Fairytale Fights

November 2, 2009 by Steve Milward
Filed under PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman and with it we venture into the altered world of Fairytale Fights from Playlogic and take on the role of our favourite fairytale characters. Its a hack ‘n’ slash affair and there’s blood spilled at a constant rate and enough to have you wondering how such small bodies could contain so much of the red stuff. Taking on the role of your favourite character and hacking your way through a fairytale environment with a rather witty take on old classic tales sounds fun and for around the first 30 minutes it certainly is. However after you have gone through the tutorial which serves as the beginning of the first level and cutting the throats of everything that moves you’ll soon realise that not everything is right in a fairytale world in fact it’s far from it.

The game itself allows you to play one of four fairytale characters, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, the Naked Emperor or Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk and each level is basically of a sideways scrolling platform style affair with small puzzles and careful timing to cross obstacles along the way. The way in which the fairytales are graphically recreated is good and certainly colourful and whilst blood is spilled and its all quite gruesome the game manages to keep a cartoon art style that reminds you its only make believe. The scenes are all well played out and as you progress you can open the various chests to find varying rewards but its mainly a case of weapons and coins. You will also have unlimited lives to help you fend of your foe and the constant reincarnation from your gravestone continues as long as you keep well stocked up with coins which in a Mario-esque style fall all over the floor when you health is depleted.

As a hack ‘n’ slash game Fairytale Fights does what it set out to do, allow you to rewrite the history books of a fairytale world with the cold blooded murder of the characters and bad guys you grew up with as a child. Whilst the game is a repetitive wave after wave of enemies all vying to kill you and the fairytale landscape is littered with treasure chests and goodies to pick up it the you are hindered by some really bad camera angles and some times infuriating situations that won’t allow you the chance to seek revenge on your killer. I can recall many situations were having advanced to the right of the screen to kill a gun wielding enemy I have attempted to return to the left but the game simply wouldn’t scroll to allow me the chance to kill the second gunman who by now had all but killed me.

Another annoyance is the constant mini cut scene that seems like it has to appear on screen to let you know you sliced the head of your latest victim and having seen it 10 times you would think there would be an option to turn it off and get on with your killing spree but alas your stuck with it and it just doesn’t need to be there. The control method also had me baffled as I failed to see why we needed to use a two analogue stick approach when one stick to run and a button to slash would have worked perfectly. Most of the weapons in Fairytale Fights are melee weapons and so there is no need to control the character like a twin stick shooter and for those weapons requiring a shoot facility I’m sure a button could be allocated for that purpose. Its the lack of thought or the trying to do something clever with the control system that proves to be the biggest let down and with every other beat ‘em up using the button mashing technique it bemuses me why Playlogic decided to try something different.

Beat’em ups or hack ‘n’ slash genre games have to be able to offer gamers something which makes them come back for more time and time again and Fairytale Fights doesn’t have anything to offer in that department. There isn’t really any reason to collect the treasure and coins that you find other than collect them for a high score and I am sure that with a bit of thought we could have seen some quite inventive weaponry or add on features that these could be traded for at the end of levels. Fairytale Fights is a fun game in short bursts and could certainly be used to relieve the stress and strain of the days real world events, however in the cut throat business on today’s game industry it clearly fails short of the mark in so many areas.

Lost Gamer Verdict: 6/10