Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D (3DS)

This game lets you pit dinosaurs against each other to see which one is the strongest dinosaur.

Release Date: Mar 22, 2011

Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs is PunchOut with extinct giant lizards. Seriously. You go head to head against another dinosaur, dodging his attacks, and hitting him with combos when you have an opening. Certain attacks require you to dodge a certain direction, and the different dinosaur types have their weaknesses (raptors are easier to push off ledges, and an ankylosaurus can be devastated with a frenzy assault). The entire game is about recognizing the oncoming attack, and knowing how best to damage your opponent. 

The reward for winning is getting to watch your dinosaur beat the ever loving crap out of the opponent, and as a bonus you get a random powerup item you can equip to make your dino stronger. It's all very exciting; the dinosaurs claw, tail whip, and bite at each other and it looks good, though not amazing. More animations would have been nice. As cool as it is to see my T-Rex crash into an enemy and knock him across the arena, seeing it a dozen times lessens the wow factor.

There are four identical campaigns in the game, each requiring about an hour to beat. Each campaign has you go through five stages, walking along a path until you find a dinosaur to kill, which triggers the PunchOut style battle mode. After playing through the same game four times you get to fight the final boss. Combat of Giant: Dinosaurs gets really tiresome by that fourth time around. There's not enough in this game to warrant multiple playthroughs, despite the numerous powerups and unlockable customization options.

It doesn't help that the gameplay is rudimentary. Obviously a game about fighting dinosaurs that features a boss battle against broccoli is designed for an under 10 age bracket, but it's still too simple. By the time Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs becomes challenging at all it's the last level and the game ends. It's fun, for a bit, but there needed to be more in here to convince me to keep playing it.