‘Give me Cake’, the Princess cried, and as her loyal subjects and defenders of the realm this is oddly your task. Fat Princess is a team game where you must capture the enemies Princess while defending your own, by fighting off the other team and filling your princess so full of cake that she is quite the task to capture. Titan studios have created something a bit different from your average online arcade experience that requires cooperation and cunning to complete your goals, add in a sense of humour and you have a great addition to a growing PSN line-up.

You play either on or off line as one member in a team, starting as just a villager, from here you can pick a number of classes (hats) in order to support your other team mates. It’s a twist on the whole team capture the flag idea, from a top down view and the flag is royalty with morbid obesity. Classes range from ‘Warriors’ who are the tanks of the team, ‘Mages’ who can cast fireballs slowly chipping away at opponents health, ‘Priest’ who heal party members, ‘Rangers’ with the ability to fire from long range but have little defence and ‘Workers’ who collect resources for the war effort.

The tricky part is striking the right balance, the first concern is the worker type who needs to gather resources which in turn upgrade the other classes, and they can also build siege weapons and create bridges. Without this class you are doomed to failure, but of course without defence and a constant offence the workers would be cut down and the army would crumble. Games have been known to run until the timer limit due to the right amount of classes being present on teams, both unable to make any real progress. You also have to factor in the ultimate defence of finding cake to feed to the princess, the fatter she becomes the harder it is for the enemy to steal her!

In the single player you find yourself guided through a humorous story that explains the young ladies eating problems. A number of different objective games are presented within, but it essentially is the multiplayer with AI, it’s more of a tutorial experience for those who need to get to grips with the system before jumping online. That said, it is worth a play through if only to familiarize yourself with the maps.

Online is where the game starts as with all team based CTF (capture the fatty?) games, teaming up with 8 other players to conquer their castle with cooperation and luck! Once in a game the game is pretty much a smooth ride, players can interact with each other through a series of expressions mapped to the D-pad, but the only one you will probably use is ‘Help’ as you storm head first into a group of warriors.

Apart from the various CTF modes, there is also a team-death match and a game called ‘Invasion’. In Invasion each team has a set amount of lives at the top of the screen.  These generally number in the hundreds, and the only way to really dent this quickly are the checkpoints scattered evenly throughout the map.  Capturing more checkpoints than the opposing team slowly ticks down the counter (Much like Battlefield).  However, holding onto these points can be a mission in itself, with one being placed in enemy territory and another usually in the middle of the map.  It adds another dimension to the task at hand. The online mode is endlessly fun, and would be very difficult not to recommend.  However, there are a few niggles.

At the time of this writing, the game does have lag issues that plague a few players, but worse than that many players (Including myself) found it near impossible to get online, with error message after error message appearing across the screen. After this occurred for the 10th time, I decided to try the ‘Find a Game’ option, which in turn crashed my console. This said, Sony have admitted to the problem, and are working on the issue, claiming that the amount of users was unexpected and the servers are full!  While this is a problem now, the fact that so many people have bought the game guarantees the title will still be played for a considerable amount of time. A silver lining in a stunning screw up by Sony.

Fat Princess is a load of fun.  The music is charming, the graphics equally cutesy with a violent twist, and offline or with a good connection the game runs at a smooth 60 fps.  As a whole package, the game is presented very nicely. You’ll find yourself strangely addicted, as we here at Koku Gamer have been, within minutes of play. Your character can be customized with a variety of options, making yourself stand out just that little bit more from the crowd.

Fat Princess may be slightly pricier than a number of PSN games at $14.99, but once you have played it, you realize it was well worth the price.  Well, you would if you could stop concentrating on the screen.  As I said at the beginning, this is a great addition to the PS3 line-up for this summer, and leaves us with high hopes for the recently announced PSP version that is in development. Unfortunately, the game has to lose points for the online issues, as the main joy of the game is being denied to so many, but should these problems be sorted the score would certainly receive a boost.

P.S. Go to options and click on ‘Who’s Your Daddy’, and tell me you’re not laughing!

7 Ninja Heads out of 10

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