I told you! No more fried food!
All this slicing and dicing creates buckets of blood that fly all over each stage, and that’s another thing Playlogic focused on. Using a volumetric liquid system, blood (and the other liquids you’ll run into in the game) seamlessly pools together. The players can then slide around in these puddles of blood, spreading it from one side of the screen to the other! (The rep actually told us that he thinks one of the achievements/trophies in the game will have to do with sliding in blood for distance.) This same system allows the water to flow like water, and the acid to melt people.
The gameplay looks simple and fun. We got to see a lumberjack-themed level, where Little Red Riding Hood was collecting precious items out of treasure chests before facing a screen-filling boss (a massive beaver). It seemed to reach a nice balance between platformer and hack-n-slash – while there was always a constant stream of enemies, some of the obstacles that the character had to hop over and around were just as dangerous.
A second Playlogic rep then jumped in to show off the game’s co-op mode. The devs have left co-op wide open – you can either play together, or you can compete with each other as you race through the levels. The level shown off to us for co-op was a giant’s castle-themed level, played in a versus mode: each of the reps kept using a seemingly endless supply of different weapons to throw his partner off balance. Overall, the game touts 100+ weapons; we got to see a good variety, from blunt objects, to blades, to magical weapons like a transforming potion and an ice wand. Much like Little Big Planet, there will be areas and items in Fairytale Fights that you will only be able to access if you have more than one player in the game – so teaming up with a friend will have its benefits.
Over the river and through the woods to hack and slash we go!
When asked how the co-op system works, the reps told us that it’s drop-in, drop-out (both local AND online) – this was then displayed in the game and it seemed to work very smoothly. At the game’s release we will be able to play with up to two players in co-op online, or up to four players locally. We weren’t given any information on “Arena” (Fairytale Fight’s online battle mode), other than that there will be four-player deathmatch mayhem to be had.
It was a truly eye-opening demonstration, and honestly one of my favorites of E3; mostly because while it came out of nowhere. If you’ve ever wished to play a fairytale character who’s gone postal (And who hasn’t?), Playlogic has given us everything we could hope for. The fight for “happily ever after” will start this holiday season as Fairytale Fights releases with a pricetag of $59.99 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and $29.99 for PC.