Unfortunately,
American McGee's Grimm: The Fisherman and His Wife doesn't quite feel as solid as the first two games. While the core mechanics are all the same, it's the level design itself that causes quite a few problems in
The fisherman and His Wife.
Since this fairytale is so water-heavy (for obvious reasons), the game's need for good platforming mechanics are essential. Unfortunately, there are a few aspects concerning the jumping that can cause quite a number of problems. For instance, the more you increase the Dark-O-Meter, the farther you can jump. While this sounds like a cool idea, this means you can't really get a solid idea for how far you can jump (I guess that's the reason the developers had Grimm constantly urinating to judge your distance). What this means is that during some of the more difficult jumps, I would overshoot my target.
Other times, a lack of control would lead to just frustrating sequences, like in the last level. Here, you start off on a crate at the center of a whirlpool, and a string of crates spiral outward and up out of the whirlpool. You must jump from box to box in order to climb out of the area and get to more stable parts. Unfortunately, the lack of precise control makes this a difficult matter, and you will hear Grimm comment on drowning in the water many times. To make matters worse, it seems like the level didn't reset quite right whenever you died because there were quite a few times when the jump to a crate was impossible, because the next crate was too high. At these times, I had to quit the level and restart it. This level was by far the most frustrating part of The Fisherman and His Wife.
I have mixed feelings about this particular episode. While I enjoy the way Grimm changes the story, there are quite a few issues in the level design that cause problems. Thankfully, the episodes are very self-contained, so if you want to skip The Fisherman and His Wife because of this, that shouldn't hurt the later releases.
If you can, download this game within the first 24 hours of launch in order to get it free (this can be done at www.gametap.com/grimm), otherwise, you might want to consider holding back until you see how the rest of the series plays out.