Preview: Woolfe – The Red Hood Diaries

A cinematic fable featuring a vengeful Red Riding Hood. This twisted fairytale is presented as a 2.5D platformer in which our heroine runs, jumps, and puzzles her way through a rich fantasy setting of a once blooming city and evil forests, wielding her trusted axe.

Pros:

• Graphics are really well done,  Bring a magical feel to it all. Cutscenes in particular look really good.
• Full 360 pad support.
• Healthy selection of video options including AA and V-Sync.
• Three difficulties easy,  normal and hard.
• Full 3D interactive world.
• Hidden Collectible diary entries which supply back story and a more in depth description of the world and it’s inhabitants.
• Simple controls.
• Full voice acting.
• Frequent checkpoints.
• Magical themed soundtrack.
• Combo fight system. As you attack you build up a bar which can let out more devastating attacks.
• Puzzle platformer gameplay.
• The story is basically a dark alternate spin on famous fairy tales.
• Narration is spoken in rhyme.
• Well known characters inhabit the world from Thumbelina to Pinnochio to the Pie piper himself.
• Gorgeous backdrops adorn every level.
• Can stealth past most enemies allowing you to play the game in different ways.
• Diary allows you to read any collected entries.
• Some really good set pieces.
• Boss fights.
• Constant updates.
• Very playable and enjoyable experience.

Cons:

• Subtitles don’t seem to work all the time.
• Frequent screen tearing and performance drops.
• Some poor checkpoint placement delicious.
• No real guidance on direction or what you need to do.
• The combo fighting bar is not explained.
• camera angle is not in your control and with that comes awkward viewing angles.
• Combat feels very loose.
• Touch a spike even by a pixel and it’s instant death.
• Needs a proper tutorial as atm it is drip fed to you.
• Doesn’t always save check points.

In Summary,  Still very much work in progress,  The game does have a good feel about it.  I mean it looks simply brilliant,  Gives me the same tingles I get from the Trine series.  The story is shaping up to be a good one but the main things holding it back are bad sign posting and awful checkpoint choices. I like where it is headed and the game is getting constant updates while they monitor and respond to queries in the forum. In short it is defiantly one to watch and could be a real winner.