By BlueZero
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A game all about cake is a sure recipe for yummy fun. Take games like Portal, which never lied about the cake waiting for you at the end. That’s why it was such a good game, it wasn’t the portals, it was the allure of cake. For Fat Princess, you are tasked with retrieving your princess from the enemy. I got to play the beta at a friend’s house a while ago and this newest trailer sparked further interest to write about the game.
I’m assuming that Fat Princess has developed further than when I played the beta probably a month ago. I didn’t see the princess being locked in the floor jail in the beta. Also, when players are turned into chickens, I don’t remember having the ability to peck as an attack. I just remember that I found an abuse for the chicken potion. I choose the bomb class and pick up the chicken potion. I then throw it at my character’s feet and turn into a chicken. Then you get on your team’s catapult and launch toward the enemy castle. Since you are lighter as a chicken, you can get on top of the enemy’s castle room basically in an area where you shouldn’t be. You can then drop bombs down on the helpless people and it is really difficult for people to kill you. At the same time, it is really hard to kill the other players since the bombs are weak.
By far the most “broken” class is the warrior since two hits from the blade is basically death. Then you respawn and have to select a class by going to the appropriate “factory” and putting on the hat. I like that you can pickup a new hat and change classes instantly, but having to pick up your first hat to even have any class is poor design. It takes too long for me to select the warrior or mage guy hat and put it on. The designers didn’t realize that they should just spawn people with hats; even random hat assignment would be fine.
The builder class is pretty boring. You can cut trees and put the lumber into buildings to construct. You can build buildings. Both give points, but this support role is without any action. Whoo hoo, I just upgraded a class building so we can have mages, great, my team doesn’t play the mage class. The main perk anyway is the chicken potion which you want to throw at enemy players to severely weaken their health. There are potentially powerful buildings which could be built like the catapult and ladders into the enemy castle. The resource management could be fun, but this class won’t be seeing much direct combat when out getting resources. Cake was my primary resource to feed our captured princess.
Another really cheap class, at least in the beta was the mage. I don’t understand why people don’t use it more often. Yes, the “white” mage has a freeze attack which slows the people down in an area effect. The true power comes from freezing, and then following up by changing to the “dark” form which lets you leech life and do damage. This attack seems to be particularly powerful although I did notice that after a while, the enemy wasn’t taking further damage if he weren’t already dead.
The archer was decent for ranged combat but not with the rifle. The arrows were the more effective of the two attacks. The rifle fire wasn’t very powerful and took far too long to fire. Archers would get destroyed by the might of warriors one-on-one.
The princess dynamic is the best part of the game. She starts off skinny in her prison. Then you find random cake in the world and take it back to the princess to feed her. She plumps up nice and good. Repeat till she maxes out her waistline so she is harder to carry back to the other castle. The problem here is that the princess should have a logarithmic scale for fatness. She plumps up fast and then tapers off, but can still gain more weight. I don’t like the artificial limit on fatness; it’s just not natural in a game or otherwise. Gluttony is a sin for a reason because we as humans can eat to epic proportions 400lbs+. How can the princess be a glutton if she maxes out I estimate around 200lb. That’s not fat by any modern American standards.
Another part of Fat Princess is the graphical style. As you can see in the trailer, there is a lot of blood for what appears to be a cute game. The graphics are pretty sharp in the trailer. I believe the game runs at 720p, but when I was playing the game, I was playing it on a ~42’ LCD 1080p TV. On this higher graphical level, the game didn’t look as crisp as the trailer (naturally) so when I saw the recent trailer, it made me think that the graphics were further polished. This could be true, but I don’t think the graphics have changed a lot.
The sound in the game is really good. The narrator in the trailer reminds me of the narrator from the Majesty series. Some of the phrases from the trailer come directly from the game like “Your princess has been captured.” Not much really to say beyond that the chicken sound effect is really good.
I am very tempted to buy this game from the PSN. I enjoy the strategic elements of the game like my creative use of the catapult. I am also attracted to medieval setting, the comical storytelling from the trailer, and carrying fat princesses. Plus there is a throwback to Resident Evil 4 with a Merchant style “Welcome Stranger, I got a lot of good things…” I wasn’t expecting that on a loading/menu screen.
If Fat Princess is 10 dollars, I will instantly buy it. $15 and I will have to think a little harder. $20 and I won’t buy it. The promise of cake and princesses is only so alluring. CAKE FOR EVERYONE!
* Images from PlayStation Blog Flicker and Playstation.com Fat Princess Webpage. You can always right click and view image for a large full-screen view.
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Both Fat Princess and Castle Crashers seem like casual pick-up and play games for hardcore gamers. I realize Fat Princess's class structure has more influence over gameplay and strategy than Castle Crashers (whose host of different characters do little to really mix up gameplay), but the humorous tone, simple graphics and (apparently?) arcadey gameplay make it seem like it was designed with the same audience in mind.
The capture the princess premise sounds like a lot of fun; I think the reason she has a fat-limit is probably to prevent the game from becoming an endless stalemate. If both sides could keep feeding her, there would never be any risk of capture. What would be really interesting is if there was a penalty for over-feeding her, so you'd have to balance her lard level.
The prospect of 32 player multiplayer sounds like a lot of fun as long as the developers address the class balance issues. Shame to hear the ranger is screwed up. I think the Builder class could be appealing if they can construct some kind of perimeter defense weapon, a la TF2's Engineer's sentry gun (though less overpowered), in addition to upgrading structures. If they plan on adding other classes later, like a Defender (more health and less damage than warriors, but capable of knock-back/stunning) or a rogue (fast and sneaky), I would probably buy it even at $15. Unfortunately, I don't have a PS3.
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