Taking a breather from saving princesses or foiling the diabolical plans of yet another evil (pronounced “e-veel” of course) genius should be refreshing.   However, Folklore’s off-the-beaten-path paranormal Irish murder-mystery is anything but.  On paper, Folklore’s premise of a young girl, Ellen, and Keats, a journalist for an occult magazine, traveling to the Netherworld in order to solve a series of murders dating back 17 years easily piques people’s interest. Unfortunately, that spark of promised originality is suffocated by Folklore’s poor level design, inane plot twists and plain old outright frustration. 

Jig Dancing? Optional.

Ironically, it’s easy to want to classify Folklore as an RPG, but it’s truly a third-person action game with only poorly implemented RPG-like “leveling” up of your character and powers.  Had, Folklore’s design been more heavily weighted with RPG elements-such as more NPC interaction and real puzzles to solve-things might have made a turn for the better.   As it stands, Folklore’s mystery begins to in the “not-so-deserted” Irish fishing village of Doolin.  The story revolves around two “outsiders” to the village: Ellen and Keats. 

Ellen was summoned to the village through a mysterious letter from her mother.  Mysterious because Ellen thought her mother had died long ago.  Keats arrives separately, but at the same time, at the village of Doolin after a peculiar phone call arouses his interest.  To solve the mystery, Ellen and Keats must travel to the Netherworld where they can commune with the dead.  Of course, it’s not quite that easy.  The Netherworld’s inhabitants, Folks, aren’t the most gracious of hosts and in order to speak with the dearly departed, Ellen and Keats must defeat the “boss;” Folklore.

This Beauty is Only Skin Deep

Playing Folklore for the first time is like taking your first bite of a delicious looking piece of fruit.  At first, the real world “hub” of Doolin will entice you with its spooky atmosphere and your first entrance into the Netherworld is a delight; full of color and imagination.  In the beginning, everything in Folklore seems to be clicking:  the worlds are beautiful and filled with all sorts of different Folk for you to fight.  Combat is varied and interesting as you harvest the “ids” (think souls) of the defeated Folk with a gentle nudge of the sixaxis controller to use as your own weapons.  Except, with this piece of fruit, after a few mouthfuls you’re bound to bite into a chunk of rot hidden beneath its enticing exterior. 

As you progress through the Netherworld as either Ellen or Keats, you’ll first be annoyed with loading screens that, while short, pop up all too often.  These loading screens, however brief, completely interrupt the flow of the game and in this age of supercomputer powered “4D worlds”, we should expect to be able to get more than a few minutes of gameplay between loading screens.  Worse still, is the realization that you’re not necessarily given the choice to play through Folklore as either Ellen or Keats, but rather, you are forced to play through the entire game as each character.  You will play through the same levels and fight the same bosses as each character with only a few slight differences in the composition of the “lesser” Folks in each level. 

Forcing players to go through Folklore as both Ellen and Keats takes far more away from the story than it adds.  Ultimately, the resounding feeling of having two playable characters in Folklore is that of a contrived mechanism to add a few more hours of gameplay to someone’s marketing bullet point.  Making matters worse, sprinkled throughout Folklore are rooms in which you must fight several groups of enemies over and over again until you are allowed to proceed.  Again, all that is accomplished by the forced repetition is an increase in gameplay time and-more likely than not-an ulcer.

An Exercise in Masochism.

At a glance, Folklore is full of promise, some of which is even realized in the first couple of levels.  As a whole, Folklore is the very definition of a complete and utter mess.  The story which whets your appetite so heavily at the start quickly devolves into eye-rolling twist after eye-rolling twist.  The brilliant incorporation of the “gentle nudge” sixaxis controller to harvest Folk ids later becomes one of the most frustrating innovations EVAR when you’re made to vigorously shake it (even more so than “like a Polaroid picture&rdquo or move the controller from side to side in time with some incomprehensible rhythm in order to capture the ids of stronger enemies.

Bottom line?  Whoever is stuck having to play Folklore over the holidays will have just one question in their mind: “What in the world have I done to get myself on Santa’s really, really “naughty” list?”