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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