Photo Dojo Review

With just ten days left to get it for free, it's about time I finally review Nintendo's latest premiere DSiWare title, Photo Dojo!

What is Photo Dojo? Well, it's one of the few DSiWare titles that actually uses the DSi's extremely-ignored camera features. Taking photos of a friend or even action figures or drawings, you can bring up to eight characters to life, adding sound effects for an amusing but shallow fighting experience. There is an option to photograph yourself, using the front facing camera and setting a timer, but I found this to be a really tedious process because I had to stand so far away from the system that by the time I was actually in frame, I couldn't even tell if I was in the right pose or not. But then I found this form on Nintendo Japan's website:

And thus Pickleman was born. The game itself tells you what each pose is for, so even though I can't actually read the Japanese on the form, I knew what I was doing (i.e. the last two frames are for taunts, or that other face there is the fireball that your character can fire, which I wouldn't have known without the game telling me).

As for the gameplay itself, each character can be placed with one of for different fighting styles, all of which work the same: you walk with the d-pad, and in combination with the d-pad you use any other button to attack. There's a one-player survival mode where you have to defeat 100 opponents in a beat'em-up style fashion, and there's a single system multiplayer, that has each player controlling half of the system, using L or R to attack, and the d-pad or letter buttons to move. As to why there isn't any sort of wireless play that lets DSi owners compete with other peoples fighters is beyond me, but I've had a lot of fun with my own creations at least.

Overall, Photo Dojo is a fun and amusing game, even if it's completely shallow as a fighting game. I can't tell you how many times I've laughed out loud because of the things I've recorded being yelled out by the obnoxious characters I've created. Sure, I got this for free, but after my experience with the game, I'd gladly put down 200 DSi Points for this one.

Overall Score: 8/10