Fat Princess Review

This review is coming fresh off half an hour of infuriating frustration of playing Fat Princess, and as I've really tried to think about writing something for the blog, I really had no motivation what so ever UNTIL about 40 minutes ago.

I am going to start off this review by saying that Fat Princess is not a bad game. It is, in fact, one of the most fun and enjoyful multiplayer experiences I've probably ever experienced on a console. Fat Princess is a downloadable capture the flag style game exclusive to the PSN, in which two infamous team colours battle it out to rescue their damsel in distress by carrying her from the opposing teams castle dungeon to their throne, but with an added twist that a team can feed their royal captive cake to fatten her up, and thus making her heavy and harder to shift. The game supports up to 32 player madness with a multitude of game modes and a single player "story" mode and around 5-6 maps.

The game is smeared with cutesy graphics, which is surprising when the menu's and trophy titles have a schoolboy sense of humour which I laughed at when I first launched the game. To select the single player game modes you have to pick the option of "Play with Yourself". Need I say more? The game adds more surprises when you discover that the cute graphics is just a ruse when you see cartooney dismembered body parts and blood splattering all over the place. Yes, behind the cute cartoon exterior is the cold heart of a killer game. The commentary is also hilarious with quotes like "They're in r base, killing r dewds" in a John Cleese-esque accent. This game is in a far away place from Animal Crossing, and thank fuck for that!

Each player starts off as a common villager which has the ability to slap people to stun them, but can become one of 5 distinct roles by picking up hats dispensed by medieval hat making machinery. Each role has their own merits and shortcomings but more importantly, roles that will suit a play style of most gamers. Each class can also be upgraded to gain new weaponry and abilities.

• The Warrior:- Melee class which has the most amount of health and attack power in the game. Upgraded warrior gets a Guan Yu style spear.
  
• The Priest: - Healer class which can heal and drain the life of others.
• The Worker: - Resource gatherer that can cut down trees and hack through rocks to help build upgrades for hat machines and the castle. Upgraded worker gets bombs.
  
• The Ranger: - Class that can use a bow to maim from long range. Gains a rifle once upgraded.
  
• The Mage: - Spell caster that can deal large amounts of fire damage, and once upgraded can freeze enemies.

Each class within the game is necessary enough to be included, the worker class being of the upmost importance at the start of a round. The classes are well rounded and each is individualised enough to make teamwork possible. Some classes can't work effectively without the support of the others which is a great gameplay mechanic, as it should encourage a mixing of classes so that a team of warriors aren't running around losing. Classes can also be changed on the fly by picking up a different hat so if players become bored of one playing style, they can switch to another at the touch of a button.

There are around 4 multiplayer modes. Capture the princess, snatch and grab, team deathmatch and a football blood bath. The single player mode is nothing more than a tutorial which helps the player discover what class suits them. It does have a story element presented in a fairy tale book about 2 princesses that can't stop eating magical cake. I'm sure that's every womans excuse. The story mode isn't really worth playing unless you're a trophy whore and want a single bronze trophy for beating it. The backbone of Fat Princess is in the multiplayer mode, which up until 2 weeks ago, wasn't even working properly. A patch however, has sorted connection issues out so Fat Princess is now playable online.

Despite the multiple gaming options, the real game play mode is capture the princess. A quest which involves capturing your princess from the opposing castle and placing her fat ass on your throne, and keeping her and the opposing teams princess locked in her cage long enough to win the round. Players can also aid by escorting you by pressing the O button. This increases the speed in which the carrier runs, and can determine victory or death. Before all of this happens, workers have to gather enough wood and gems to build upgrades such as castle doors, improvements to hat machines and a catapult to help throw you deep into the enemies castle. Teams can also choose to capture outposts scattered around the map which is vital, as outposts provide health to players by entering the fort door, and are often placed near vital resources such as trees and rocks, as workers can walk right into outposts to deliver resources to the teams stockpile.

Overall, the game experience is enjoyable and fun and is definately worth the £11.99 and hard drive space. So why the infurating frustration? There is only 2 elements of the game that make it so wardrobe punchingly death screamingly annoying. The players, and the AI. If you are at the unlucky end of the internet spectrum, you can get drawn into a team of complete retards who couldn't tell their arse from a Fat Princess. I have joined a game that was about to restart the round and lost the game within a minute. A single minute. 60 seconds. about 30 of those painful seconds was the countdown to us losing. Death scream I did. Another thing I've noticed is that the majority of players don't fatten up the princess. It's a major gameplay mechanic and it helps you win!! Use it!! Fatten that bitch up!! In all the online games I've played I seem to be the only player that feeds her cake and others ignore it. It makes no sense to me, unless I'm missing something.

And another thing. Why do you have to include AI in a multiplayer game? You know I told you not to play the single player story? It's because the AI are moronic. If Fat Princesses AI was embodied in a person, it would have down syndrome. They dont try and complete the goal of capturing the princess. Titan Studios developed an AI team of score whores who only care about killing other players and AI. This is not the objective of capture the princess. Even when you order the AI to follow you they will follow you until they spot an enemy, and then they will score whore it up. You can order them to help you jump in a catapult, but once you grab the princess, none of your assembled team will escort you back to the castle. It took me half an hour to complete the last story mission. I was not amused. Another tenure of gameplay saw me being the only one to capture the princess but by the time that happened the other team had their princess. The battle for the opposing teams princess lasted 20 minutes, and we we're almost the victors. Then my team went into score whore mode, abandoned the objective and we lost. I falcon punched my wardrobe.

You see, the success of multiplayer games of this nature are determined by the community who pick it up. I mean there are games, such as CounterStrike, where one good player can completely dismantle a team, but Fat Princess is not one of these games. Fat Princess requires intricate and decisive teamwork to complete the objective. If there is little to no teamwork within the group to which you are assigned, you're destined for constant failure and misery.

I know you will always get newbs in any form of multiplayer experience, but a whole team? A team of people who cannot work together? A team of people who don't know what they're doing? It's a gamers nightmare I'm certain. There is the option of swapping teams (aptly named "team sucks?") but thats a defeatest attitude. Sometimes all it takes is a couple of experienced players to join and the roles reverse but sometimes that just doesn't happen, and you're stuck with wheelchair players for another half an hour until the map changes. But this problem is inherant in all team based mutiplayer games. TF2 is another perfect example of how things can go badly when you get drawn onto "that" team. The team that doesn't know what they're doing. Because it doesn't matter how good you are. If you're on a bad team, you're going to look shit.

Despite this, the game is worth the money because of the satisfaction you get when you get drawn onto a team that does work together. When you're the one that sits on the top of the scoreboard because you have helped your team achieve the goal. That's gaming satisfaction at its finest.

Metal Gear Solid 4 Review

I've wanted to write a review for MGS4 for a while, as I've seen so many high scores around popular gaming journalism sites and, if I'm completely honest, I really didn't see what they did. Maybe it's because they'd played it whilst it was still in production. Who knows? Now before any readers who have just discovered this blog (and if you have, you have more time on your hands than I do) and decide to belittle me for what I'm about to write, I have played every single MGS title, 1 through 4, back to back. I've played through each title at least 3 times just to get to grips with the story arc and I have found 3 subliminal messages that Kojima has tried to push since the first installment of the franchise.

1. Nuclear weapons are bad.
2. Walking bipedal tanks created to launch nuclear weapons are also bad.
3. War... ugh.. good god y'all... what is it good for?

OK, maybe the last point is a little off, as if there were no war, Kojima wouldn't be sitting on the throne of AK's he's created through the means of his vast currency collection off the back of the franchise. And also I've deviated from my original point. MGS1 was a masterpiece and has shaped the way some modern games are being developed. 2 was a storyline shambles with more plot twists than the ending of a saw film. 3 was back on track with amazing boss fights and a camo system that worked. MGS4 was just.... meh. It's the only word I can use to describe the hype and 10/10's the game has cheekily managed to score.

Let me start off by saying that MGS4 is one of the primary reasons I decided to buy a PS3 instead of a 360 ( that and I'm a Sony fanboy) and on my first play through, none of the cut scenes were skipped. My wallet even went out of its way to shed out an extra £30 to buy the collectors edition, featuring a making of blu ray and a plastic old snake figurine. That's how awesome I thought this experience was going to be. And to my excitement and joy it was delivered to my door a day earlier than release. I was the first person I knew of that was going to play MGS4. Insert the disk into my PS3 drive and I'm greeted by an old man in a black PVC bondage suit smoking a cigarette, and I have to watch this for half an hour while 4 gig of game data is saved onto my PS3's hard drive, while all sorts of health warnings are thrown at me every 10 seconds.

Still not one to be disappointed, I waited for Old Snake to finish taking the last drags of his cig so I could finally get my hands on the game, and seeing as I was going to do this properly, it took me around another 15 minutes until I actually got to control wheelchair bound action hero snake, and in all fairness to him, he can still shoot and break peoples faces thanks to his muscle PVC getup. I moved snake a few meters when the screen fades to black and another 2 minute long cut scene cuts in. My excitement is beginning to drain a little now. Cut scene ends and I begin to move him a few meters again. Oh wait... another small cut scene! The infamous REX ripoffs jump into action, my excitement ramps up a little again. I get to handle snake again for another 2 minutes, moving in and out of ruined buildings to avoid the watchful CCTV camera of the Gekko units. I get spotted and run for a door way and another fucking 20 minute cutscene introducing snakes octocamo. The worst element of this is the fact that this could have easily been made into an interactive setpiece in which you try to escape from the clutches of a maurading Gekko trying to turn you into old exploding body parts.

I mean I can understand that MGS has always been a story driven game but this is only the prelude to the main game, and so far, out of 30 to 40 minutes I've been able to hold a controller, I've only been able to make use of it for 3 out of 30. However, things are about to get a lot worse. I am now introduced to the events prior to snakes mission, and the mission briefing, a recurring theme before each act in which the plot so far is conversed between snake and Otacon for around another half an hour. But at least you can use Mk II while they're talking to find extra batteries and other hidden extras right? For 10 minutes out of the full briefing maybe. Take your favourite MGS and then times the cut scenes and codec chatter by at least 2 and then you have the full scope of how little play time you will have, considering the game can be completed in 2 hours minus the story.

My main gripes with the game, however, is the use of the tagline "Tactical Espionage Action" when you will be doing almost no sneaking whatso ever. Unlike MGS1 where sneaking was almost paramount until you completed the game and got either the stealth camo or bandana, within around 20 minutes of playing MGS4 you are given a tranquilizer gun that practically has an infinate ammo scattered around each act so instead of shimmying around ledges and using the octocamo to great effect, you'll be sitting in an open spot picking off guards with a tranq gun dart to the face and running to the next cut scene point. The textures look good until you get first person mode and get a good close inspection to find really blotchy, almost bitmap like patterns, and this ugliness translates to the octocamo suit when taking on the properties of the texture.

The amount of playing time is extremely disproportionate to the rediculously long cut scenes. And my biggest gripe of them all, is the fact that the only good bits of MGS4 were already shown off at various conferences during its development, and none of these elements were changed. Anyone remember the epic Raiden vs Vamp stand off trailer shown at E3 a few years back? That was in MGS4 in its entirety and nothing about it was edited or changed, so it spoilt the whole battle. The boss battles are unimaginative, the team obviously trying to replicate the success of the Cobra unit, and failing dramatically. Who gives a shit if they're all based on real life models? They aren't epic boss fights, end of, although shooting a crazy bitch in the face isn't all that bad actually.

Oh, and my major gripe is the whole of act 3. In which you will spend half of your time following a resistance agent, clearing his path of PMC soldiers so he can lead you to the resistance HQ. As stupid as some game mechanics are, nothing beats shooting a PMC while the agent looks in his direction, and then looks puzzled when the soldier drops to the floor in a "What was that noise?" MGS1 style. The second half of the act is you on the back of a bike shooting unmanned flying units topped off by a wank boss battle.

Despite this, there are a few redeeming qualities about the game. This section contains a few spoilers so if you havn't had the privelage of playing and don't want to know some of the plot, do not look here!!!

During the cut scenes you are given prompts to press the R1 button when a character mensions something memorable. And if you dare press R1 you are treated to some flashback images reminiscent of the old MGS games to tie plot points together. The character models are incredibly life like, stylish and will be difficult to match (until uncharted 2 comes out anyway). So good infact that when watching a cut scene my mum burst into the room and asked what I was watching, presuming it was a TV show. When graphics can fool your mum, you know they're good! The shooting element works well. Infact if anything it works a little too well as it completely cancels out the need to use stealthy tactics.

The only thing that redeems MGS4 in my eyes is the whole of act 4 in which you return to Shadow Moses all over again. With 1 being my favourite of all MGS games, I almost exploded in my pants when entering a full HD shadow moses complex. My pants explosion complete, however, when I discover that I can pilot metal gear REX, forcefeeding suicide Gekko units bullets and rockets whilst running through a crumbling tunnel of death, and to top this amazing act off, i get to kick the face off of liquid ocelot's metal gear RAY Bruce Lee style AND you get to watch Grey Fox impersonator #2 Raiden almost get crushed to death. Amazing. And the final battle between ocelot and snake is also actually awe inspiring. Almost a perfect good vs evil final fight. And I was also genuinely shocked at the return of Big Boss at the end, and him personally terminating Zero's life.

Overall, the game is slow until act 4 and then it suddenly hits the form that MGS is known for. As much as I hate the lengthy cut scenes, the lack of stealth mechanics, act 3 and all my other nitpicks, Acts 4 and 5 and the ending pretty much make MGS4 a worthwhile experience and as much as I rant about the cut scenes, they're actually executed quite well and it does give you an insight into the thoughts and emotions of the characters, and it is an emotionally exhausting ride from start to finish. Worth it if you're a true Metal Gear Solid fan. If you aren't there isn't much point in looking at the back of the box.

First Post Up!

As the first blog entry into this series of nonsensical rants, raves, and occasional views and reviews, I may as well explain who I am and what this lark is all about. This rather pitiful blog attempt is by a person who likes to be known as S2H (my mother doesn't call me that though), from a rainy little town in Devon, UK, who spends most of his evenings either on the internet or sat infront of his TV with a gamepad nestled in his greasy little hand.

This blog will share my passion (and anger) for the industry that I hold close to my chest, and the industry that holds me close to its arse as it seems to frequently shit all over me. Overall I will be posting my thoughts and feelings over new announcements, revelations and no doubt some leaks over games, hardware and anything else the industry decides to spit out. I will also share my opinions on some hot topics, such as the ever popular console flame war, the motion control fiasco and occasional reviews on some of my favourite titles from recent history.

May this blog be read by few, and payed attention to by even less.