People usually fear what they don’t know. Why would I bring that up now? Well, over a year ago when Fat Princess was announced many feminists groups flipped out about a game being called Fat Princess. No one really knew much about the game; all they said at the time was you would have to rescue your princess from another castle while holding that castle’s princess captive. If you fed the princess you had captive a piece of cake she would get bigger and thus harder to carry. The same thing would hold true for your princess in their castle. These groups flipped over that, a simple game mechanic. Had they played the game? No, it was over a year until the game would be released. This was the Mass Effect sex scene fiasco all over again.
Whether or not the feminists wanted it Fat Princess was released July 30th as a downloadable PSN exclusive. I had been looking forward to this game for what seemed like such a long time. As I said before, the point of the game is to rescue your princess while you still have the opposition’s princess, but that’s just one of the game modes. The others include: Snatch ‘n Grab, where you have to capture the opponent’s princess three times to win; Team Deathmatch, which is just the standard kill the other team until they run out of points mode; and also Invasion, where capturing over 50% of the outposts in the level will cause the other teams score to decline, when one team’s score reaches zero they lose. There are eight maps on which to play any game mode online or with computer controlled teammates, and one map called ‘soccer’ where you can play a murderous game of you guessed it, soccer. There is a ‘The Legend of the Fat Princess’ option, which is the single player ‘story mode’. It’s a nice mix of the different modes in the game with quirky narration and story book visuals. You can also ‘Gladiate’, another mode which is only available in single player, where you choose a class and fight waves of enemis in an arena.
YAY:
- The class differentiation is great. It’s tough to choose a class, because they all have their own value. The classes are Warrior, Ranger, Priest, Mage, and Worker. The Warrior has a sword and shield that he can use to block arrows, the Ranger shoots arrows with a bow, the Priest can heal his teammates and himself, the Mage can cast an area fire spell or throw fire balls, and the Worker can collect resources and build things.
- Worker upgrades are a big plus. You choose your class by putting on a hat that comes out of a machine and all of the hat machines can be upgraded to give that class more options. For instance, after upgrade the Worker class can throw small bombs, the Warrior can switch to a giant spear, the Ranger gets a blunderbuss, the Priest can become a Dark Priest and steal enemy health instead of healing teammates, and the Mage can use ice as well as fire.
- There are also areas in the levels where Workers can build springboards, bridges, doors, and even catapults. They all add a different dimension to that level aside from the layout itself.
- Such cutesy graphics with such a high amount of blood. It’s a very nice balance. Also, when you die respawn time is a quick 5 seconds, so you’re not out of the fight too long.
- You gotta love the audio, from the sounds of them working and fighting to the princess yelling “feed me cake!”
- You can customize your character with different hairstyles, facial hairstyles, eye colors, and skin tones that you unlock by playing the game.
- The credits of the game are amazing. It allows you to kill in-game versions of the people who made the game with a scythe while dressed in a robe.
NAY:
- For an online focused game I’ve run into many online issues. I’ve only played one game where I was on the same team as other people, and that was earlier today. In the games I joined around the time the game released I was the only person on my team against four or five other people, and this happened a few times. In a few instances I couldn’t even connect to a game or it would say no games could be found. Fat Princess has been patched since release, but I’ve still been experiencing problems.
- While the single player may be fun, not being able to communicate with or somehow control the bots on your team is frustrating and can be an exercise in patience, depending on the mode you’re playing.
- Some of the maps make for loooong games, especially Deep Fried, which is a level where lava rises and falls. If you don’t time grabbing the princess right the lava makes bringing her back to your castle so much harder.
- I know they wanted to keep the level titles and as much as they could food-based names, but calling some darker skin tone options ‘chocolate’ and ‘brownie’ is most likely going to offend more people than the title will.
- At the end of the story mode some of the text was overlapped, so it couldn’t be read. Thankfully it was narrated so I could tell what was happening.
Fat Princess is a fun and funny game. It’s too bad that online problems are kind of ruining it at the moment. I was looking forward to this for a long time and in spite of the current issues I’m glad I spent the $15 to get it. I have faith that it will get better as time goes on. I just hope it doesn’t scare people away or force them to abandon playing it, because the single player isn’t going to keep the interest of many players.
