CES 2009: Fat Princess impressions

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Remember Fat Princess, the cooperative strategy/action game coming to PSN that garnered a little bit of controversy from feminist groups for its namesake portly royalty? Sony had an early build at their CES booth that they were giving demonstrations of. Seeing as I quite like a little junk in the trunk, I could not wait to see more of this game, and a kindly Sony rep was more than happy to show it off.

In Fat Princess, your objective is to work together with other players (or the AI) to rescue your team’s princess from your opponents, while preventing them from carrying their own away from your dungeon. There are several means of making it more difficult for enemies to breach your castle walls and spring the damsel from your prison, such as combat with the interlopers, building doors or just fattening her up with cake to make it difficult to carry her off.

I wish we’d had an opportunity to truly see all of the five character classes in action, but were only granted a glimpse of the worker (who acquires raw materials and builds objects), warrior and archer. While some of the other classes were certainly doing their thing under the control of the CPU during our session, the AI still needs a bit of work, as those characters often wandered off or became stuck. 

What I like about this concept is the emphasis on teamwork. As evidenced by a moment where the Sony rep charged into the enemy fortress only to be slaughtered almost instantly, it’s obvious that cooperation between players is by far the most important aspect to playing Fat Princess well. I will be keeping a close eye on future news about it, as this appears to be shaping up to be a really fun, quirky game.

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Conrad Zimmerman
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