Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries

Written by Travis Huinker on 5/29/2015 for PC  

Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries from developer Grin has players taking the role of fairy tale character Red Riding Hood on a quest of vengeance after her father mysteriously died while working at Woolfe Industries. The narrative is simple in concept and if players know anything about the fairy tale will be able to guess all the twists at the very beginning. Gameplay is the basic platform and action sort that doesn't deviate at all from the genre. As players progress through the game they gain additional abilities for Red Riding Hood that enable further combat skills with her axe.

Gameplay takes place on a 2.5 D plane that allows for movement sideways and some areas with forward and backward motion as well. While this sounds great in theory, it instead results in both awkward movement and combat situations when trying to either line of jumps or attack swings. In regards to the combat system, it allows players to use normal and heavy attack swings in addition to the ability to slowdown time to utilize special attacks and abilities. Inconsistent and spongy controls result in mindless spamming of the attacks in hopes of hitting enemies. It doesn't help either the combat doesn't offer anything new to the genre and beyond two bosses the game only contains about five repeat enemy types.

While level design does provide some interesting and visually-pleasing locales with a snow covered village and warped fantasy forest, they're dragged down constantly from lackluster gameplay and overly simplistic puzzles. The game does allow players an ability to sneak through some sections, but most of the time the mechanic is difficult to make work with the 2.5 D level design. The character design of the normal enemy types is disappointing to say the least with plain-looking robot soldiers and rats that provide no challenge at all. The boss character designs are even worse as neither of them don't speak any lines of dialogue.

Presentation wise the game offers great visuals that unfortunately suffer from constant frame rate spikes even with all of the graphics settings either disabled or turned to low. The major issue with the game's presentation is with the main character of Red Riding Hood and her constant commentary on nearly everything that happens in levels. The smallest event always involves some sort of dialogue line that is either cheesy or unnecessary, all of which result in a constantly annoying gameplay experience. Fortunately, the game's musical score accompanies the game well with its fairy tale vibes.

The game's length should also be noted as an average playthrough only takes around two to three hours. While not clear at the first, the game's Steam page includes a notice describing that Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries is only part one in a volume of two. Unfortunately, none of the game's elements justify the base price of $9.99. The game is a difficult recommendation even if it's on sale as the gameplay is neither interesting or entertaining when compared with the wide range of other better platforming and action games available to players.