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PS3 REVIEW – Fairytale Fights

Posted January 30th 2010 by Adam Glasgow.

Fairytale Fights

I really hate reality television and generally refuse to watch it, but for whatever reason, reality shows involving cakes intrigue me. Whether it's Ace of Cakes or those Food Network cake baking challenge-deals, I'm always happy to waste a few hours of my life glued to the couch excitedly watching to see what these strange, obsessive people will do with fondant (for those not in the know, fondant is a special kind of frosting that's used mostly on fancy or wacky looking cakes). I blame this cake fixation for my initial interest in Fairytale Fights. The game's cartoony landscape looks intriguingly like a delicious frosted good. Despite its generally poor reception, I decided to give in and try it out. Unfortunately my cake fetish has, for the first time in my life, betrayed me.

The idea behind Fairytale Fights is pretty simple. Take some fairytale characters, stick them in a cute, colorful environment, and have them violently platform their way to the end of levels. Blood spills on the ground to such an extent that your bug-eyed little character slides all over the place when you walk over it. The cute/viscous combo is a nice little gimmick, and is nearly the jumping board for an entertaining action platformer. Instead it's the highlight of an otherwise forgettable experience.

There are two main aspects of Fairytale Fights - the platforming, and the combat. Aside from the cool looking environments, the platforming is flat and boring. I'm having a seriously hard time even remembering anything worth mentioning as far as the platforming goes. It does what you would expect; some running around, some jumping over spikes, finding stuff along the way. This would be fine, but the controls feel sloppy, which is a complete deal breaker. Even a cookie-cutter run and jump can be fun, so long as it feels right. Fairytale Fights doesn't feel right. The collision detection is off, and jumping is sometimes unresponsive. This problem alone throws the game into the pit of frustration and non-enjoyment.

Combat is also sub-par. It's sluggish, boring, and broken. Normal melee attacks are useless, and using bludgeoning weapons is a waste of time. There is absolutely no point in doing anything other than hunting down a bladed weapon (like an axe) and tearing through your enemies with it. It's ridiculously effective and makes you wonder why they even bothered putting anything else in there at all. Find axe, destroy enemies, jump over a few pits or up some cliffs, effortlessly chop some more enemies, beat the level. This is Fairytale Fights in a nutshell.

"Surely," I thought, "the boss fights will at least be cool." And they almost were! Take for example the first boss. He's a giant beaver you fight while riding around on a log raft. There's no way you can mess that up, right? Right? Somehow, it got messed up. Like everything else in this game, the giant beaver fight borderlines on something that could be great, but instead slips into mediocrity. The action was slow, the tactics predictable, and the whole encounter was just boring. After this point it's hard to want to continue playing. It's not like I want to throw my controller at anything; I would just prefer to play something a little more engaging and interesting.

I'm not sure who or what is to blame for Fairytale Fights. Was it rushed to publication before seemingly obvious issues could be fixed up? Or were the developers happy with their work, believing that they created a polished, fun game? It's hard for me to judge to harshly without knowing the whole story, especially since the game comes so close to being something fun and unique. Instead I'm going to put it on the shelf and probably never think about it again. You're not an ugly lady, Fairytale Fights, you just lack personality. Don't expect me to call you tomorrow.

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