I was pretty excited to try this one. There are so many military shooters and boring brown open world games on the console. A bright colourful fairy-tale themed hack and slash where you spill the blood of your enemies with 3 friends, sign me up! It's a great idea that we don't really see much on the console, harking back to the good old days of streets of rage and games with some humor. The problem is, this fun lasts for about 5 minutes and then you start to realise how painful this game really is. The levels are colourful, but extremely bland and linear. Most levels have you walking right. That's it. The combat is terrible. It could be due to the awkward controls, which make it difficult, but even if it controlled well, its very basic stuff. You flick the right stick around to slash and link some combos up. This doesn't make for fun gameplay. The coop gameplay doesn't make the game much better. It's difficult to see whats going on with 1 player on the screen, let alone 2 or even 3. One of the most shallow games on the console, don't be fooled by the cute graphics or unique concept.

Ever so slightly misses the mark imo. For every step this game takes in the right direction I think it makes two more in the opposite direction. As a beat-em-up this is far from the repugnant trash heap I was led to believe, perfectly serviceable (if, of course, repetitive) with an eccentric control gimmick and an insane amount of meaty, splashy violence - I was honestly liking this for the majority of it (you can slide around in the enemy's blood like an ice rink, how cool is that?!). However, once they expect you to perform any amount of platforming it all falls apart. The control is beyond finnicky as it is, slippery as all hell even on plain surfaces - but the awkwardly fixed camera angle leads to trajectory with often zero sense of depth. You will fall off. Again and again. And again. So on and so forth.. Yeah... Not even on difficult obstacles either, just jumping across a small creek from a big lilypad frequently seems like an insurmountable task. There's a lot to like here, lots of these levels are lovingly designed with vibrant colors and fascinating ideas - and I dig that this smartly decided against fairytale satire, going more for just a quick hit of cartoon characters being sliced apart Happy Tree Friends-style like Jell-O. But man... it can be tough to sit through due to its overarching flaws.