Fat Princess
A catchy title can get you a lot of attention, but to get a good review, it helps to have a good product. Luckily for Titan Studios, Fat princess has both. Initially, this game got plenty of flack for having a name that was simultaneously offensive to women AND offensive to fat people. Neither is really the case if you sit down and play even three minutes of the game. Fat Princess is simple a cartoony multiplayer action/strategy hybrid. It’s available exclusively as a download from the Playstation Network on PS3.
Let’s talk about gameplay. First off the primary mechanic is a ton of fun. The game basically starts with the class based system of any old school RTS you may have played. I’m specifically reminded of Warcraft II. You have a worker, a warrior, a mage, a priest, and an archer. You can switch classes at any time by picking up a different hat (even the hats of fallen friends or enemies). This helps the action switch up often, and keeps the battles very chaotic. Now, even though you are switching classes, the action is much closer, and you never really have a fully clear picture of what all of your teammates are doing at any one time. This makes communication essential (the lack of communication feels JUST like when no one talks in TF2 or BF1943, you’re almost doomed to be the losing team).
There is a single player story mode, which essentially just strings together a handful of multiplayer modes, with a loosely connected fairytale. The single player game (and occasional online games) are filled with bots. The bots aren’t horrible, but they have that occasional “run into a wall 3 times” bot brain we’ve all come to know and love.
The map design is solid, with some smaller and larger maps, varied terrains, and very very well designed pinch points and secret paths. It’ll take you a few nights of playing to learn them all, and even more time to develop some winning strategies. I find almost all of the classes enjoyable to play, and find new uses and tricks for the advanced powerups almost every time I play another game. Everyone almost universally has a handful of workers off the start, collecting wood, ore, cake, upgrading hat machines, and building defenses. This preps your castle for the pending siege, and gets everyones abilities up to snuff for the bloody battle.
The graphic style reminds me of Castle Crashers immediately, although lacks Dan Paladin’s specific minimalistic style (which I personally love). The cel shading works very well in this case, as the action is bloody and violent, and the cel shading makes it a lot more comical.
Overall, the game is just plain fun to play. The multiplayer is where it shines, especially with friends, and even more so now that the match making has been patched (the first two weeks were HORRIBLE online). And finally, be sure to watch the credits.. you’ll be glad you did. The story mode is weak, but serves mostly as a tutorial for the game types, and learning the maps. I would have liked to see more control over the bots in single player, besides asking for up to 3 to “follow” you.. but so be it. One thing I would have held essential would have been splitscreen or some other kind of local multiplayer. This game is inherently social, and too many times I’ve had people over that wanted to play at the same time, and were forced to alternate rounds. Lame.
This game is yet another notch on the belt of “pro download only” games, and I couldn’t be more pleased with that. The $59.99 retail disc is a constraint of content size, that restricts games like Fat Princess, Portal, or Shadow Complex from fitting well in the gamer diet, and download seems to be the right solution. Fat Princess is a great value for the money, especially if you’re into heated deathmatch style games. Fat Princess borrows more from Team Fortress 2 or Battlefield than it does from Zelda, which wouldn’t be apparent from just seeing the screenshots. Fans of classic RTS games should also give it a spin, as it takes many of the mental ideas of task & resource management, and turns them on their heads as action game elements. Well done Titan.
One Liner: Warcraft 2 meets TeamFortress with Castle Crashers flair.
Final Grade:[B+]