If Zelda had the same feel as the old 2d Marios a whole lot of people would be pissed. Those two games aren't comparable in the slightest. If you want 2d Zelda back get Four Swords (GC) or Minish Cap (GBA). Besides, there apparently is a new 2d Mario game in the works for the DS.
The eyeball in the sam fisher gears is a beholder' from eye of the beholder. The two characters talking to the warcraft 3 death knight are from broken sword I think. The little knight with the flag is from settlers The skeletan in roman armour is from Eternal Darkness. thats all i got on top of that great list!
Looks really nice, some small things; The sword looks really thin and not really nice, your rocks are really metal-ish with the hard highlights and the high reflection, and that orange reflection on the rocks dosnt fit in with the rest. Also I would write the website name under the character name for spacings sake
Speaking of melee, I would have liked to see the implement something with the chainsaw where you can control your cuts rather than watching a canned animation, kind of like the sword mechanic in Metal Gear rising. Canned animation are already kinda novelty, may as well add some interaction to it.
My only critique is that the croc's lower body kind of blends in with the background on your key shot. It might be worth trying to brighten up the background a little bit or to increase the size of the magenta spotlight. The design is really awesome. It'd be great to see him rigged and animated to fight something with…
NoseRider: always love seeing your loose style, and your stuff always seems to improve. more please :] Cool sword monster Mop! Fannied about in art rage after seeing pers thread, then touched up in photoshop. Need to have a proper go at a finished piece! its fun like
I know these aren't very good high poly sculpts so you guys have little interest in them, but I've learned a lot creating them. To be honest Zbrush and Mudbox sure look appealing now as Blender's sculpt tools are really hindering. Next I will sculpt the sword and scabbard meshes.
I think the hand painted sword is the new concrete pillar. Until foliage takes over at least. Whats unfortunate is one of the biggest complaints about the newer tutorials from Eat3D and Gnomon is specifically the fact that they skip things and are not "follow along" videos that you can copy piece by piece until the end.
btw, i also have a little feedback for the game. Diagonal movement (even with just 4 directional sprites secret of mana style) (takes about 5 minutes to add in GM) and a bar, or symbol, or anything that shows you when you can fire a spell again, or swing your sword again
The helmet reminds me of a design for the canceled EA game TIBERIUM, where the hero character had some funky Iron man like helmet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtA3zXkDue8#t=0m40s I quite like the design of the helmet in the second concept picture, the one the guy with the electric sword is wearing.