Our favourite Fat Princess has waddled over and squeezed herself onto the PlayStation Portable. Coming from a successful run on the PlayStation Network, this fast paced action strategy game will keep your thumbs working for ages, unless there is cake nearby of course.

This PSP version of the game introduces a story of sorts, the basic premise remains, but here is the story anyway.

One day in the fantasy land of Titania (not sure how that is pronounced) two innocent Princesses from rival lands were strolling through the Black Forest. There, together, they encountered an unusual thing, a gigantic slice of cake – possibly Black Forest cake - they simply could not resist. Gorging themselves silly and then disappearing from the land only to reappear trapped in dungeons, horrendously obese and unable to move.




So it is down to the little people of Titania to rescue their rotund royal.

Literally, at the drop of a hat, our little fellas can pick up a new career. Grabbing a Worker hat immediately imbues our peon with the ability to upgrade and fix the hat dispensing machines, build siege weapons and eventually toss the odd bomb or two. In my opinion, the upgraded Worker is possibly the strongest character in the list.

The Warrior bludgeons foes and has extra health, the Mage can either spew fire or ice attacks, the Priest can support his brethren by healing, or turn nasty and drain health from the enemy and finally the Ranger lobs arrows or blunderbuss shots from a distance.

Before donning a hat, the default Villager can be useful in that he runs the fastest, and can slap an enemy causing them to drop a carried object. This can be important if that object is a Princess.

Game-play is a frenetic, tight balance of timing and class selection. At anytime a hat can be dropped, and a new one picked up to change class, perhaps from Warrior to healing Priest, tipping the balance at a crucial juncture.

Feeding cake to your Princess is a twist on the normal capture-the-flag mode, as it makes the weighty woman much harder to carry off. Even in single player, this rescue the princess mode can be a lengthy arm-wrestle as each sides AI try’s hard to best the other, as well as the scattered neutral denizens. Most of the time, these games will need to be won by you, using your soft mushy organic brain against the PSP’s pure electronic one.

The PSP version of the game features a fifteen chapter ‘story’ campaign (with voice over introductions), which is imperative to newbs who may jump straight into the frenetic game-play and be overwhelmed by the well balanced head-butting action.




The campaign will cover the usual princess rescuing modes as well as cover resource gathering and building along the way. It is a nice way to gently ease players into the comical medieval and fast moving world that awaits them.

If you can find some PSP owning mates, either head to head or over an internet connection, the multiplayer modes offer an amount of value here. Game modes include Grim Reaper, where a black helmet appears in the middle of the map, turning the first peon to grab it into a scythe wilding killing machine.

Demolition, and Dilapidation revolve around destroying and fixing machines on the map whilst Jailbreak will task you with gaining territory by owning outposts.

These modes join the original games Team Deathmatch, Invasion, Rescue the Princess and Snatch ‘n Grab adding six new multiplayer maps into the mix as well.

Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake is a value add transition from PSN to PSP, and while the accuracy of the controls can sometimes cause frustration as your warrior plummets to an untimely death, or struggles to land a hit (despite the lock-on), this a short-lived bedevilment as you will soon be back in the action.