If you’re a fan of traditional platformers and you’ve never played any of the Dadish games before, you’re missing out. They’re effectively the perfect distillation of what a platformer is. There aren’t any gimmicks or anything, just pure, simple platforming in an absurd food-themed world. You take control of a radish whose kids have run off for various reasons, and you set out to bring them home. Dadish can move, jump, double jump, occasionally grab onto vines, and that’s it. One hit kills, infinite lives, it’s pure platforming perfection all rolled up in a beautifully basic presentation with killer music and absolutely hysterical writing. 

There have been 3 proper Dadish games, as well as Daily Dadish, which is basically a set of new Dadish levels where you can only play one stage per day. (It’s way cooler than I’m making it sound). All four of these games are great and I highly recommend them. But it seems that the game’s creator has decided that it’s time for Dadish to enter the next level, and thus Dadish 3D was born. And while it’s nowhere near as polished as the previous 2D games, the soul of what makes Dadish so endearing is still on display. 

The older Dadish games have a very clean pixel art look. Dadish 3D instead opts for a very PlayStation 1 visual style. It’s not chunky like N64 games, but it also features high definition textures… sort of. I don't know how else to explain it. It’s a PSX game in HD. The goal is exactly the same as before. Your kids have run away and you have to set out through various platforming stages to get them back. This time, they found a pop up ad on the internet, and well, it’s all delightfully absurd and leads up to a final showdown with Cyber Durnak, this game’s iteration of the series recurring villain. He’s a bottle of root beer. 

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You don’t have any new abilities to tackle these new 3D challenges other than camera control, which is something you're going to be fiddling with a lot. The only real problem with Dadish 3D is the fact that it’s, well, 3D, and as such it falls into a lot of the traps that early 3D games did. It’s really difficult to tell where you are in 3D space. Dadish himself always has a shadow underneath him to show you where you are, but everything else in the game casts shadows based on the game’s lighting engine. So you can see an enemy right in front of you, but then die when you try to get around it because while it may have seemed like it was 3 feet above your head, it was actually right in front of you. 

This makes the Burgurgular stages particularly infuriating. Burgurgular is a burger (and a burglar) that you meet in the first game who stole Parappa the Rapper’s hat, in case you were wondering why it looks familiar. Anyway, these levels work like auto-scrolling stages as you ride on Burgurgular’s back. These worked really well in 2D, but with the difficulty of telling just how far away platforms are in this game, especially when they take control of the camera away from you once you get on Burgurgular’s back, these stages stop being fun really quickly. 

Thankfully, for as frustrating as Dadish 3D can be, the writing is as hilarious as ever, and serves as a great incentive to finish things off. The bosses in particular made me quite literally laugh out loud, especially the bowl of cereal. 

Dadish 3D is about the same length as previous entries in the series, weighing in at around 50 levels, however it’s also a bit more expensive, which is to be expected given its 3D design likely took a lot more effort to create. 

Overall, Dadish 3D is a good game, but I personally enjoyed the 2D games much more. That probably has a lot to do with my own personal preferences, but the 2D games are a lot less janky, if that makes sense. Not that Dadish 3D isn’t polished, just that by the very nature of it being a 3D game, the act of navigating stages is more complex. If you’re a fan of 3D platformers, absolutely give this game a go. The writing alone is worth the price of admission. Same goes for any Dadish fans out there. It may not be quite as good as the previous entries, but it’s still a blast. 

Dadish 3D is available now on Nintendo Switch and Steam.