Photo Dojo

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Same System)

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Review:

Photo Dojo is a Fighting Game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. As indicated by the game’s title, the core concept of this game is that it is a Fighting Game that players build themselves by taking photos and recording sound clips.

In theory, there’s a lot of room for creativity here – if you have a patient friend willing to pose for you in 9-10 different positions and record some voice clips, you could turn them into a fighter. Alternately, if you prefer, you could pose an action figure and record lines from your favorite kung fu movie, or even take screenshots of sprite sheets and record sounds from game soundboards. The game even lets you use photos to create the fighting venues.

In practice, while the game’s creation system is fairly accessible, it’s not going to produce results that look even the slightest bit professional – the different poses here all have a cutout in the shape of the move in question, and the camera will capture everything in that cutouts (including the background), and remove anything not in the cutout (such as your feet, if you couldn’t get them in frame). It’s not perfect, but given the $2 price tag for this game, it’s tolerable.

The gameplay is pretty bare bones, though. Players can fight others in 1v1 battles where each player holds half of the Nintendo DSi or 3DS, using the D-Pad or face buttons to move and jump, and using a combination of the L or R button and a direction to perform different attacks. It’s cute and functional, but it isn’t going to come anywhere close to a serious Fighting Game in terms of depth, and the lack of any sort of multiplayer other than the awkward same-system multiplayer is disappointing..

What’s more, players without someone to play with don’t have any sort of standard Fighting Game mode to play through. Instead, they’ll play something akin to an Arcade-style Brawler where they move left to right while downing hordes of enemies who all go down in one hit, with the goal being to see how many enemies you can defeat before you run out of energy.

I don’t think I’m going to shock anyone by saying that Photo Dojo is little more than a novelty. It’s a fun little way to get you and your friends (or your toys, or whatever) into the most rudimentary of Fighting Games. It’s cute and amusing, but not something with any sort of staying power to keep you playing. Still, for only $2, it may be a fun distraction if the premise interests you.

tl;dr – Photo Dojo is an extremely simple Fighting Game built around the gimmick of taking photos to use as the fighters in the game. This game is extremely shallow and lacking in features, but for $2, players may find the gimmick amusing enough to be worthwhile.

Grade: C+

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