A Resplendent Retrospective- 3D Dot Heroes Review

SeanNOLA’s Take: I live in a neighborhood of hipsters.  For those who are not familiar, let me shed some light on the subject: hipsters are kids who subsist entirely on what they perceive as “irony.” They are rich kids, living in historically impoverished parts of towns, spending a great deal of money on clothes specifically designed to look worn and dirty so they can go to concerts of up-and-coming bands, only to abandon them when they finally come up. They spout a never-ending stream of internet memes from their mouth-holes while trying their best to cling to the ways of the Amish. To be frank, they are a generation-wide identity crisis, but their life-style sums up 3D Dot Game Heroes very nicely: a new game in an old style that is just as entertaining as its contemporaries in both directions.  

3D Dot Game Heroes is a game designed to look and play like the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. The hook is that the pixels are now cubes instead of squares, which adds depth of field to the flat plane we all remember from our youths. The result is one of the most brilliant and uniquely beautiful games available for the PS3. The game incorporates a tilt-shift filter that makes everything appear very small, but very close – as if you were moving toys around a table. The effect is that the player is immediately transported back to a time when their LEGO heroes battled foes on their tabletop.

Fans of the action-adventure games of the 80s will find themselves immediately familiar with just about every facet of 3D Dot Game Heroes’ sword-swinging adventuring. After choosing or creating a character, players will travel across the world map, battling monsters while searching for dungeons. Each dungeon is filled with puzzles, most of which can be solved by using a special item, such as a boomerang or wire rod. At the end of the dungeon, you’ll face off against a boss to receive one of the six orbs needed to save the world from a great and powerful evil. The equation has been used dozens of times over the past quarter-century, but 3D Dot Heroes never strays from its roots – it stays pure to the very end.

The title’s rigorous adhesion to its source material is a double-edged sword. Some may find the dungeon-crawling to feel antiquated and unoriginal. Certain dated constrictions, like the players inability to attack at a diagonal, subtract from the quaint experience and serve as a reminder of why designers don’t make games “like they used to.” Although the intense feeling of Déjà vu (no, not that Déjà vu…or that one) is inarguably novel, it may not be enough to keep players interested through to duration of the game. The story is relatively short, so those with little patience may still be able to see the end-game.

All in all, 3D Dot Game Heroes is well worth its slim, $40 price tag. There is a lot of game here,especially when you consider the robust character creator and goofy mini games. Although I would have liked to see some sort of create-a-character sharing system, I understand the legal and financial hoops that would need to be jumped through in order to provide such a service and avoid people sharing copy written Bubsy the Cat sprites. Hipsters rejoice: there is irony in the budget titled game that is worth the full price.

DesertEagle’s Take: Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” While the German philosopher and cultural critic certainly wasn’t thinking about the ersatz nostalgia of 3D Dot Game Heroes, the quote accurately explains my admiration for the title. Like Capcom’s last two Mega Man entries, or XSEED’s Retro Game Challenge, Dot Game Heroes carefully apes a beloved diversion, making a strong case of retro-revivalism. 

For Hyrule veterans, the title evokes the euphoria of sitting a controller cord-length away from the NES, exploring Miyamoto’s celebrated realm for the first time. Although the utilitarian sprites have been replaced with voluminous, whimsically-animated blocks and a fanciful selection of mini-games have been added in, every nostalgia-inducing element has been carefully reconstructed. From a fastidious recreation of the Lost Woods, to unearthing a coin-collecting, switch pulling boomerang, and even picking up a set of fissure-splitting bombs, none of the classic axioms has been neglected. The game’s one major departure is the player’s sword- which can be augmented into an enormous antagonist annihilating blade. Like the game’s customizable protagonist, all sort of wacky permutations are possible; one mallet caused surplus coins to erupt from defeated enemies.

Gamers whom haven’t vanquished Ganon through multiple iterations, will likely find delight in 3D Dot Game Heroes‘ mechanics, which are solid enough to oblige any newcomers. There’s an expansive overworld crammed with quests, while the title’s six dungeons present an increasingly challenging gauntlet of trials. Whenever these levels are conquered, players are given the requisite new piece of equipment which allows for additional exploration. It’s the preverbal carrot-on-a-stick method to game design, but it is captivating enough to make most players forget about the whole process. With the exception of sporadic graphical slowdown and a bit of backtracking, Heroes transgressions are amazingly few, and minute enough to forgive considering the game’s reduced MSRP.

With a surplus of chip-tune drenched, nostalgic charm built upon a proved design mechanic, 3D Dot Game Heroes is a requisite buy for both sentimental gamers and neophytes yearning for a charismatic adventure title. While Heroes may not push our cherished pastime into new realms, it does skillfully illustrate that solid renovation can be nearly as important as innovation.