Dalmatians
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"...for a company to slap together loads of s***ty minigames with no music that could easily be done at home without any f**king electricity, and then add in the worst cartoon anyone has ever laid eyes on, and then slap on Disney characters into the box to trick parents into buying it makes me think this company is actually HELL and carne into the game company."
— Caddicarus
Dalmatians is a series of "Puzzle Games" containing a film produced by Dingo Pictures. The games were developed by The Code Monkeys and initially published by Midas Interactive Entertainment, who published only the first game. Since 2003, Phoenix Games took over the publishing process of the Dalmatians games until the fourth one. This trilogy is unflattering for being part of the Phoenix games trilogy and is considered one of the worst trilogies of all time and also is responsible for the Phoenix's compilation trilogies existence.
Plot
The plot is as simple as building a flail, first a group of Dalmanians meet each other and then they talk to each other, after the conversation they notice a cat and then they start chasing it, which then they end up in the city and talk to each other again, then they are seen by a bunch of angry black dogs and their starts to chase. Actually, that's all.
Gameplay
The gameplay is very simple, it is a compilation of several minigames where you have to, for example, arrange a puzzle or match 2 of the same elements and there is also a movie available as in all other compilations from Phoenix Games.
Why They Got Locked In The Pound
- It doesn't really count as a video game altogether with a few exceptions here and there, as each installment only contains a movie and a selection of basic minigames which clearly show the developers' lack of idea to create at least an arcade game.
- And of course, you can't forget that all the mini-games are boring and repetitive like in other Phoenix Games compilations.
- On the topic of the movie, the movie's animation is absolutely dreadful and it looks like the animation was done very lazily and stop motion because the characters move really stiffly.
- The English dubbing is even worse than the animation, with only one or two voice actors in both (Dalmatians 2 however, has the worst voice acting between both) and lip-syncing that makes the lip-syncing in Sonic Adventure look good by comparison. Exactly as if the authors of the film did not have the budget to hire more actors and hired several to voice at least half of the characters.
- False advertising:
- In Dalmatians 3, both Cruella De Vil, The Purple Fox, Pongo, and Perdita appear on the cover even though Cruella De Vil and said Purple Fox never appear anywhere in the game and Pongo and Perdite barely appears in the film. However, Pongo also barely appears in The Dalmatians but not in the sequel.
- Also, there are far more dogs in the box art than in the entire movie, in which there are only 3.
- Dalmatians 3 isn't even a sequel, rather it's just a PS2 port of Dalmatians 2, which also leads to False Advertising. The rare Dalmatians 4 could also be the same thing as well.
- After all, it's possible that the creators simply didn't want to put any effort into the animation and instead copied the movie to "part three" to save effort.
- In Dalmations 2, there is a flashback sequence of the first game's story, which while not a bad idea to implementing a flashback, its unnecessary for Players who have just watch Dalmations previously, not to mention is that it lasts over 8 minutes in this 45 minute film, it also serves no revetment to the plot what-so-ever and is completly forgotten about in the film, therefore, anyone can remove this scene from the film's plot entry and it would be the same .
- Also from some strange reason, even though they got the same voices, the flashback has been re-dubbed for no reason what-so-ever and is even missing a few lines from the original scenes, why couldn't they have record the original is beyond anyone's guess.
- Despite all the games having a 3+ by both PEGI and ELSPA, there is occasional profanity scattered throughout which can be demoralizing for such a small age group who are not yet very aware of the meaning of words and it can then scare others by the behavior of such children.
- Such an example is in Dalmatians 2/Dalmatians 3 where a German Shepherd dog says "Oh that policeman, ohh he will be mad as hell!".
- There is also an inappropriate mishearing in one of the scenes with the dog with sunglasses, which sounds like he's saying "Swallow my b*llocks!".
- The Dalmatians 4 box art, just like other Phoenix games on the Wii, is poorly-rendered and odd-looking and the characters look like the living dead that haven't started to rot yet.
- The movie for Dalmations 2 is 45 minutes long (37 minutes if excluding the flashback). Like other Phoenix games on Compact Discs, by the time it finishes, the disc will be overheated and warped and will never play again.
- It's already better than most other Phoenix movies, but still too short for a movie.
- While it looks like a rip-off of Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians, it's most likely to be a blatant rip-off of the 1985 Pound Puppies TV Special and you can also see that it's pure cash grab made with very little effort licensed from a popular Disney movie.
- The plot looks very simple, even ridiculously simple and without any order or composition, just the animals mainly talk to each other and run around nowhere. Even a few-year-old would be able to come up with a more interesting plot.
- It teaches no skills or life lessons, which is unacceptable for a game rated 3+ and the developers didn't even know how to make a good game for children, they just put in enough content to be considered a game, if they didn't want to teach children.
- As with other compilations modeled on those from Phoenix Games, the menu looks very poor and at times it will be hard to figure out what even a minigame is.
- This trilogy was responsible for the infamous trilogy of game compilations that were released under the Phoenix Games banner.
- To make things even worst, the Dalmatian games were made in 2000, 2003, 2008 and 2009, and games that were made during those years look better then this.
Redeeming Qualities
- While these games are bad, at least the soundtracks for all four games are decent.
- Like all the other movies from Phoenix Games, the movies in this trilogy have the syndrome of movies so bad they are good.
Reception
While going unnoticed by critics, the game received an overwhelmingly negative reception from gamers and online reviewers, and was remembered as the beginning of a trilogy of compilations from Phoenix Games, as well as being considered one of the worst game trilogies of all time and heavily panned by YouTubers.
NRGeek found one of the Dalmatians builds to be one of the weirdest and dumbest things he's ever seen.
Videos
Comments
- PlayStation (console) games
- PlayStation 2 games
- Wii games
- Nintendo DS games
- Games reviewed by Caddicarus
- Budget games
- Games trying to be movies
- Rip-offs
- Games reviewed by DX
- Games reviewed by Square Eyed Jak
- Shovelware games
- Games with a non-human protagonist
- Games that don't qualify as games
- 2000s games
- Misleading in gaming
- Games made in the United Kingdom
- Games reviewed by Tennings
- Zagrajmy w crapa episodes
- Franchises
- Reskins
- Dingo Pictures
- Phoenix games
- Lost games
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible
- Cash grabs
- "It's made for kids"
- Europe-only games
- Games reviewed by Octavius King
- The Code Monkeys games
- Games reviewed by Joueur du Grenier