DARKMATTERS - The Mind of Matt

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Monday, August 03, 2009

Darkmatters - Matt falls for a Fat Princess



Fat Princess

PS3

Titan Studios

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

She's fat, she's round, she bounces on the ground…. But you’ve got to love the PS3’s new chubbilicious royalty because she’s redefining the online battling.
Step up if you’ve ever fancied being knight / wizard / priest or um, harvester… This is war, you’ll need to fight, you’ll need to use all your cunning and you’ll need cake, lots of cake!!
Out there is a beautiful maiden to be rescued (alright maybe ‘beautiful’ is a bit of a stretch) but she’s in need of delivering from an army of enemies…
So the feminist baiting, un politically correct Fat Princess has been let loose exclusively on the Playstation Network.

Fat Princess is like a 3rd person medieval Call of Duty, you have five classes of character to use – pick from sword and spear wielding warrior through the ranged archer / musket man or magically charged, fireball throwing mage. Shoot, chop, blast and slap your way through the enemy ranks, breach their castle and escape with the obese Princess. All you have to do to switch classes is pick up the right hat, this includes ‘borrowing’ the hats of your fallen foes. It works really well.

If like me, you’ve ever enjoyed battling online (I’m a vet of COD4, Killzone 2 and Warhawk) then the chances are that you’ll fall for this lardy lady, because whilst she might not have the looks, as Han Solo once said “she’s got it where it counts”. Titan Studios have created a wonderful game, chock full of great ideas, superb playability and serious replay-ability. Everything pulses with invention – you can tell that this is a game made by people who love playing games… From the cute menus ‘play with others’ or ‘play with yourself’ etc through to lovely little touches like the ability to turn enemies into chickens and slaughter them for fun – this is a perfect storm of genius design, mixed with quality programming.


"blood and cake..."

There is an element of resource management too – collecting slices of cake and bringing them back to the enemy princess in your dungeon makes her put on weight so that she’ll require more baddies to carry her off. There are also wood and metal resources which you can harvest, these allow you to upgrade your battle equipment, make new machines of war or build castle defences.

For those out there who normally suck at online battle games Fat Princess is refreshingly ‘pick up and play’ with controls that can be mastered in under 10 minutes. But it will take you much longer to master the subtle variations, upgrades and unique abilities of the various classes.

Online multiplayer sees up to 32 players battling it out in either Rescue the Princess (capture the flag), Team Deathmatch, and Conquest (capture and hold zones) styles. There is a nice selection of maps too from traditional castle based mayhem, through volcano levels or a pirate ship and my favourite – a giant football pitch where unlike the Premiership, violence is recommended!

Overall this a must buy for PS3 owners, Titan Studios deserve to wrack up some serious sales with this classy piece of software. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another date with that large girl online…


Darkmatters final rating of: ööööööööö(9 – let them eat cake!!)

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