“Fat Princess” review
Playstation 3
rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Fat Princess” received an overwhelming amount of press coverage after last year’s E3. The game was well received for its innovative game play while some feminist gamers criticized the game as misogynistic.

Fortunately, “Fat Princess” lives up to the hype and is more of a parody of the “rescue the princess” motif in videogames instead of being misogynistic. The premise of the game is the players—cartoonish male and female soldiers—need to rescue their princess from the other kingdom in twist on the capture-the-flag style game play. However, the teams of up to 16 players can try to fatten the captive princess by feeding her cake, which makes her get fatter and more difficult to carry out of captivity.

The whole “male hero rescues the princess” theme in videogames is misogynistic, but at least “Fat Princess” attempts to make fun of the cliché premise in a way that’s more creative than simple “role reversal.” Though the feminist gamers bring up a valid point about the game’s portrayal of women and the overweight, the sheer absurdity of the game seems to be what the developers were going for. For example: the game has cell-shaded cartoon graphics and every time a soldier is killed, he or she leaves behind a particularly large pool of blood.

On the positive side, “Fat Princess” is aimed at the hardcore gamer, but is actually very easy to pick up and even an unskilled player will feel effective after a few hours of play. This isn’t like “Counter Strike” where players’ first 100 hours are more often spent as targets in a shooting range instead of functional members of the team.

However, the game still offers the hardcore gamer a lot of room to improve. Occasionally you will face another player that seems to dance around your every attack, but they will be quickly picked off if they run in to two more of your buddies.

“Fat Princess” is an example of how less is more. The game features eight well-designed maps and five mostly similar modes of play. The limited number of maps works for the best because it doesn’t overwhelm the player in scope, which all too often leads to the majority of matches taking place on the same two maps. Despite the limited number of maps and modes, the careful design choices make the game feel more like a full release game than a Playstation Network download.

On the other side, the game still has some connectivity issues even though they were supposed to be addressed in a patch. It’s a real downer when you’re trying to play a game you just paid for and it won’t connect to any games.

Though the game is marketed toward the hardcore gamer, there isn’t enough to the game to warrant taking it up as a second career. “Fat Princess” is more like a fun summer job than a long term desk job.

Also, the game has weak trophy support. Though the game has a lot of trophies, they are all bronze and most require a substantial amount of work. Compared to a game like “WipEout HD,” which has dozens of trophies that cover the bronze to platinum range, that costs five dollars more, the trophies in “Fat Princess” feel like a rip off.

Trophies aside, “Fat Princess” is $15 well spent.

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