Fat Princess is a PS3-exclusive which was released yesterday (July 30, 2009) and developed by Titan Studios. It is a violent CTF-based game, which focuses on team work for ultimate victory. Read more about the game and my thoughts after the jump!
Fat Princess is a violent, bloody and gory (you can turn these settings off) CTF-based game in which two rival kingdoms (Red and Blue) have taken each other’s princesses. Of course, FP isn’t limited to just CTF (though thats the whole backbone), there is also team deathmatch and soccer (yes, soccer!). FP is primarily an online game, but playing through the single player campaign, which features a short 7-chapter offering, gives you a back-drop and “what’s the deal?” of the story and game. When playing offline, you can also go to the arena in Gladiate mode, in which you choose a class and attempt to finish 12 waves of enemies. You can also play the various game-modes with up to 31 bots on 3 difficulties.
So why is it called Fat Princess? When you are in a game mode where the princesses are around, you can feed them pieces of cake, which have begun to magically sprout from the ground. As the princesses eat more and more slices of cake, they become more voluptuous and curvy (the enemy princess will even quote “Baby Got Back” with ‘She looks like one of those rappers girlfriends…’). If your princess is captured, you’re going to need some help securing her back to your castle (see the CTF elements?).
In FP, there are your standard 5 classes consisting of Priest (healing), Warrior (tank), Mage (magic), Ranger (long range) and Worker (engineer). Classes can be switched on the fly by wearing a different hat, and can also be upgraded (once) when the Worker has enough resources to upgrade the specific hat dispenser. You could almost think of it as TF2 in a 3rd-person cartoon perspective, without the cloaked-spies and sentry guns: a balance of classes is essential for victory.
Player control is fairly simple with X to jump, Circle to pick-up/drop objects, Square to Attack and Triangle to switch weapons (when upgraded). L1 is used to target-lock, with the right analog stick changing targets (its difficult, there must be another way really) and R2 for voice chat. I’m not sure if in-game chat is allspeak or teamspeak, but according to the game you are able to use any USB microphone or a Bluetooth headset, which is something you don’t ALWAYS see (games like Resistance 2 only support BT headsets). On the D-pad, up/down is used to call/release reinforcements accordingly, with left/right being taunts.
Something I noticed and experienced, in contrast to the previously “reviewed” Battlefield 1943, was that games are hosted by specific people. In other words, if I was hosting a game, everyone would be trying to connect to ME. This definitely presented some connectivity issues, such as lag and the INCREDIBLY long “searching for a game”/”waiting for host” times. The biggest problem would be the game ends when the host leaves. You read right, when the host leaves the game, the game subsequently ends…which makes sense. Think of it like starting your own server on TF2 and then closing the game – the server closes too. Of course, these server issues affect gameplay, as often there are hit-detection issues (ie. playing as a Worker trying to fix doors).
A very enjoyable aspect of the game are the memes Titan Studios has managed to pump into the game, ranging from the announcer/narrator exclaiming “They’re in our base, killing our d00ds!” when the enemy is literally in your base killing your dudes, to a trophy called “The Cake Is NOT A Lie”. The game is highly enjoyable and comical, seen through its bright, colourful art style, quirky sound effects and quick, addictive gameplay. You can even turn players (including yourself if you’re not careful) into chickens! If you go into the Credits, you’ll play as the Slayer (with a scythe) and kill everyone who helped on the game, TO THE TUNE OF SIR MIX-A-LOT’S “BABY GOT BACK”. You probably saw all my Tweets…Tweeta, Tweete, Tweeti, Tweeto…
There isn’t much player customization available in the game, with only 90 player unlockables (skin colour, hairstyle, beardstyle and eye color), but there appears to be a section for “Fat Downloads”, which hints at future DLC. Hopefully this DLC is going to gush chocolate on top of the already-cherry-topped cake that is Fat Princess.
Fat Princess is available through the PS Store ONLY, for $14.99USD.