It’s not uncommon nowadays for directors and designers to take a beloved concept or story and redevelop it with a unique twist. The re-imagining of classic fairy tales seems to be the next big trend with games such as Fable and Alice, exploiting the subject matter to deliver games centered on satirical humour, with grittier and darker expositions of beloved characters. Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries takes the classic tale of Red Riding Hood and attempts to develop something along the lines of “Fables meets Blade Runner and directed by Tim Burton.” Does it work? Meh.
Woolfe as a whole is a Gothic re-imagining of Red Riding Hood, where our sweet and innocent hero is turned into a vengeful assassin, living in a world controlled by an industrial tycoon known as B.B Woolfe, the human ego of the “The Big Bad Wolf” if you didn’t guess it (I’d be shocked if you didn’t). Woolfe is the brutal dictator of the enchanted land, where his factories run as far as the eye can see and overwhelm the organic forests and decaying cities. You take on the role of Red, a hooded, white hair girl who is out for revenge for the death of her mother and father, who she blames entirely on Woolfe.
The narrative takes a similar tone to Fable and Alice, taking the concept of a known fairy tale and restructuring it as a gritty fantasy epic. The symbolism and writing is nothing original, as many have done a similar notion and it often feels slightly dumbed down. Using a seemingly lazy combination of tropes that integrate names from the classic tale that really doesn’t expand on Red Riding Hood, nor does anything memorable such as Alice. It doesn’t take many chances with the original concept and often feels like something you’ve seen before.
The overall problem I had with the story is the lead herself. Red seems disjointed in personality, as she often puts her priories in the most bizarre order and lacks any real depth. There are some nice moments where she reflects on her past, speaking fondly of her mother and father, but half the time she seems disconnected, sounding more like a bi-polar teenager who loves someone one minute then hates their guts after a revelation.
Another example would be when Red returns home to save Granny, but stops off halfway and reflects on some more fond memories, while B.B Woolfe make his way to murder Granny. She seemingly lacks any intelligence or care for the serious situation at hand, uninterested in saving her beloved Granny. Yet another poorly written moment sees Red relishing in the defeat of her enemies while Granny is bleeding out from a brutal attack. Often with these careless actions is a dim witted pun and the many that are repeated during the game makes my ears bleed. I thought Deadpool in his game felt like a broken record, but at least Nolan North is funny and so is Deadpool.
I guess the only real moment of stable writing is having the Pied Piper as a child murder who lives in the sewer with an army of man eating rats. It’s a nifty idea, but again highly unoriginal. It feels like a rip off of the more sinister Grandma Rags from Dishonored. She was bad ass, the Piper isn’t.
The main reason I’m not satisfied by the narrative, or game overall is how short it is. I understand that it’s an indie title, but the whole game seems like its missing the third act, and ends on a disappointing and abrupt note. From trailers shown before, I was expecting giant evil Pinocchio monsters and mine cart chases, but it seems the developer has split the game into two and will sell the other half later on. This is thoughtless in my opinion, and if this is meant to gear us up for the second half, so far it’s not doing a good job.
Combat is very simple: implementing a light, heavy and two or three special attacks for Red to use when you’re not trying to be stealthy. I’d found that there is no point in using the weaker attack, as the heavy attack is the exact same speed, with just about the same level of damage dealt. With special attacks lacking any real impact on enemies, you’ll spend most of your time to hammering the heavy attack button on enemies who either seem to take too much damage before they die, or hardly any at all. At one point, I encountered two enemies that were Terminator levels of strength who I couldn’t kill, and rather annoyingly, they could kill me with one hit. A bug in the game that was pretty annoying. There are a few more of these types of glitches, including many invisible walls and odd collision detection that aren’t game breaking, but just plain annoying.
Stealth would have been the way forward with this game, and it was nice to have a choice between combat or stealth. While the stealth mechanics do work, the collision detection makes it hard to use them. When trying to sneak past groups of enemies, you’ll find at times many of the NPCs are placed in rather odd locations, making it extremely difficult to sneak past them. There was one moment where Red needed to use a crane to drop a load of creates onto a situated patrol outside her objective. These ideas and set pieces, acting as well as puzzle elements in the game, would have been more enjoyable than the weak melee combat. Boss battles are rather a lacklustre affair and can be more frustrating than fun. Their attacks feel cheap as they summon hoards of smaller enemies who can overpower you, and have a variety of attacks that can kill you in just one hit, making you start again from the very beginning of the battle.
I felt that a stronger emphasis on stealth gameplay could have been more beneficial over the weak combat, and better use of the platforming mechanics.
The best aspect of the game is world itself, as it looks absolutely stunning and wondrous. The locations in the game are made up of a Gothic city and enchanted forest, which have a vast amount of creativity displayed, showing that its been lovingly designed and beautifully crafted. The game gives a vibe similar to the Fable series, with an atmosphere feeling close to a dream like world, in addition fantasy-like music that sets the tone perfectly. The game makes the perfect world that pleases the senses to observe.
Using the 2D world more dynamically via multiple paths and directions helps make the game engaging from a platforming stance. The game has an interesting way to observe the glorious world, similar to classic old school titles such as Abe’s Odyssey and Pandemonium. However, the scenery can at times obscure the view and make navigation rather difficult, being more frustrating as you’ll won’t know where to go from time to time. This was made slightly more painful with the irritating checkpoint system, as checkpoints are either too close together or too far apart.
Woolfe is a visually stunning game that can be quite fun and a potential cult classic. But sadly, it misses being on top form with weak combat, lame boss battles, some annoying obscurities regarding the camera view, lack of clear navigation and an uninspiring story. What’s worse is that there seems to be another “episode” coming, and this was never made that clear. With a short length of two hours, I was hoping for a full game, or something much longer. Well, to everyone who backed this game on kickstarter, you seemed to have funded an episodic game. I do feel for you.
My Advice: Buy the Fall or Strider. Same price, more fun.