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I'm a fan of the Fat Princess franchise. Running around brightly colored, cartoon maps and hacking other players to death with an axe is a blast, and it's rewarding to stuff a woman's face with cake so that she gets so heavy her rescuers can barely carry her hefty heine to safety. But something weird happened while I was playing Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake.
I realized I didn't want to play anymore.
Granted, that realization came while I was playing the single-player "Legend of the Fat Princess" portion of the title, but it's a feeling that permeates the game at times. The problem with Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake is it doesn't play to the PSP's strengths.
I realized I didn't want to play anymore.
Granted, that realization came while I was playing the single-player "Legend of the Fat Princess" portion of the title, but it's a feeling that permeates the game at times. The problem with Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake is it doesn't play to the PSP's strengths.
If you're just joining us, Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake is a game that pits two teams -- one red, one blue -- against one another in one of several game types. There's stuff like team deathmatch, but the game's calling card is Rescue the Princess. Here, the red team starts with the blue team's princess locked in its dungeon and vice versa. The first team to rescue their princess, get her back on the throne, and keep the prisoner secured wins the match.
Saving and securing comes down to you and your teammates. When you start, you're just plain ol' men, but littered around your castle are hat machines that spit out class caps. Pick one up, and you instantly turn into a warrior, ranger, priest, mage, or worker. Each class comes with its own unique abilities and attacks -- the warrior can use a shield and the ranger can fire arrows -- and you can change classes at anytime by picking up a different hat. Workers are running around gathering lumber and stone to upgrade the hat machines so that the players using said hats become more powerful.
This setup is a blast. There's no denying that I love running around, stabbing enemies, and watching blood spurt onto the ground. There are strategies to master (have a warrior out attacking with a priest behind him to heal the muscle, a team of workers fixing doors and making catapults, and so on), shortcuts on the game's 17 maps to find, and a whole bunch of skin colors and hairstyles to unlock for your character.
But then we run into the PSP version's shortcomings. Fat Princess is a multiplayer game where up to 16 cutesy characters run around the screen, but the PSP can only handle four real players in those 16-player infrastructure matches; the rest are bots, but you can host eight-on-eight ad-hoc matches. Success in Fat Princess comes down to communication and working as a team to manage resources and cross the map, but Fistful of Cake doesn't support voicechat like other PSP games. When you do play a single-player match, sometimes there are specific win conditions that the bots you're working with will blatantly ignore. The PSP isn't 3G, so you can't just jump into an online game whenever you want. Although other games have added clans and such, Fistful of Cake provides you no way to invite friends to games online. Fat Princess can be fun, but it's got so many hang-ups, it's not crazy freakin' fun.
This setup is a blast. There's no denying that I love running around, stabbing enemies, and watching blood spurt onto the ground. There are strategies to master (have a warrior out attacking with a priest behind him to heal the muscle, a team of workers fixing doors and making catapults, and so on), shortcuts on the game's 17 maps to find, and a whole bunch of skin colors and hairstyles to unlock for your character.
But then we run into the PSP version's shortcomings. Fat Princess is a multiplayer game where up to 16 cutesy characters run around the screen, but the PSP can only handle four real players in those 16-player infrastructure matches; the rest are bots, but you can host eight-on-eight ad-hoc matches. Success in Fat Princess comes down to communication and working as a team to manage resources and cross the map, but Fistful of Cake doesn't support voicechat like other PSP games. When you do play a single-player match, sometimes there are specific win conditions that the bots you're working with will blatantly ignore. The PSP isn't 3G, so you can't just jump into an online game whenever you want. Although other games have added clans and such, Fistful of Cake provides you no way to invite friends to games online. Fat Princess can be fun, but it's got so many hang-ups, it's not crazy freakin' fun.
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