Review: Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is

So I went through the game writing down my thoughts as I had them. I'll tack the raw data to the end of the post, but I very much believe the value of writing a review is to distill the experience.

American McGee's Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear Is (2008, Spicy Horse) is a platform game about changing fairy tales from their modern cleaned up versions back to their old dark versions that actually teach a lesson.

That's how I heard it described, anyway. In real life, it's more of a territory claiming game. Run a smelly gnome around, turning stuff rotten.



Enemies clean up after you. At first you can only stun them. Eventually you can convert them. Once you've done enough conversion, you move on to the next pristine area and do it over again and again and...

Zzzzz.

Zzzzz.

Zzzzz.

Huh? Wha? Review? Oh yeah.

The dialog is mildly entertaining. Watching the landscape change is mildly entertaining. But there's no real gameplay here, which suggests it's for kids. But the game has people being hung and people being burned alive and people being killed by cannon fire, which suggests it's not.

Final Score
2 of 5


Raw Data

Opening
- The song's sound levels are messed up. I can't hear the words.
- The art style reminds me a little of Psychonauts for some reason, but much more papery.

Pristine Storytelling
- Heh heh. The teacher said "fondle".
- Aww. The ghosts are so cute. *sugar shock*
- The king said marrying his daughter will teach the boy fear. Once I've turned her evil, I bet it will.

Scene 1
- I got a silver medal and missed two secrets.
- The ending of the corrupt version (where the dad punches his son) is pretty random.

Scene 2
- The dialog clips play on top of each other sometimes. It makes it hard to hear.
- When you leave Grimm standing still he pees. Peeing is funny. :\
- I did even worse on scene 2. I blame the boat.

Scene 3
- Using voice to tell me to butt stomp every time I approach a butt stomp target is getting on my nerves.
- What did the teacher actually do? I thought there was going to be a bigger change.
- It appears time and darkness are separate awards. Either go for max corruption or go for max speed.
- Getting bored.

Scene 4
- Grimm showed some butt crack. :P

Scene 5
- Cutest ghosts ever.
- And they don't change! I can't corrupt them!
- I thought the dogs that spawned in might be finally upping the opposition. They weren't.

Scene 6
- Yay. Wedding guests are dead. Who cares?
- Can I get a little credit for knowing that the princess turning yucky was going to be the capper?
- Oh, a big cannon doing nothing was supposed to be the capper. Fail.

Corrupted Storytelling
- He's talking about different motives for the actions in the story. That's a change.
- What? The teacher still just touched the school bell? Who cares?
- I should have just played "You Burned The Rope" again.