3D Dudes

Rumor has it that the developers accidentally slipped an "e" into the title.

Developer: TC Test Publisher: TC Test Genre: Utter crap Players: 1 Size: 1.6MB Difficulty: Pure luck, depending on how much you push the Attack button, and assuming you haven't snapped yet.
Download (what?! You fool!): http://electricgames.com/pc-games/0/pc-3ddudes.html

I thought the age of games that sucked was OVER! That was years ago! But nooo... some designer thinks he can dent the name of games by making this Piece de Crap! I wish I was making all this up (along with the fact that this is just a shareware--just a taste of how bad the full game is).

Gameplay--3D Dudes originally planned to become a 3D fighting game, where your character runs around a 3D environment, pulling off 3D moves against the 3D opponent, all while hoping to lay the 3D smack down on his 3D spum. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the characters are blocky, the sound pathetic, and the controls nearly impossible to move around correctly, the game is not fun in the least, and that makes gameplay a chore. You just move your poorly animated 3D body around and try to locate your opponent, who looks just as bad as you do. When you find him, you try to move in close, and then--be still, my heart--you slam the Enter key as fast as you can to pull off a number of really stupid moves, hoping that one of them will come into contact with the other 3D dude! Whee, I say! Whee! Occasionally, you can pick up a knife or a pipe and hit your opponent, but I didn't notice any differences from the regular attacks, only that the knife looks 2D, and it only has one attack. There are a number of camera angles to choose from, but to tell you the truth, each and every one of them sucks, and the camera will always find a way to screw you up (i.e. go behind walls, lose sight of you all together, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if the lousy camera is there to add challenge to the game.

Graphics--They're everything a reviewer fears. Blocky, chunky characters with no detail, poorly animated moves, badly textured objects and walls, clipping galore...the list goes on. I know low-tech games don't focus on graphics that much, but it looks like the game doesn't focus on anything else, either.

Music--Zuh? Music? Ohh...you mean the extremely repetitive, cheesy MIDIs that drone on and on until I wanted to just rip the sound card out of the system. I restrained myself by remembering that if I did that, I couldn't listen to the Wild ARMs theme or the Mordor theme. I came pretty close to doing it, though. What I'm trying to say is, the music sucks.

As for the sound effects, they're thrown in at random whenever you get into a fight. Sometimes they're in the right place, but that's not necessarily a good thing, since they're just as bad as the music. Your character emits a total of about two war cries, one "SWOOSH" sound effect for his moves, and a click for when he takes a step, the most annoying sound effect ever, as you'll come to realize when you start playing. You can customize the sound effects with your own wav files, but even "Will you stop that, man? You're freaking me out!" can't save this game.

Control--Horrible. There's only one button for attacking, and I had no idea what was going to happen when I pressed it, since it seemed that my character cycled through...say...four moves at random. Even worse was the way you move around. Sure, the landscape is 3D (really, really bad 3D, that is), but the thing that kills the control is the fact that you can't change the direction you're going unless you stop moving forward. This means that you take a few steps, turn verrrryyy sllloowwwllyyy, take a few more steps, and repeat the process. Ouchy.

Fun Factor--3D Dudes is about as fun as... well... I can't think of anything that low yet, but you get the idea. It's no fun whatsoever. It classifies itself as a fighting game, yet it doesn't serve up any fast paced, adrenaline pumping action or any elements that make it the least bit enjoyable to play. It's simply two "dudes" slowly moving towards each other in a really dull 3D environment.

Overall Satisfaction--I only keep this game on my computer to show my friends how bad it is. It's more pointless than Space Bastards, less detailed than Solitaire, and about as fun as... Frogger! Yeah, that's what I was trying to think of. Anyway, the bottom line is this (Jeff and I even agree on this)

3D Dudes is a piece of carp!

Highs: Can be deleted in exchange for 1.6 megabytes of free disk space!
Lows: Do I need to repeat all of this again?
Score: 1