• Hands-on with Fairytale Fights

    09/29/2009

    Tags:
    Posted in: PS3, Preview, XBox360

    Fairytales, the cleverly disguised horror stories that kept kids of yore in line is the stuff Fairytale Fights makes comedic fodder of. In a land of fairy stories gone awry, the game emulates the Adult Swim side of things with a saccharine paint job over some Naked Emperor carnage. At first reluctant to view Fairytale Fights as more than a game caught in the wake of Fat Princess fervor, it didn’t take much gameplay to convince me that the cheeky title carves out its own turf.

    Want to read this on ZTGD?

    I want to avoid making too many Fat Princess comparisons, and I think it’s best if we get them out of the way. Both games use a storybook framework to unleash some serious gore, all cutesy and sweet. Both benefit from a brutal take on multi-player, and the similarities really do end there. Fairytale Fights promises substantial gameplay that uses cooperative and multi-player elements offering both a Quest and competitive modes.

    The game’s story is a little easy to overlook in the midst of the gameplay and is a tale of the valiant effort to save books from the book-burning giant of Jack and Beanstalk. Saving books preserves the characters lives, and gives you the chance to bring your character out of the dusty shelves of remaindered works and into the light of fame. In your absence, Little Boy Tailor is in the spotlight, a slight the main players cannot let stand.

    I played through Lumberjack Lands, a level with a good combination of platforming and combat with Playlogic rep Patrick Meyer. Best of all, he was completely OK with the first thing I did in game – hacking him to pieces – and returned the cruelty in turn. There is four-person multi-player, but we played with two, and the aforementioned friendly fire is a toggle option. Your arsenal includes well over a hundred weapons from edged, blunt, ranged and potion be they clubs and hatchets or chainsaws and guns.

    Being dispatched by friend or foe is a regular occurrence, even by navigating some hazardous platforming elements like the formidable spinning blades. Lives, however, are infinite, so defeat just damages your income and fame and serves you up as a tombstone on the battlefield. Falling off the edge of a bridge is kind of annoying, not that the game ever gave the impression of being a consequence-free environment.

    The side-scrolling adventure is dual stick controlled, directing with the left stick and attacking with the right. You can dual-wield, with the ability to drop and pick up as well as quickly swap weapons. The revolver for example is a mighty powerful option but ammo is limited. Holding the analog stick in a fixed direction charges the attack, and combos use a lot of upward striking attacks sending you and an opponent skyward and out of harm’s way. There is a blocking system but this sort of gameplay encourages blitzkrieg above all else – at least a sea of blood was a more satisfying a reward to me than blocking an opponent or two.

    As you progress through the level there are some well-timed waves of enemies allowing you to enjoy the environments and platforming as you explore some wells and open treasure chests. These waves are pretty subtle and give the game a pleasant rhythm, though I admit that the massacre aspect of the game is so gratifying that when there were no enemies on screen I couldn’t help but want to flay my cohort.

    The four playable characters in Quest mode: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Naked Emperor and Jack, though the Emperor is a likely favorite. There is something appealing about playing as a kind of old-man baby with his belly all exposed, though I wouldn’t expect a naked man to be quite so keen on wielding anything with a sharp edge. All the characters you meet along the way will be familiar, if a bit messed up and worldly, like the lush Goldilocks. In the co-op players can drop-in/drop-out both online and off. The Quest is estimated at less than ten hours, but the Arena, which offers competitive multi-player, has four modes across ten or so maps. Modes include Death Match, Last Hero Standing, Gold Rush and Greedy Bastard (high score and high coins). Since the multi-player is an all-out battle, Arena mode is ideal for anyone that likes to play with friendly fire turned on.

    Everything is very tiny, so discovering that the Emperor was naked on the PAX TVs was sort of a surprise. Even so, the characters are pretty recognizable. The relative smallness of the characters and the use of a zoomed in effect for special attacks emphasizes the game’s use of scale. There is a lot of playing around with the tiny characters and larger-than-life environments and bosses. Easily the brightest and most saturated game to make use of Unreal Engine 3, I love the glory attacks, slippery bloodshed and the myriad moving parts that make levels really come alive. All the nasty bits flying onscreen still retains a cartoonish glory, even while you are slipping around on pools of plasma. It’s dark, but no darker than the latest WWII fare in your arsenal – just a little gore served up with glee.

    Fairytale fights is due out next month and promises to bring plenty of cheeky violence to all of your childhood fable memories. With so many referential components in play, the very Happy Tree Friends take on the classic fairy tale runs the risk of being a little too naval-gazingly self-aware in both its humor and influences. How it manages that balancing act is a determination best left for the full version, though even with dark versions of childhood favorites the game avoids coming across as mean-spirited or unpleasantly nasty. With compelling visuals, an addictive Quest and the option for cooperative play Fairytale Fights holds very real appeal.

    • Leave A Comment

    Mail (will not be published) (required)