Despite its massive amount of gore, this is a fairytale not worth visiting.
Taleville is the world that is inhibited by various creatures from the fairytale world. In this boring escapade, players have a choice between four heroes; Little Red Riding Hood, the naked emperor, Snow White, and Jack (of beanstalk fame). No longer remembered for their roles in each of their famous stories, all four heroes have decided to try and make a name for them once more. To accomplish this task, they set out to recover a magical kettle that's been stolen. If you are a fairytale connoisseur, then you'll be happy to discover that the game borrows heavily from that world, so chances are that you will be seeing plenty of characters that you may or may not recognize, depending on how familiar you are with the stories. Unfortunately, this is really the only story that's shown on here. In fact, if you're hoping to find a story that's worthy of a lengthy saga, such as God Of War, be prepared for disappointment. Like many games before it, this type of plot is a natural excuse for what's ahead; nonstop combat.
Combat is the order of the day and you'll be going through this process many times over, but it is no means fun whatsoever. For the most part, you'll be encountering monsters, such as gingerbread men, and begin to hack and slash away to your heart's content. But the procedure in itself is a bit overdone. For at least a minute or so, you'll destroy your enemies with your chosen weapon in rapid succession, only to move on a few seconds later and have to stop as more enemies appear, making the fights turning out to be nothing but a tiresome chore to go through. Speaking of weapons, you'll only be relying on your fists and feet in the beginning, but soon enough, you'll find various weapons to select from. Not that it makes any difference, despite how strong or weak the arsenal turns out to be. The only thing that matters is that it kills what you see on the screen and it doesn't take a long period of time to annihilate your foes with simple, yet quick combos. The only exception that matters are the bosses, who take out a lot longer to destroy and even have a few forms to sort through. It's unfortunate to report, however, that even bosses are easy prey, as their patterns are quickly exposed and it's not hard to avoid their attacks, since they telegraph it early enough.
On top of all this, combat is even worse, thanks in part to the frustrating controls. Your right hand, along with the arm, will get quickly burned out by pressing the right stick wildly as you slash through the opponents. You can push the right analog stick in different directions, resulting in some new, but very brief animations, yet the exercise in itself can be tiring at most, if not all, times. You are also required to be moving around in your environments and jumping over certain obstacles, such as razorblades and traps that spring out of the ground, but the controls do not follow your every whim. So when you feel like you calculated your jump right, yet the game does not register the proper timing and your character falls to his or her doom, the task in itself tends to get quickly repetitive. When you want to target your opponent, you have to manually face that direction and begin slashing, only for your weapon to go right through sometimes and the hits does not properly get accepted until a few seconds later. It's these kinds of faulty mechanics that make you want to scream your rage and slamming the controller on the ground. After all, a good hack-and-slash performer would behave appropriately if it came along with excellent, tight controls that make you feel like you're part of the action and perform these wild, yet fun moves with impeccable accuracy. Unfortunately, the developer decided not to think the issue through and thought that any kind of control scheme would work perfectly and that is simply not the case, especially since you'll be dying many times over.
Of course, death is nothing to be concerned about, as you'll be able to revive yourself through money that you obtained from treasure chests or slaughtered enemies on the battlefield. Besides reviving yourself, however, you can use your earned gold to either buy a new weapon or increase the look of your statue back in town. Neither reward is satisfying however and even when you lose money, it doesn't even matter in the big scheme of things. However, even if death is of minor consequence, the same scene can be replayed multiple times over, depending on how hard you set the difficulty. There are times, especially on the hardest setting, where you may be surrounded by a mob of enemies that can easily dispatch you within seconds. Once you are quickly reborn a few moments, that same group of monsters will gladly eat you for dinner very fast. Although there's no way to avoid this in a skillful fashion, there's really no help for it. The good news is that you don't have to worry about lives, as they are infinite as long as you possess enough gold within your stash.
Death to your enemies, on the other hand, can be satisfying, but the satisfaction in itself doesn't last for a long time. As previously mentioned, as you traverse the landscape that makes up Taleville, you will find an abundant of weapons scattered around. You can pick up any of these weapons, ranging from swords, axes, waffles irons and lollipops (just to name a few) by pressing the right bumper. From that point on, once you face a certain opponent, it's all about hacking them into pieces and seeing nothing but red from the carnage that you create. That's where the true fun is supposed to happen – seeing the amount of gore rising into the air and landing on the ground. Once that blood is spilled, you can slide on it as if you were skating on ice, which admittedly is a neat effect, but the happiness to be found in that act is minor nonetheless. If you're able to pull off a successful set of combo string, the gory bar is raised. Once it reaches its limit and is activated, should an enemy target be nearby, you can manually pull off a set of wild moves that is reminiscent of Cloud's Omnislash. This can be fun to perform the first few times, but the exercise in itself is quite boring and adds nothing exciting to the boring, stale game play in itself. Of course, fending off your enemies with closed-ranged weapons in close-ranged combat isn't necessarily the only option. In fact, if you wish to pick off your enemies in the distances, bows and guns would preferably be the weapon of choice to use here. It's astonishing to discover, however, that the aiming that you'd expect to be precise is really not accurate at all, so the better alternative is to slice up your foes with a melee weapon in hand, for its much faster and gets the job done.
Fairytales Fights isn't just a hack-and-slash game; it's also a platformer. It's too bad, however, that these segments are few and far between. Even so, just like the rest of the game, it's a pointless excursion to undertake. Since the game relies on a camera that positions itself at a wide level, it's sometimes hard to figure out which route you're supposed to take or which platform you're supposed to jump on, as some of the backgrounds in the game can be misleading. When you reach certain points that require you to leap from point A to point B, those times are merely frustrating, especially when there are times that you feel you made the jump correctly, yet your character slips and falls to their death. The same also applies to jumping over obstacles – just when you thought you made it past the obstruction safely, the game's programming decides that you did not and perish, forcing you to start from the beginning of that troubling segment. Part of the bad platforming lies in due part to the faulty controls, as they are literally of no useful aid to you. Also, you can only perform regular jumps, which is fine, but it would have been nice to see some nifty acrobatic stunts as you're maneuvering your way from one platform to the next. So chances are, if you're a platformer fanatic, be prepared to be completely unhappy with this experience, as there is little to be found here within Fairytale Fights.
The fairytales that you've read, either as a kid or perhaps later on as adult, would be brief and quick to the point, but that is simply not the case for Fairytale Fights. The game is made up of twenty-two levels to journey through and most, if not all, seem to drag on endlessly, with no light at the end of the tunnel until sometime later. For the most part, you'll be experiencing a lot of battling and little platforming, which isn't exactly a nice balance to begin with. Your eyes, although quickly adjusted to the sight, will immediately get tired of seeing the same enemies popping up on the screen over and over again. In fact, you'll be required to stop and destroy your enemies before moving on a few moments later and there they are again, waiting to be dispatched. It's a constant routine that tends to repeat itself many times over. Therefore, it's more unfortunate to discover that there is no greater reward that is waiting for you at the end of every stage. It's like someone above you is pulling your head up above water to give you a quick breather, only to push your head down again; the experience is dreadfully awful and lean to get boring at a rapid pace.
You do not have to commence on this adventure alone. Fairytale Fights presents players the chance to either undertake the journey alone or with friends. But even with friends, it is still an unexciting quest to romp through. For starters, when there is so much chaos going on, it's sometimes hard to figure out where you are currently at and there's no button to press that tells you where you are at that given moment. Also, when one player is on the screen, if they get ahead of you, you won't be seen at all until you rejoin the fray. This mode quickly tends to get confusing, especially when you have three other players being part of the experience at that time. If you're not up to single-player campaign with you or your friends through co-op mode, you can also fight each other to decide who is the fastest in slicing each other into pieces, yet that mode only serves to be a terrible reminder of how bad this product turns out to be. If you were hoping for some multiplayer action all the time, do not get excited, for only a few valiant souls are more than likely willing to test the waters and see how it goes for them and those brave people are far and few between.
Visually and sonically, there is really not that much to speak of here, especially not in a positive light. Although the worlds to be found within Fairytale Fights are admittedly vibrant and colorful, they are nothing more but rare inspirations and therefore nothing special to write home about. The character models are not better off, as they look drab and unattractive for the eyes to behold, the animations created for each character stiff and unlikeable. The sound effects, along with its music, are completely unmemorable. There is no voice acting to be found here, except with the occasional grunts and cries from the chaos that unfolds on the screen. It would have been fantastic if the soundtrack complimented the bloody atmosphere, but that is sadly not the case, as most of the tunes are altogether not pleasant or catchy for the ears.
Carnage can be a beautiful thing, but if only executed properly. The developer, Playlogic, did not realize this logic as they created the game and rushed it out of the door. What may have turned out to be a good idea on paper failed miserably, as the unattractive visuals, bland sound, unremarkable gameplay, and worthless replay value are all combined to make a horrifically appealing game that should have not existed. Sure, the idea of a fairytale with an immense amount of blood and gore sounds great, but once the idea in action is unveiled to the rest of the world, players will find this game to be unappealing and not worth any of their time. Unless you have a lot of free time on your hands or have the urge to earn more achievements or trophies under your belt, Fairytales Fights is to be avoided at all costs, for it is a massive train wreck that does not deserve to be looked at, unless you possess a twisted sense of morbid curiosity.