We Love Katamari Review

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(More customer reviews)With "We Love Katamari," the good and crazy folks at Namco managed to produce a game that keeps almost everything from the original, alters things just a trifle, and yet created a sequel that feels a whole lot richer than the original.

For those who don't know, in Katamari games you control a super-sticky orb (a katamari) that rolls throughout a world packed with stuff. Roll up enough caramels and you'll be big enough to roll up a mouse. Roll up enough mice and you can roll up cats. And so on, until you're rolling up clouds, islands and thunder gods. All this is built up over the course of a few levels, but it can be disorienting to roll up cookies under a car at the beginning of a level and roll up the car itself in the end.

With each level a new star is added to the sky (replacing the ones your monolithic and rather drunken father, the King of All Cosmos, accidentally destroyed).

The original is still one of my favourite titles, but as innovative as it was, it was a bit on the short side and there were really only four kinds of levels:

1. Build to a certain size, and then as big as you can get.
2. Build to as close to a certain size as possible.
3. Gather as many of a particular thing as you can.
4. Gather the largest of a class of thing as you can.

Not so with the new one. In some levels, you have to build yourself as large as possible with a limited number of objects, in others you're self-propelled and have to control the katamari to maximize what you get, in others you have to move quickly or snow gums up your katamari, making it difficult to move - the variations are all of a similar kind to the types listed above, but different enough that each level plays differently.

Getting the levels is different as well, with as many as half a new dozen levels available at a time. The final level is actually accessible early on, but you don't have a hope of winning it for a very, very long time. The King of All Cosmos is back, and with all the popularity of a rock star, people clamour him with requests to have particular stars created. And, of course, it falls to you to do his work for him.

Gameplay and controls are identical to the original, and fans of that one will love the added complexity to the levels while newcomers will have no trouble picking up on the way things work. Recommended for all ages and levels of play, at least by me.

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Product Description:
We Love Katamari brings back the award-winnig gameplay of Katamari Damacy! The quirky gameplay that captivated the gaming world returns as you contine to roll up anything and everything that gets in your way! The King of All Cosmos grew to stardom after taking all of the Prince's Katamaris and replacing the stars. His fans knew no bounds and wished to see more Katamaris fill the sky. The king of all Cosmos desired to appease all of their requests and recruited the Prince and his cousins to help. Now they are tasked with rolling up even more clumps, each larger and more different than the one before.

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Katamari Damacy Review

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(More customer reviews)One thing can be said for certain: you haven't played a game like this before. Everything about this game is off-the-wall, but it works.When you load the game for the first time, you will be greeted with giraffes, rainbows, bicycles, and a plethora of other things- all performing some contorted dance- just for you.Welcome to the world of Katamari Damacy, where the gameplay is original and surprisingly addictive.Your goal?- roll your sticky ball around to collect the "objects from earth".As your ball gets bigger, you can pick up bigger things.So you go on a hunt to keep growing your ball.The levels you play in are simply huge- I never felt like I had seen everything in a level- so replay level is quite high.Meanwhile, the background music is a lot of fun, good enough to put you in a good mood if the rest of the game doesn't.And the story- without ruining anything- has to be the product of mixing drugs and alcohol.The controls are quite simple, employing only the analog sticks and a couple shoulder buttons (although I never found much use for the shoulder buttons).When I heard about and found the game, I worried that it would be too simplistic to entertain me- it seems my worries were unfounded; Katamari Damacy is a great game for everyone....and cheap, too!

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Product Description:
Katamari Damacy is a silly, colorful and occasionally hysterical game that's become a hit in Japan. Now it's arrived here and it's unusual gameplay and one-of-a-kind design will makegamers laugh and play for hours! When the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys the stars in the sky, he orders his pint-sized princely son, to put the twinkle back in the heavens. He decides to do this by rolling everything and anything on earth into clumps, so he can replace what's missing in space.

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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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Katamari Forever Review

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(More customer reviews)I was lucky enough to get the first Katamari game for the ps2 when it first came out, and experience it before seemingly everyone got Katamari fever. The game was completely original, fun, had an excellent soundtrack, and I place it in my top 10 ps2 games. It got a sequel fairly quickly, and then another one on the PSP a few years later. I enjoyed the PSP game a bit, though was a bit curious as to why so many levels from the first game (and apparently the second, though I never got to play it all the way through) were in there. Now with Katamari Forever, I can see that the developers don't know what to do with this franchise, and it's easy to see why the creator has moved on to other things- this is more of the same.

If you haven't played a Katamari game before, then you'll probably really enjoy this game, and can add another star to the rating. You play as the Prince, a little green guy who rolls around a Bumble Ball-looking object called a Katamari. You roll it around rooms, streets, towns, and over the entire world eventually, collecting everything in your path. Your Katamari will start out small, but can grow to be thousands of kilometers in size! An example being that you start out in someone's messy bedroom, but after you collect enough, you'll be big enough to pick up cars and people outside, and after that, you'll be picking up islands, boats and entire countries. When done in a level, your Katamari is used to create an object in space like a star, satellite or planet. It's totally fun, and somehow relaxing, though there are a few problems I'll get into in a bit. You control the Prince/Katamari with both analog sticks- if you want to move forward, you tilt both up, etc. You're collecting objects this time because your dad, the King of all Cosmos has lost his memory, and to have someone in his place temporarily, the Prince and his cousins made a robot king, but he's going a bit crazy. You'll be rolling up in levels for both the King and the RoboKing.

And here's where my problems kick in- the King's levels start out in black and white, which is cool because as you pick up more, the world comes into color, showing that he's regaining his memory. But from what I could tell, all of these levels are from the previous games. While that makes some sense because they're things that happened in the past, I see it as the developers just being cheap and not wanting to put time into creating original levels. There were many times when I thought to myself "hey, I played this in 2005". Again, if you haven't played the games before, it'll be no big deal, but for myself- some of these levels are making their appearance for the 5th time now (twice on the ps2, once on the PSP and maybe once on the Xbox360's game). Next, the camera is still just as bad as it was in the old games. Sometimes you'll get in front of a wall and the camera won't zoom in more, or do the nice x-ray thing it does every now and then, and you'll be trying to get your way around whatever it is you may be stuck on. There's also a lot of slowdown in some levels, which stuck me as odd considering how powerful the ps3 is, and how light this game is in the graphics department. If games like SoulCalibur 4 and Dead Space can play smoothly, why is Katamari Forever getting such bad slowdown here and there? Finally, get this- remember all the great songs from the first game? The same songs that got remixed and put in all the sequels? They've been remixed again and make up most of the soundtrack! Granted, 2 or 3 of the remixes are good, but once more, can we get something new PLEASE??

There are a few new things thrown in, but nothing too big. The Prince can now jump(!) with the Katamari if you press R2 or shake the controller. You're better off with R2 because everyone I know can never pull it off by shaking, and it's not the controller's fault either. This jump is useful but still has some control issues. There's also a multiplayer option- you can battle another player on the same console and try to roll up more objects than them or get a certain item before they do and hold it until time's up. Or you can play cooperatively and complete a level together...using the same Katamari. This is pretty clever but requires a lot of communication since one person controls the left side and the other controls the right. There are also a lot of Trophies you can get here to keep you busy, though a few require more patience than skill. And finally, I have to give them some credit for having a level where you roll around a sumo instead of a Katamari, and collect food to make him bigger in order to challenge another sumo. I can play that level at any time and still smile seeing this giant sumo rolling around with dogs and bikes stuck to it.

Don't get me wrong- I enjoyed playing this game, and I can't stress it enough when I say that if you've never played a game in the series before, the score gets an extra star. But after 5+ years, the series should be making progress- not be stuck with the same levels with a story of amnesia to be used as a cheap excuse for it. And at that price? Ouch. Either until it drops, or borrow it and then see how you like it. You'd think that with it being so close to the previous games, it could've stayed at their price points when they first came out too.

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Product Description:
When the King of All Cosmos bumps his head and loses his memory, thePrince and his cousins design a RoboKing to replace him. But thesituation goes terribly awry when the RoboKing goes out of control anddestroys all the stars. With the fate of the Cosmos hanging in thebalance, the Prince and his cousins must roll their Catamarans to fixthe RoboKing's destruction, restore the King's memory and bring colorback to the world.


New Visual Effects
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Suck in Nearby Objects
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Use your Katamari Ball
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Synopsis
Prepare to roll your Katamari again in Katamari Forever. Thisexciting new installment in the series comes packed with new visualeffects, a new gameplay system, exclusive features for PlayStation 3and more. Select wood, comic, classic or new default graphic filters,and use your SIXAXIS controller to jump your Katamari with the newPrince Hop action. Choose any of more than 50 playable cousins you canequip with an array of accessories. Experience the excitement of a newsystem in which the Katamari will suck in nearby objects under certainconditions, and even snap photos in the game to save them to yourPlayStation 3 hard drive.


Key Game Features:

Help the Prince and his cousins restore the Cosmos to rights after the disastrous creation of the RoboKing
Use the new Prince Hop action to jump your Katamari with the SIXAXIS controller (not included)
See the Katamari world come to life in a new way with visual effects,including wood, comic, classic and new default graphic filters
Select any of more than 50 cousins you can equip with a variety of accessories
Take advantage of a new gameplay system in which the Katamari will suck in nearby objects under certain conditions
Save photos taken in the game to your PlayStation 3 hard drive
Consult network rankings, and see the game come to life in crisp clarity with full 1080p support and HD resolution
View 16 in-game movies for additional excitement

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