Me and My Katamari Review

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(More customer reviews)Once in a while a game comes along that you can't help but smile for, and this season's game is Me & My Katamari.

Me & My Katamari (I'll be referring to it through the review as MMK) is the little brother of Namco's PS2 Katamari series, beginning with the original Katamari Damacy. I've never seen nor played any of the PS2 versions, so all I had to go on was my own experience with the PSP version.

The King of All Cosmos, the Beautiful Queen of All Cosmos, and the Dashing Prince (collectively known as the Wonderful Royal Family) decide to head on to Earth for a tropical summer vacation. The King, however, gets a little carried away with swim practice, and it's up to the 5-centimeter tall Prince (and his unlockable assortment of cousins) to roll up stuff to make new islands for all the homeless animals.

I'm guessing there isn't much difference between Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari, and as I understand it both titles employ the PS2's twin analog sticks to control the ball (or, officially, your katamari) to roll through increasingly bigger stages as you roll over stuff to stick to the katamari.

That gameplay concept remains intact in MMK with one notable exception. Given the lack of a right analog stick on the PSP, Namco had employ the face buttons to fill in for the aforementioned missing stick. When you play the game for the first time you go through a mandatory tutorial mission where you learn the new control scheme. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do it feels natural. (Strangely enough it felt like I had to believe I was using analog sticks and I never had to look up the controls again.) You can still use the PSP's lone analog stick in place of the d-pad and still get good results.

The only boss you'll face is size, and your only enemy is time. You'll be required to get anywhere from a 15 cm katamari in 10 minutes to a 500 m one in 3 minutes, and along the way you'll roll over everything from thumb tacks to volcanic islands. (Stick it out until the endgame and you'll have the chance to roll over even more unbelievable objects.)

Aside from Prince Island, where you spend the bulk of your time between missions managing the game, there's the nearby Volcanic Island with additional objectives that expand the MMK challenge in amusing ways, and Beanstalk Island where you keep all the cousins you roll over and switch characters with. It really doesn't matter which character you use as they bring no special abilities to the gameplay, but the presents you unlock look different on each cousin.

There's a lot of music and images to enjoy in the game. Some reviews have made note of the fact that some tracks have been carried over from previous Katamari games, but to me that really doesn't matter because a) I've never played the older ones and b) they all work well within the game. Upon beating the game, you're granted the opportunity to take pictures wherever you like and store them in an in-game photo album (which is also viewable in the PSP's Photo function when you're not playing the game).

You'll come back to MMK for its Eternal Mode, achievable upon creating the last island. There is no time limit in this mode and you can spend all the time you want hunting down whichever items, presents or cousins you may have missed. Attaining a preset size limit takes you to a larger stage, and so on.

The only thing holding me back from a 5-star rating is the number of stages in the game. These are mostly retooled for different missions; for example, you roll through a town in summertime, then play another mission in the same town in a different season with a new assortment of objects. The whole game works this way, and while it really isn't bad I sometimes found myself wishing there was a larger assortment of places to roll through.

(Incidentally I read on another website that this is going to be the last Katamari game. That's a saddening thought after giving this game enough time, and I hope Namco takes a page out of the Wipeout Pure playbook and gives us downloadable content and new stages. Or even a follow-up Katamari game.)

Overall there's plenty of quirky, surreal, and enchanting charm and wit in Me & My Katamari to keep you interested for many satisfying hours. Go ahead and give it a roll.

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Product Description:
The King of All Cosmos takes a break from celestial construction and takes the royal family on vacation to a tropical island paradise. Here, they become tasked with the responsibility of creating new katamari islands for homeless animals. The King's pint-sized son, the Prince, is called upon for this epic task with the help of all his cousins. Assume the role of the pint-sized prince and grow your katamari by rolling it around cleverly designed locations to collect objects throughout the world.

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