May 23, 2010
I used my DSi Camera.
It was to try out Photo Dojo.
Basically, Photo Dojo is pretty awesome at the current price of 0 dollars, and you can easily get an afternoon of fun fiddling around with it. However, for it to really be a full product, it would need a lot of work. Luckily, again, it’s a 0 dollar download, so that’s not an issue.
Basically, you create a very simplistic fighting game by taking pictures of your friends and making them into fighters. They strike some poses, and you record some dialog, and then you can fight with them. Hitting a button makes them throw punches and kicks, up jumps, down ducks, Down and a button does their “special move,” which is based on one of four fighting styles you pick from, and back and a button throws a projectile, Hadouken-style. You can also taunt and use “Desperation Moves” with the touch screen. That’s basically it. There’s no blocking or combos or anything.
Still, the benefit is having fun making fighters with your friends. It’s a really silly affair, and a lot of fun trying to think of different positions and whatnot.
The main problem with the game is cropping. Basically, the game attempts to “crop” around whoever you’re taking a picture of. This might work, but the fact is that people want to do silly awesome things, not go with a set few poses. Even if they use those set poses, it’s hard to get them to fit perfectly in the cropping box. So you end up with a whole lot of background of the picture built into the “sprite” of the fighter, which looks kind of stupid.
The alternative, though, would be some very complex cropping tools in order to make the sprites look good. This wouldn’t be user friendly at all, especially on the DS. I’m not surprised it’s not in there. It’s just not that kind of game. It’s for an afternoon of silly fun.
In any case, Photo Dojo is a fun little distraction, and makes you go “Oh, okay, that’s why there’s a microphone and a camera on this stupid thing.” Since it’s free, it’s worth downloading if you have a DSi right now. Is it worth buying a DSi for? Fuck no. But eh, as I said, it’s an afternoon of stupidity with a friend or two.