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Fairytale Fights
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Graphics & Sound:
Fairytale Fights brings cute and cartoonish characters from classic kids' stories, and puts them in a whole new, bloody (oh so bloody) light.
The overall feel of Fairytale Fights looks like something that you would let your kids watch. There are birds and bunnies everywhere with simply designed and cute characters to frolic around in the woods or clouds or candy castles. All of this apparently cute innocence goes away as soon as a weapon gets thrown into the mix, though. Not only do the characters (both enemies and heroes) end up having a strange, dark and downright creepy look to them as soon as you start hacking away at the bad guys of the game, but Fairytale Fights has two features that immediately turn what could have been a Teen (or maybe even Everybody 10+) rated action platformer into something most definitely in the Mature rating bucket.
The first of these graphical details is the sheer amount of blood that gets spilled in the game. Seriously, there is a lot of blood here. In fact, it is so over the top that it becomes quite comical at times (much like in the movie Kill Bill: Volume 1). The other feature built into Fairytale Fights is the Zoomcam. This is a close up view of the very bloody kills you perform. Since you can slice up your enemies in pretty much any direction (thanks to the game's odd control scheme... but more on that later), this feature lets you see just how much you sliced off to finish them, whether it be off the top of their head, or the bottom of their feet, or their arm. Neither feature can be turned off, but the Zoomcam at least can be made to happen less frequently if you find it too distracting.
The game's music has a nice and misleading sing-song quality to it befitting any game with a fairytale theme. What I found really enjoyable, as far as sound is concerned, are the sound effects used for the various weapons. There was nothing more satisfying than swinging a saw around and hearing that distinct sound, or firing off a cork rifle and hearing a popgun sound effect. While most of the weapons' sound effects are probably the same (or similar), when one of them needed a unique sound, it was there. Considering the game boasts over 140 weapons, this particular aspect was no small feat.
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Gameplay:
Fairytale Fights lets you play as one of four fairytale characters: Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Naked Emperor and Jack, who climbed up a certain beanstalk. These characters have recently found themselves less than appreciated as a new character has shown up in Fairytale Land and is solving all of the problems that they normally have to deal with. The depressed characters then go on a bloody rampage seeking a new outlet for their lack of position and decide to right other wrongs in the land in a way that is, quite frankly, more befitting the original, dark versions of these tales as opposed to the Disney-fied ones we grew up on.
The game takes you from the woods where lumberjacks have stolen the magic porridge kettle from the Bears into the candy castle of a certain witch that likes to eat kids and eventually, into the clouds where giants like to live. Along the way, you will not only have to fight tons of minions (like the aforementioned lumberjacks as well as gingerbread men and mice from Hamelin), but quite a few big bosses as well. These boss fights pit you against a giant beaver (*snicker snicker*), Pinocchio, the Pied Piper, the Candy Witch and even a family of giants.
Outside of the game's main storyline, there is also the Arena where four friends can have an all-out brawl in some of the craziest locations (my favorite was inside of an ant farm for giants). Oddly enough, there wasn't really a way to play this mode against any kind of A.I., and it still lets you jump into it even if you only have one controller hooked up. Yes, that's right, at one point while reviewing Fairytale Fights, I found myself stuck in a giant ant farm for 3 minutes, just running around, unable to kill anything or even die myself. That, my friends, was a waste of time.
There is a lot to Fairytale Fights that should appeal to those people who have to collect everything in a game. Not only are there counters for the number of weapons you've picked up and used, but the game also keeps track of how many types of enemies you've slain as well. This is all accessible in the game's hub world of Taleville at places like The Taxidermist (where you see your kill count) and the Weapon Smith (your weapon count). Other locations in Taleville will show you how much money you've collected, saved and spent and even pay to have a statue erected in your visage. Quite frankly though, there isn't a whole lot of reason to stick around in this world for too long. The levels flow from one to the other uninterrupted by this world, so the only reason to stay here is to look at these stats, go back to an earlier mission, or attempt to get the "Lazy Bastard" achievement by being in there for more than 15 minutes.
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Difficulty:
For the most part, Fairytale Fights is an easy game to play. While it has a couple of difficulty settings, I didn't really notice a whole lot of change between them. The only areas of the game that actually gave me any trouble were the various boss battles, and for the most part, they weren't hard, just a bit frustrating at times. For one, most of the boss battles involve some lengthy pattern of attacks and dodges in order to get your hits in. This is especially true with the first chapter's main enemy, Boss Beaver. In standard platformer style, you can quickly figure out exactly what you need to do in order to defeat the boss and through a ton of repetitions, you finally perform the same task over and over again until he falls. It probably wouldn't feel as frustrating or tedious if there was a health bar so you could see just how much longer you had to go, but since there wasn't any indication, every time I had to repeat the cycle, it just made the overall experience that much worse.
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Game Mechanics:
There is only one thing you really need to know how to do in Fairytale Fights, and that's attack. Unlike most games though, attacking isn't relegated to a simple button press. Instead, your attack is based on how you swing your Right Analog Stick. Since most of the time, you will have a slicing or blunt weapon in your hand (the only other type is shooting), the swing of your stick determines the angle of attack. If you flick the stick up, its a vertical upward swing, a tap to the left makes the weapon go from right to left. While this feels really odd at first, after a few waves of enemies, you should have a good handle on this unusual scheme and you should be able to pull off some rather gory slices and dices, all seen in plenty of detail thanks to the Zoomcam.
Fairytale Fights is definitely not for everyone, and with the game's ability to cut up pretty much anyone, the fact that innocent bystanding bunnies can be torn to shreds without much effort means that many people will be turned off by this game, if not for the over-gory nature of it, then for the potential animal cruelty. But for those who don't mind the animated violence and blood, and have a fairly good constitution, you should find Fairytale Fights to be a pretty lengthy and fairly enjoyable gameplay experience. |
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
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