MAIN -- SONY -- MICROSOFT -- NINTENDO -- PC -- E3 BUZZ
Boardgames and Balls
Product: Beautiful Katamari, Culdcept Saga
Company: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc.
Date: 07/13/2007
Avaliable On:

Two of Namco/Bandai's 360 titles were continuations of strong lines that make their first appearance on this system.

Beautiful Katamari takes the "standard" gameplay of the Katamari system and brings it to the next level. This third console-based Katamari game has the King of All Cosmos taking out the entire Universe in a crazy tennis stunt, and now it is up to the Prince and his 50+ cousins to roll everything up and remake the Universe. This game features a 2-4 player Versus mode that will be over Live or local to one XBox as well as the Co-op mode and Story mode similar to the previous games.

As usual, levels are going to be more than your standard "just roll up as much as possible" setup. The level I tried out at E3 involved only rolling up hot items in order to get my Katamari up to a certain temperature... lots of fun!

Culdcept Saga is the other title that is making its way to the 360 for the first time. In Saga, you take your characters across tons of gameboards with over 400 cards and 50 decks. Here you will need to use your strategic placement of monsters and land to gather as much magic as possible in order to win the game.

Culdcept is scheduled for release in 2008, while Beautiful Katamari comes out this Fall.

J.R. Nip aka Chris Meyer

GameVortex PSIllustrated