Fat Princess
Verdict: An amusing distraction that can get a little monotonous after a while.
In a Nutshell: Capture the flag with a silly, bloody cartoon shell.
Rescue your beloved princess through teamwork in this comic medieval battle royale. There’s a catch, though—the other team has been feeding her magical cake, making her harder to escort back to your castle. Choose from five distinct character classes and switch at any time to best help your team. Charge head first into battle, heal teammates as they break through enemy lines, and upgrade your team and the castle defenses as you work with your team to save your princess.
- Fun Rating: Fun
- ESRB: T
- Players/Mode: single-player / online multiplayer (up to 32 players)
- Game Duration: As long as it keeps your interest
- System: PS3 (PSN)
- Developer: Titan Studios
- Website: http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/Fat_Princess
- Cost: $15
| Would I play this again? | Yes |
| Would I recommend this game? | maybe |
| Was the story good? | ’twas OK |
| Was the music good? | yes |
| Were the graphics good? | yes |
| Was this game difficult? | no |
| Was this game frustrating? | sometimes |
| Was this game offensive? | no |
| Was this game worth your time/money? | yes |
Playing the game
Controlling your little dude (or dudette) in Fat Princess is simple (although the game’s instructions seem to be trying to keep that a secret, making it seem more complicated than it is). Move around with the left analog stick, X jumps, square attacks/uses, circle picks up a new hat (change class), L1 locks on, and triangle switches weapons. Holding down square charges up your attack. Pressing Select brings up a map. That’s about all there is to it.
The basic gameplay is essentially a variation on capture the flag. The other team has your princess, you want to get her back, while also preventing them from getting back their princess. To help with the latter goal, you can feed the captive princess magic cake, which makes her fatter and thus more difficult for them to carry out of your base.
What the game gets right
The action in Fat Princess is pleasantly fast-paced, with the larger 32-player games being quite the sight to behold. With five different classes (worker, warrior, ranger, priest, and Mage), the variety of options for how you can play in a given match is refreshing.
The cartoony graphical style is fun, and definitely adds to the game overall. The whole concept of feeding magical cake to your captive princess to make her too fat for the other team to save is amusing as well. Also, although it’s a fairly minor touch, I enjoyed the ability to customize the look of my character.
The short, seven-chapter story mode serves as a nice introduction to the game. Also nice is the variety of environments present in the maps—not only the themes (beach, lava, etc.), but the environmental obstacles as well.
What the game gets wrong
When you fire up Fat Princess, you are presented with seven different screens before you are actually able to play the game: auto-save, seizure warning, Sony presents, Santa Monica Studio, Titan Sudios, Physx by Nvidia, and finally the online user agreement (which you must accept every time). All told, it takes nearly a full minute between launching the game from the PS3 system menu and actually reaching the game’s title screen. Ridiculous.
[Update: Titan Studios dropped us a line to let us know the following: "Unfortunately, we have no control over the legal screens at the beginning of the game. Since the game also has online content, Sony had requested that the EULA be accepted (or shown to the player) on every boot. We agree with your sentiment here, but this is something that was outside of Titan's control." So apparently two of the seven screens are not their fault. They did not specifically mention the other five.]
After playing Fat Princess for a few weeks, it has also become evident to me that the games can often become somewhat monotonous. Although the variety of classes and maps is nice, most every game seems to boil down to the same crazy mayhem in the middle of the map, often leading to a stalemate game that is decided on points.
Sum it up
Fat Princess is fun. Is it $15 fun? If you’ve got a group of friends that you can join up with and play online, maybe. If you’re going it alone, probably not.
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