It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry with Fairytale Fights. Aren’t these the same characters that coloured your childhood imagination and helped you sleep at night? Yes. So why are they hacking each other’s heads off with bloody implements? We don’t know. What we do know is that it doesn’t take long to start enjoying Fairytale Fights--it appeals to that blood-and-gore-loving side of us that rejoices in the disintegration of human values. We recently had a chance to play through the first three chapters of the game on the PlayStation 3 to try to understand why on earth Snow White enjoys being a sadomasochist.

Don't be fooled by the cute, colorful characters. Bad things happen here.

The story element in Fairytale Fights was covered in our last preview--the gist of it is that a giant has stolen a bunch of very important fairytale books from our well-known fairytale characters, and as a result, everyone has forgotten who they are. Bent on setting the record straight, Little Red Riding Hood, Beanstalk Jack, the Naked Emperor, and Snow White patrol the kingdom searching for tales, completing quests, and spilling as much blood as their tiny hands will allow.

Once the game loads up, you’ll be able to pick which of the four characters you want to play, but be warned: they don’t speak. Instead, Playlogic has gone for that rather endearing method of expression where the characters give little sighs here and there (high-pitched to indicate joy, low-pitched to indicate peril). However, there are screams aplenty.

The opening chapter of the game had us learning the controls while walking through the woods in search of a magic-porridge-producing kettle that once belonged to Goldilocks and her three bears. Since this game is part platformer, there isn’t much room for exploration: you can go straight, up, and down, which proves a little disappointing given that the surroundings are so brightly coloured and inviting--the whole world looks like it has been built out of colourful plasticine, and it’s a shame you can’t explore all of it.

After a few encounters with the magic mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs--who gives you tips and updates your objectives--we were finally able to jump into our first fight. Fairytale Fights has put its own spin on hack-and-slash with something that Playlogic is calling "picture in picture salami-slicing." While that sounds like something you’d find in a butcher’s shop, in the game it’s really just a screen that pops up and that zooms in on the action below so you can get a better view of your character doing very bad things to other characters during a fight. This happens only when you’re doing particularly well in a fight, which seems pretty easy to do given the control scheme. All you have to do is move the right thumbstick from side to side, and your character will go into a hacking and slashing frenzy. You can use L2 to block, but that seems rather counterproductive, when the objective is really to kill everything that moves and you have unlimited lives (at least we did in our demo).

This is "salami-slicing" in action--carve up your enemies in style!

Of course, fighting is even better when your character is armed with a weapon--there are more than 100 weapons lying around the place or stored in treasure chests throughout the game. Their nature is a testament to the game’s dry humour: blunderbuss, axe, carrot, branch, bird’s nest, chicken drumstick, fishing rod, swordfish, wizard’s staff, and so on. Anything you can pick up and use as a weapon will have a faint glow around it; you simply use R1 to pick it up. During combat you can also pull off a "glory attack" by pressing R2--this is essentially a finishing move with a meter which you can build up by performing well in combat.

But it’s not all about hack-and-slash. After a fight is over, you can skate around in the blood of your fallen enemies and earn yourself an in-game trophy appropriately titled "Wheeee." Or, if that’s not your thing (and why wouldn’t it be?), you can read the hilarious rhetoric of the magic mirror, which fancies itself a comedian with lines like “Grand Theft Kettle.” Even better are the platformer puzzle elements, which appear to be evenly balanced with the combat elements. We had a chance to see plenty of this kind of action in the next chapter, set in a land full of waterfalls and mine carts. The puzzles proved challenging: we had to make our way through a passage of rapidly dropping butchers' cleavers, rising and falling wooden bridges, and spinning razor-sharp wheels.

We noticed that the puzzles became harder as we progressed through the game, and it took us a few tries to successfully navigate through a section of falling tree trunks, slippery rocks, and a rapidly moving waterfall towards the end of the chapter. This is where we faced our first boss: a giant beaver who tried to knock our character from a wooden platform floating in the middle of a lake. The objective was to let the beaver attack the platform while avoiding his wrath and attack him when his large teeth got stuck in the wood. After a successful fight, we entered the town of Hamlin, where we came face-to-face with a new enemy--rats--which proved refreshing after two levels of lumberjacks.

Based on our time with the first three levels of Fairytale Fights, it seems that a lot of thought has gone into making this game. Everything from the look of the game to its uncomplicated yet fun gameplay, puzzle elements, and off-beat humour makes this title one to watch out for. If you agree with the magic mirror that “beating people up has never been so easy,” then stay tuned for Fairytale Fights later this month.