If you’re looking for the perfect example of a great concept being killed by sub-standard gameplay, then Fairytale Fights should be your first stop. It may seem strange to begin a review with a sentence that could be used quite legitimately as the last, but that feeling of missed opportunity is so strong here that I can’t really begin with anything else.
The idea behind Fairytale Fights is – as mentioned – a cracking one. Take good and wholesome fairytale characters such as Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Jack (from Jack and The Beanstalk) and the strangely Naked Emperor (from the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes) and set them down in a world where they get to hack, slash, chop and headbutt their way to solving a mystery or defeating a Fairytale overlord. Pour pints and pints of blood into the mix to ensure a suitably “alternative” sounding age rating, and you’re done.
But, all is not well in the land of fairytales, since the developers have worked hand-over-fist on creating an incredibly violent game and, in terms of the amount of blood spilt and the way in which the story presented, have done a good job. They haven’t, however, seemingly spent any time on polishing the gameplay, the majority of which runs through like a modern take on the old-school 2D platformer. Your character leaps to high ledges, bounds over spinning buzzsaws and dodges underneath swishing swords, dispatching of stacks of drone enemies along the way, before reaching the boss and working out how to dodge which of the limited number of attacks he or she is about to use.
It’s all very formulaic, and becomes even more so when you realise that there are only a handful of different enemies to take on and that if your weapon has the ability to slice them in two, you’re practically unbeatable. Stacks and stacks of different weapon types are available, from branches to chainsaws, but you’ll very, very rarely want to experiment with the effects of anything other than the most powerful melee tools. These – being saws or knives – will bring about a “picture-in-picture” view of your slicing action that gets old incredibly quickly. Sure, it’s funny to see a fairytale drone toddle around in two separate parts…but it’s only funny once or twice. When you’ve seen the animation thirty times before you’re halfway through the first part of the first level, well, you’ll be glad they’ve given you the option to turn it off.
This is far from the worst of the game’s problems, though. The main issue that I found was that of judgement. Due to some very, very squishy-feeling controls and a camera that seems to work well one minute, and hideously the next, you’ll often find yourself unable to negotiate even the most simple of stereotypical platform game obstacles. Fortunately, there’s no limit to the amount of times that you can die, but you do lose some of the (seemingly pointless) riches that you acquire each time you do so. The only thing I found that was worth doing with the money I’d accrued was to spend it on new weapons when I stumbled across a location that enabled me to do so. Unfortunately, this led to me being given things such as three branches and a rolled-up newspaper – items which commonly appear throughout the game for free. So, collecting things isn’t just seemingly pointless, after all.
But the killer for Fairytale Fights, is the control system. For some reason, the development team decided that it would be a grand idea to map your main attacks to the right analogue stick, and to do so in a way that doesn’t make any sense. When facing a character attacking from the front, you’ll flick the stick right in order to hit it, and land a successful blow. Then, you flick the stick left and…land the same type of attack. It makes little sense, and there’s absolutely no reason why attacks couldn’t have been mapped to one of the several unused “standard” buttons. Flicking the stick multiple times breaks out a combo, whilst holding it in one direction will charge up a super attack – when the game decides to realise that you’ve been holding the stick, that is. More often than not when attempting this manoeuvre, you’ll end up being attacked yourself before anything happens.
Fairytale Fights is a missed opportunity, and no mistake. The concept is superb, and even with some slightly above-average platforming action, it could have been a must-have title. In actuality, that platforming action is more often than not filled with problems, and that’s before I even think about discussing the amount of times that the game decides to slow to a crawl when there’s too much of it going on. At times, the game feels as if it’s getting the job done really well and there are some genuine moments of comedy to be had but at no point does Fairytale Fights manage to get ahead of its own technical issues, general gameplay complaints and bizarre developmental decisions. In a packed winter schedule, this would have to have been something special to get any sort of recognition but – I’m sorry to say – it’s probably going to end up getting the recognition that it actually deserves.
