towards secret shields, swords and life segments except your own curiosity, and you often come across something exciting for your efforts.

3D Dot also has a terrifyingly full-featured character editor that lets you create anything you could possibly imagine out of little pixel squares, too. I'll admit to being too frightened by the requisite attention to detail to make one myself, but there's already a little set of cute alternatives (a zombie! A car!) available as DLC. There's sure to be a flood of copyright-infringing creations as soon as publisher From makes it possible to download characters from its website.

Speaking of DLC, there was a New Year update that instantly made the game vastly more playable by adding a hard-disk install and halving the four-second load times between practically every screen. It still spends a bit too much time loading (clearly the visual style is more hardware-intensive than it looks), but all the load screens are cute recreations of Japanese NES game boxes, so it's at least easy on the eyes.

If you're going to rip off Zelda, you have to either pretend that's not what you're doing at all through clever subterfuge, or do it very, very well, like Okami. 3D Dot manages neither, but it avoids the problem altogether by being so blatantly obvious about its inspiration that it's impossible to begrudge it.

'3D Dot Game Heroes' Screenshot 3

Ha! A boomerang! What's next - bombs, bow and arrow, hookshot? Oh.

The dungeon design could be better - it's good, but repetitive and unnecessarily punishing, and though it's in keeping with the retro feel, it would be nice if there were any difference at all in their interior design. Played an hour or so at a time, 3D Dot is charming, but any longer and the retro shtick begins to grate.

Atlus is bringing 3D Dot Game Heroes to the US in May, and the translation is going to be absolutely crucial to how it's viewed. A generous helping of humour could save it from itself - if it makes enough jokes about its own inspirations, it'll come across as clever rather than just derivative.

The Japanese script has occasional flashes of humour and flippancy - one spell, for instance, used to reveal hidden embossed patterns on flat surfaces, is called Parallax Map - but at other times it comes across as confusingly earnest, and it's patronisingly obvious about hints. Admittedly, it can be hard to pick up on subtleties in your fourth language, but a sharp, openly self-referential script would make the game feel more intelligent.

3D Dot Game Heroes is a one-trick pony, but it does its one trick very well. Anyone with any nostalgic affection for the era of its inspiration - or for classic Zelda - will find it hard to resist. You could see it either as a loving tribute or a complete rip-off, but even if it is a rip-off, it's a very likeable one. If it were a bit more imaginative and a bit funnier, a bit more openly satirical, it might be brilliant. It's a comfortable and visually stunning trip down memory lane rather than anything more ambitious.

7/10

Edited: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:50:17

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Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:14:31

Gamecentral review
3D Dot Game Heroes (PS3)

Review by Roger Hargreaves – We've said it before and we'll say it again: this game has the best graphics ever.

Not really in a technical sense but in its ability to create such a consistent, outrageously stylised and yet wonderfully familiar art style.

However, as we've also said before, graphics do not maketh the game and the gameplay here never comes close to matching the grandeur of the visuals.

Although the game exists for no reason other than to stimulate the nostalgia glands of wistful thirtysomethings the graphics can be appreciated by anyone.

They're basically 2D 8-bit sprites extruded out into three dimensions.

From the hero to the buildings and sea, everything is made up of a Lego-like construction of little cubes - but all still benefiting from modern graphical effects like depth of field.

The end result is a game that looks utterly unique amongst modern titles and also works as a perfect celebration of older video game graphics.

Visually then the game is perfect, but contrary to our initial assumptions the gameplay is not a pastiche of old school Japanese role-players but instead the early 2D Zelda games.

And by pastiche we mean lawyer-baitingly exact rip-off.

Many games have tried to copy Zelda over the years but this isn't merely influenced by it, like Okami or Darkstalkers, it's a full blown clone.

As a result you've a huge
overworld environment to explore, filled with secrets and monsters.

The latter are primarily dispatched by your sword, which jabs out in front of you in a giant arc (all the animations are strictly limited to two frames).

There are plenty of secrets and sub quests and even the odd modern mini-game hidden in the overworld which is a genuine pleasure to ramble through.

One of the few deviations from the Zelda template is that as well as the traditional extra life bars you can also find and upgrade new swords.

Given how much fun it is to see enemies explode in a shower of pixel cubes, the impetus to find more is strong.

Where things come unstuck are the dungeons, which replicate the Zelda experience (find a boomerang in one, bombs in the next) so exactly it almost seems like some psychotic flashback.

Inevitably the real problem is that the puzzles are not as well designed.

Add in a rather too old school difficulty level and the fact that the interior designs never change and the six dungeons become a real chore.

The game will be released in the U.S. in May (there is no confirmed European date) so it's impossible to say at the moment what the dialogue is like.

It's going to have to be a work of comic genius though to justify the rampant plagiarism and unwillingness to add any new features of its own.

At this stage then there's little point importing the game from Japan - just watch the trailers and hope.

IN SHORT: One of the best looking games ever, but its awe for retro Zelda ruins hopes for similarly inspired gameplay.

PROS: The art style is drop dead gorgeous and a perfect homage to retro video game visuals. Large overworld.

CONS: The gameplay tries to copy the original Zelda so exactly it feels like a bad imitation rather than a homage.

SCORE: 6/10

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Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:29:46
Disappointing reviews so far.

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