What do you get when you combine your favorite childhood fairy tales with Unreal Engine 3, God of War style melee gameplay, and buckets of volumetric blood?
Coming by way of Playlogic Entertainment, Fairytale Fights is the answer to a question that no one asked. In a nutshell, this action-adventure title for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 takes many classic fairy tales and turns them on their heads. Or rather, it slices off their heads and lets the crimson geyser gush in every which direction.
A Fairy Tale Like None Other
Don’t let the Nintendo Wii-esque graphics lead you astray. Fairytale Fights is anything but a game designed with young children in mind. In fact, it’s rated M for Mature thanks to its over-the-top cartoon violence and intensely exaggerated blood, guts, and gore.
The special reviewers’ copy of Fairytale Fights came in a tome-like box, packing in a special reviewers’ guide, some creatively-designed playing cards, a poster, a pack of sugar discs, and the game itself. You think that you’re cracking into a classic by Hans Christian Andersen, but you’re treated to decapitated heads and severed limbs instead.
Get Ready for a Bloodbath
Utilizing a creative application of the Unreal Engine, Fairytale Fights takes on the appearance of a standard 3D action-adventure title. The exact mechanics are similar to most 3D platformers, getting you to explore worlds and beat the tar out of your enemies. The difference is that you’re playing as Little Red Riding Hood.
The control scheme is an interesting one. While you use the left analog stick for movement and the “A” button to jump, you actually perform all of your attacks using the right analog stick. The kicker is that the direction you move the right stick is the direction that your character will swipe. Move from left to right and Lil Red may slice a lumberjack in two. Playlogic calls this “dynamic slicing technology” and it’s arguably more violent than any Aliens vs. Predator or Halo title.
The other big selling point here is what the developers call the “volumetric liquid system.” When you hack and slash your way through your enemies, their blood will gush and spill into the landscape. The drenched surroundings actually make for pools of blood and your character will slide across these pools as if he or she were ice skating.
Play with the Naked Emperor… What?
There are four main playable characters in this game. It seems that the main protagonist is the aforementioned Little Red Riding Hood, but you can easily swap on over to Snow White, Jack (from Beanstalk fame), and the Naked Emperor (from New Clothes fame). Thankfully, he has a strategically placed leaf to cover his twigs and berries.
While this may give you the impression of RPG-like mechanics, the four players fight in fundamentally the same way with fundamentally the same attributes. They have a few quirky character traits, but these largely do not affect gameplay.
Extensive and Creative Arsenal of Weapons
As you make your way through the different “chapters” in your progressing fairy tale, you will encounter a huge range of weapons. There are over 140 weapons in all, including blunt objects like toy bunnies, sharp objects like chainsaws, projectiles like hunting rifles, and even potions that can be thrown or ingested.
Each of these weapons is slightly different in nature, but you’ll find that most “sharp” weapons will work in much the same way. The action, in this way, can become very repetitive, very quickly. While you could use the right analog stick with that “dynamic slicing,” I found myself randomly moving the right analog stick whenever I wanted to kill an enemy.
Even though projectile weapons are generally stronger, I also found that they were difficult to aim in the 3D environment. Your character will shoot in the direction he or she is looking, rather than the direction you push on your analog stick.
A Quirky Sense of Humor
While you could use the dynamic slicing in your regular attacks, you have even more fun when you enter what is called “Glory Mode.” Your “glory” meter fills up as you perform combos of longer lengths and when full, you can activate it for some slow-motion precision slicing.
Yes, Fairytale Fights has a remarkably twisted sense of humor. If liked the kind of comedy that we got through the Raving Rabbids series, you’ll really like what you get here. It’s the same kind of humor, lacking in dialogue and being heavy in physical comedy, but it’s much more violent in nature.
I understand that the graphics are meant to be simple and blocky, offering us a quirky “child-like” appearance, but there are places where it just doesn’t look right. The chunky trees and blocky characters are fine, but even the splashes of water in the waterfall are in giant blocks.
The gameplay can be quite repetitive during the main chapters, as mentioned, but this is broken up with some fun (albeit long) boss battles. The Beaver Boss for example, will come jumping onto your raft, only to get its teeth stuck. That’s your chance to attack.
Final Thoughts
If you’re like me and you grew up with far too many side-scrolling arcade beat-em-ups, then you’ll find some inherent appeal in how Fairytale Fights operates. Much like the X-Men and Golden Axe games of old, you move from point A to point B, slashing apart your opponents along the way.
The twisted sense of humor and the inclusion of fairy tale references here makes for an enjoyable journey, as does the intensely over-the-top and incredibly bloody violence. There’s something so satisfying about slashing a woodsman twenty different ways with an oversized geometry compass.
Fairytale Fights is a refreshing departure from the norm and I really have to applaud Playlogic on its creativity. At the same time, I can’t see myself playing this through more than once, so the replay value (even with multiplayer) can be quite lacking. The action is just too repetitive to warrant a second go-around.
That said, you’ll have a smile on your face the first time around. Hack and slash your way back to fairy tale glory.
Pros
- Unique dynamic slicing technology
- Seriously twisted sense of humor
- Easily approachable by anyone
- Strangely satisfying yet simple
Cons
- Gets repetitive very quickly
- Easy to “lose” your character in a crowd
- Projectile operation needs work
- Lush environments still too “chunky”
Overall Rating: 7.5/10.0
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Fairytale Fights for Xbox 360 Photo Gallery
