Snow White in Happily Ever After

The Good
The game is graphically okay in the gameplay. The platforming is very much like a classic Amiga game. A lot of the time, you're collecting fruit and coins, it's almost like Slot Machine as a platformer. A good thing is that you choose which level you want to start. You can collect a lot of hearts, which act as lives rather than health. And the fact that there is no time limit is very welcome indeed. Not only does getting hit by an enemy deduct a single heart, but so does falling. For weapons you have throwing apples and bomb apples, which makes the evil queen's poisoned apples look useless.

The Bad
Although the game loosely follows the film, it doesn't show even half the presentation of it. The text is chunky and very bright colours. The silver mirror in the main menu looks hideous. And for some reason the cover artist chose Snow White's colour scheme to mimic Disney's princess. Not even a third of the characters make it into the game. There's no story to accompany, you're just plunged into the levels. The music and sound are nothing really to write about.

The gameplay physics are busted. The jumping doesn't have enough momentum so you can't move left or right enough to jump a gap or on to particular platforms, you'll only fall. And whenever you fall from higher places, you get dizzy a lot, it's much like Duncan from Dark Castle. Level design is pretty bad, with so much jumping around with no way to see what is above and below without a blind leap of faith and it takes forever to find the exit. Lastly, whenever you get hit by an enemy, you stop and fall backwards (very irritating in midair) and forget about temporary invincibility, you'll only take one hit after another.

The Bottom Line
What can you expect from a game based on a film, which is based on a fairy tale? It goes like this: "Once upon, there was a little girl and a shadow man who liked to jump around and collect fruit, then throw it all away". This title has a lot less to do with Snow White than Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales. The game isn't going to put anyone's platforming skills to the test, it's just going to put you through a marathon of item collecting and hopping about. It might take you the same amount of time it takes to watch the film (75 minutes) or a lot less if you decide that it isn't worth your playtime. You can just close the book on "Happily Ever After" and find a more decent game.