Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake

Review from Anna - Wednesday, 16 June 2010 @ 8:32am

Fat Princess was on my radar for a long time - they had their marketing push just right when it came to launch on the PlayStation Network. What I found brilliant was marred by the minimal single player campaign. Really, it was a tutorial more than anything to get you ready to join in on multi player sessions. I am not much of a fan of multi player unless it involves split screen. Playing by myself in a multi player game against people I don't know who on occasion tend to forget the finer points of polite social interaction isn't something I enjoy. In fact, I loathe playing like that and constantly bemoan the fact that fewer games are providing split screen multi player.

I found Fat Princess to be exactly what I expected, and yes, found it brilliant but found I was limited by my disgust of the online multi player aspects. I filed it away as just another disappointment I come to expect as an enthusiastic gamer - it was on PSN, and I hated the key benefit that PSN offers. But lo! They made a variant of Fat Princess, a mutant breaking out of its shell to emphasise its strengths and minimise its weaknesses, and provided it on PSP. This I have and this is what I consider to be the current pinnacle of Fat Princess. It has everything I loved, builds upon it like an over enthusiastic kid stealing blocks to make the most awesome tower of blocks ever, and somehow, while it still wobbles, it remains standing - tall, proud and of many colours.

For those who don't know of Fat Princess, have not played Fat Princess - it's a rather straight forward capture the flag variation yet it gives it a special twist that makes standard capture the flag rather boring. They took a cut and dried gaming premise, injected some humour and now, despite doing essentially the same task over and over and over again, the game has you wishing for more levels. It also crosses over into other territory, borrowing elements from both RPG and Strategy genres to keep you on your toes.

If your princess is in another castle push her back

Instead of a flag, each team (red and blue of course) has a princess. You can feed your princess cake so that she grows larger and thus more heavier (hence the game's title). This prevents the other team from being able to come into your castle and whisk her away - she's heavy therefore it takes more time to move her fat arse and gives you more chances of taking her back before she's even outside the castle walls. In your own campaign against the other team, you have the choice of five classes to assist your cause. These roles can be assumed by picking up a hat at the corresponding hat factories which not only allows you to chop and change throughout the game, it also helps identify who's doing what on the map when you're trying to figure out which class you need more of. You have a choice of Warrior, Mage, Priest, Marksman or Worker which each have special attributes that assist your team. Personally, I like to start off as a Worker so the AI teammates can worry about other things while I quickly upgrade the home base. Then, I move into Warrior-mode and help my team slowly dominate the map.

What about the cake?

I found the single player as enjoyable as the PSN version, but was glad they extended the plot further, playing around with different gameplay concepts - instead of being simply a tutorial, they played around with what they already had and extended upon the designs and concepts. The story gets extended from simply being two teams trying to get each other's princess to introducing a third player on the film. They rework familiar level designs and turn them into something more challenging, befitting an actual single player campaign. I was expecting a simple port but a tipple this is not. This game is infused with all sorts of surprises - so many that I found myself actually playing consistently with my PSP again. Sometimes for more than ten minutes at a time and more than once a day! It was getting ridiculous. It got me thinking about games on the PSP and when there would be another decent game released for the platform. By its history, it'd be lucky to have another this year.

When I first heard of Fat Princess, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Then I played Fat Princess and it was a brilliantly executed game. I thought it was hilarious, well though out and while it had its faults, the game's charm overrode them. I picked up the PSN version of this game when it came out but was sorely disappointed to find that, not unlike many other PSN games available, the main focus was on playing with others online. With Fistful of Cake, Fat Princess extends the single player campaign without sacrificing the multiplayer component.

Pros

Extended single player, not just a port, great visuals, colourful, genuinely funny - great narrator.

Cons

Frustating AI during single player, some levels seem a little impossible.