Blood and guts. Include too much in a game and it can end up looking tacky, like in the early Mortal Kombat games when you performed a fatality and an absurd half a dozen rib cages burst out of your opponent. Fairytale Fights manages to get the amount of gore just right – there’s plenty of it, yet it doesn’t look out of place. This is a little bizarre considering that the cartoon styling may fool some into initially thinking that this is a kid’s game. It couldn’t be further from the truth – the fairytales told here are deeply twisted, with Hansel and Gretel being conjoined twins and the Pied Piper luring women into his house instead of rats.
With infinite lives, drop-in-drop-out co-op play and similar camera angles, Fairytale Fights has clearly been influenced by the Lego games. First impressions are favourable enough – the graphics are bright and breezy with some detailed backdrops while cutting enemies in half – complete with an extreme close up on the side of the screen – is mildly entertaining. The potions are quite fun to use too – throw a pot of acid at an enemy and their skin peals off their bones in a distributing manner, just like scene at the end of Gremlins where Spike falls into the water fountain. The boss battles are creative and sometimes require some thought, but here’s the problem – the levels leading up to them are long and tedious, with little variation in enemies and hardly any set-pieces.