Like the bedtime stories that inspired it, Fairytale Fights is fun, entertaining and bloody as all get-out. But far from being a dark morality tale, Fairytale Fights gives up to four players the chance to go on a carefree romp through Fantasyland, where they can slice, smash, burn and utterly destroy anything in their way.

Fairytale Fights lets you choose from four different characters, each from a classic fairy tale. There’s Beanstalk Jack, the Naked Emperor, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White (dwarves not included). One player can brave story mode alone, or up to three friends can join in on the grisly fun. Playing with friends is highly recommended, as there are lots of enemies, bosses and deadly traps. And you’re going to die. A lot.

Gameplay harkens back to the golden days of side-scrolling beat-’em-ups like Final Fight and Streets of Rage. Replace gritty back alleys with gumdrop forests and gingerbread houses, turn the brightness all the way up, and give all the characters squeaky-cute voices, and you’ve got the setting of Fairytale Fights in a nutshell. Along the way, you’ll get plenty of weapons, potions and poisons to assist in the mayhem. The variety among the weapons was particularly impressive, as the game continues to introduce new types of swords, bats and other instruments of annihilation all the way through the story.

However, story mode is also plagued by a number of faults. First and foremost, like I mentioned before, you will die. A lot. Whether you’re good at the game or not. There are just so many enemies, so many deadly traps, that you’re bound to die over and over and over. The game makes this a fairly painless process, granting a plethora of extra lives and continues, but there are some sections in which you’ll be dying so frequently that you’ll still get frustrated.

Chief among these are the platforming sections, where you’ll have to do things like walk across a balance beam overlooking a bottomless pit or jump Frogger-style from island to island across a pit of acid. The game uses static camera angles, which translates to the camera often being pulled way too far back for you to really see what you’re doing. The problem is compounded if you’re playing with friends, since one player can leap ahead and force the camera to scroll forward, which usually kills any players who are lagging behind.

The other area in which you’ll be dying too quickly to count the deaths is during the boss battles. The fight against the Pied Piper is particularly nasty. He perches himself on top of a huge pipe organ surrounded by flame-shooting death traps, and getting hit even once means instant death. So you’ve got to ascend this fiery organ, hit a switch to make the Piper vulnerable, and then repeat. All in all, I think I probably died about 30 times just trying to beat that one boss. If it weren’t for unlimited continues, I don’t think I would have ever made it past that part of the game.

Another minor annoyance about the constant deaths is that dying causes you to drop whatever weapon you happen to be holding, which is especially annoying if you’re holding a rare or powerful weapon. Each character has two weapon slots, and the game automatically switches to your other random slot when you come back to life, which usually translates to you missing a jump, dying and losing your first weapon, coming back to life with your alternate weapon, dying again, and thus being left unarmed. If weapons were rare at all in this game, again, I probably would have gotten too frustrated to continue playing.

All these flaws, however, will only really hamper your playing experience if you’re playing with even a modicum of seriousness, which is just the wrong way to play. If you’re playing for the visceral joy of seeing Red Riding Hood beat a lumberjack to death with a picnic basket, then you’re going to have a fun time no matter what.

If games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii are just a little too family friendly for you, or if you love seeing fairy tales get the bloody treatment you knew they always deserved, Fairytale Fights is undoubtedly for you. I recommend renting it before you decide for sure whether to buy it, as the story and multiplayer modes are meant for short, pick-up-and-play sessions. The story mode itself is plenty long, though, so those who go for the full purchase won’t be disappointed by lack of things to do.