Fairytale Fights

Normally, you would expect a happy ever after though, unfortunately, Fairytale Fights has no fairytale ending. Whilst it is a unique title with some strong ideas amid a distinctive style, the lack of a true storyline, the clumsy combat and repetitiveness of the title fail to make Fairytale Fights a must-buy purchase.

If you are looking to get an ultraviolent fairy tale fix, you would be better off to use that $30 to download Castle Crashers and buy a DVD of Shrek II.

Fairytale Fights could have been the next Castle Crashers, but its lack of depth and overabundance of repetition shows that some tales are better left untold.

The moral of this fairytale is to avoid playing this game.

As a hack-and-slash platformer, Fairytale Fights could have been a success. On top of a consistent and admittedly appealing theme, it has all the right ingredients to fit the genre: countless weapons, challenging levels and 4-player co-op. But with repetitive gameplay and unrewarding challenges, this title falls very, very short of becoming the next Castle Crashers.

It doesn’t seem like Playlogic dug in to finish the game, which left it to work (or not work) based on its gimmicks. Sadly, those gimmicks aren’t strong enough to maintain the game across its entirety.

The most depressing game I've played in a long time.

From interface to basic design, it's marred by numerous game design decisions that simply should not have made it to the finished product.

While it can be briefly enjoyable and provide a few giggles and chuckles, it quickly becomes repetitive and boring. Co-op helps, but in the end, poor controls and lack of genuinely entertaining qualities will drive most players away.

Straightforward, button-mashing combat through the game's Quest mode with up to three friends may clutter up the screen during heated duels against an onslaught of bad guys, but it provides the otherwise muddled Fairytale Fights with its only true high point. [Jan 2010, p.78]

From an intriguing prospect to an abysmal game, Fairytale Fights has turned out more like a horror story.

There's no fairytale ending for this beat 'em-up, with its striking art and terrible control scheme.

There's no way to break the curse on this staggeringly bad action game.

Fairytale Fights has one of the very best set-ups of any game this year, yet it's marred by repetitive gameplay, annoying combat, levels that go on forever and bosses that stand out for all the wrong reasons.

Fairytale Fights would have been starkly disappointing as an XBLA or PSN download-only title, but as a retail game taking up shelf space, it's absolute failure.