Fairytale Fights (Xbox 360)

UGGHHH...Why? I really wanted this to be a good game, I really did. This game was just oozing with potential and from hearing about it through previews it sounded like it was going to be awesome. What part of a game that's about playing as classic fairytale characters and then slicing and dicing your way to the top sound bad? Well, it turns out just about everything sucks.

WHAT THE GAME IS: A repetitive, broken, and aggravatingly awful hack n' slash/platforming nightmare. The game lets you choose from four characters: Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Naked Emperor, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Each of these characters has lost their popularity and are vying to get back to the top so whatever character you choose goes on a quest to retrieve a magic kettle and take control of your fairytale again by killing craploads of repetitive enemies and uninteresting bosses...Hurray.

GRAPHICS: This game claims to use the power of Unreal Technology? The same engine that powered Gears of War? This game looks awful! There are games on my old Xbox and Playstation 2 that date as far back as 2001 that have way better graphics than this heap of garbage does! Sure this game seems to be going for a cutesy art style, but it looks bad. This game has hideous textures and looks blurry as hell. The environmental designs may look cool at first, but these levels are long and believe me, you get tired of looking at these boring levels that hardly change in design. For every level, this game also has a habit of recycling enemies. Killing lumberjacks and little woodland animals never gets old, but killing the gingerbread men sure does. However, I will complement the gore effects and I liked how an enemy could be sliced to bits in all sorts of ways. The gore is the only thing I will complement about the graphics.

MUSIC: The music tries to capture the magical feel from many fairytale films, but it gets so boring to listen to and fails to capture that vibe. I eventually just ended up listening to music either from my Ipod or from Xbox 360 hard-drive. Just choose one of those options because the music will impress no one.

SOUND: Once again, bad. There is no voice-acting except for grunting and dying screams. The other sound effects are too quiet and just don't seem to fit a good portion of the game.

GAMEPLAY: This is the area that truly turns this game into an unforgivable mess of many bad design choices. None of the characters you choose play any different from each other and you never feel a sense of reward for completing tasks. You start off in Taleville to begin your quest and eventually find your way to the missions menu and go from there. This game has many weapons such as axes, swords, bats, guns, sticks, candy weapons, potions of acid and love, and many more. These items can be picked up by using the RB button, which can also be used to throw them. To use these weapons requires the use of the right analog stick which is already a bad design choice right off the bat. Though you can eventually learn to deal with such an awkward design choice, you can't help but be frustrated when this chaotic use of combat accidentally sends you over a cliff. However the game is at its best with the combat because although the camera sucks, the screen will split and give you a shot of how you cut up an enemy which at times makes it feel like the Kill Bill game we unfairly never got. You can decapitate enemies, cut them in half, slice off limbs, and more. This is the only place the game truly achieves some level of decency. Combat however is not what kills this game. No, this game destroys itself truly with three major design problems: 1. The horrible camera. 2. Horrid and unstable platforming obstacles thanks to the camera. 3. This game has so many cheap deaths that it beats the Xbox disaster Drake of the 99 Dragons in terms of cheap deaths. And that's saying something! This game seemed like it was trying to be a side-scrolling adventure, but the camera is absolutely horrible because it is panned out way too far back (There is no option to zoom in to make matters worse) so you can't tell at times where you are going, or see what you're doing. The camera will lead to many unfair deaths, I'll guarantee that. I have not been this angry with a game in quite some time. I was cursing like no tomorrow and I had to restrain myself from throwing my controlling as hard as I could at my TV because of how aggravatingly bad the camera and platforming were. Every time you die in this game results in a loss of some of your money and you must wait ten seconds to respawn. Unfortunately, waiting to come back to life gets old very quickly and this game sometimes felt the need to respawn in the worst places in which the moment I respawned I was killed instantly by whatever just killed me before. This game is loaded with cheap deaths at every turn. You might accidentally walk into some sharp object you didn't see, fire kills you instantly, water almost always kills you instantly, you can be knocked off cliffs constantly by bosses or other stupid things. There are many other cheap deaths to speak of, but that will take too long. One of the worst examples of cheap deaths came from the Pied Piper boss because the fighting space was too small, large flames shoot out which kill you unceremoniously constantly, people that are on fire pop out and if you touch them you die instantly, if you try and jump on a platform at the wrong time it will pop up and throw off the edge and once again will kill you. The boss battles ranged from too hard due to constrained space and too many technical issues, to too easy making the game feel unbalanced and unpolished. There aren't very many puzzles, and when the puzzles do show they aren't that difficult to solve. Had this game ignored platforming altogether it may have achieved at least mediocrity (I would settle for a mediocre game rather than an awful game), but as it stands there is too much broken and infuriating platforming obstacles, the horrible camera, and endless cheap deaths just kill this game's potential several times over. Multiplayer is also an option, but good luck trying to find anyone who will want to play with you.

OVERALL: Definitely skip this mess. It wastes its potential at every step and its overflowing with terrible design problems which causes endless frustration and utter boredom simultaneously. If you want to play a game about homicidal cute and cuddly creatures then I suggest you play Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64 or Whacked! for the original Xbox. These games have awesome single and multiplayer modes, loads of gore, and funny humor. Just forget about this game because it's worth no one's time.

THE GOOD: Good gore and decent combat.

THE BAD: Ugly graphics, bad music, horrible camera, horrible platforming obstacles, endless cheap deaths, crappy sound effects, lame bosses, and the levels are repetitive and long.

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So, to get right to it, if you like quirky, mature, funny video games then you will like this game. Multi-player is fun, you can work together, or you can mess with each other. Single player is just as fun. There is a plethora of weapons, and the story is hilarious.

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Fairytale Fights is great fun, if you know what you are getting into. I knew, and I am enjoying it to it's fullest potential. Let me break it down into.......

Pro's and Con's

~Good storyline ~Repetitive area's (at times)

~Great graphics ~A little too much fighting

~Good sound effects ~Annoying camera

~Easy to learn controls

Summary: Fairytale Fights is a great game with an amusing story line, amazing graphics, and high quality sound effects. There is good music playing lightly in the background throughout the game, and has online and offline multiplayer features. Although the camera can get annoying, and repetitive fighting is prevalent, this is still a great, fun, amusing title.

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