And then there are the weapons, which are supposed to be one of the highlights of the game but like the characters are all pretty much the same. There's a large number of weapons in the game, blunt, bladed, and ranged … everything from rolled-up newspapers to machetes. Each weapon is rated with a number of stars to signify its effectiveness, but like everything else in the game you won't be able to really tell one from the other when using them. The exception to this is the ranged weapons, which are so difficult to aim and slow to fire that you'll never want to pick one up. The control of the blade and blunt weapons is not nearly as precise as the game would want you to believe, so fights involve flicking the right stick all over the place until everyone is dead. Even if there was some semblance of real control with the weapons it wouldn't matter since most battles are a mob scene in which you will be hard pressed to even see your character, let alone target any particular enemy.

The platform portions of the game fare even worse than the battles. You'll periodically come across traps, buzz saws, and similar automated contraptions of death, with the idea being for you to run past or leap over them, or even to push enemies into them. That's the idea, anyway. In practice they all pretty much guarantee several deaths of your character because the jump controls are imprecise, the edge detection is inconsistent, and the camera angles often make it difficult to line-up your jumps. Some of the platform sequences are so poorly designed and absolutely frustrating you have to wonder if the developers ever bothered to sit down and try to play through them themselves. Merely the thought of playing through one sequence again that involved giant balls rolling back-to-back down a series of ramps still makes me tense up.

And through it all you die. Die again. Die, die, die, and then die some more. Death will turn you into a little gravestone on the spot and the press of a button will bring you back to life. Unlimited lives and an inconsequential death penalty make all the dying absolutely pointless. You lose a little coinage in the transition to death and back to life, but as far as I could tell the only thing that you can buy with the coins in the game are upgrades to the rather lame statue of your character in Taleville (a statue, by the way, that instantly changes each time you change characters). Adding to the pointless frustration is that overly large mobs of enemies will continue to mill around your grave after death, so there are times when you'll revive only to be killed again before you can even push another button. This is supposed to be fun?

Do I need to mention that there is multiplayer support in the game? Up to four players can join in locally or on Xbox Live to play co-op or competitively. The game is no less tedious or no more fun simply because you have company to share the misery. In fact, you should save yourself from that misery entirely and let this particular fairytale be forgotten.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 44%. The moral of this fairytale is to avoid playing this game.

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