Beautiful Katamari
Score: 90% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 (Co-op), 2 - 4 (Online) Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: Beautiful Katamari is the series' first venture into the next-gen world (in fact, this would also be the game's first stint on a non-Sony system). While the game doesn't change its look or feel much with the extra horsepower that comes from the Xbox 360, the scale of the game seems to have grown. The Katamari games have never been the most graphically intensive; in fact, I would say it is one of the biggest arguments on the side of Gameplay in the Graphics versus Gameplay argument. The series' visual style has been full of blocky, primitive shapes that wouldn't take a lot of rendering power even for a PSOne, and even though Beautiful Katamari now has a lot of graphical possibility, I'm happy to say that the developers didn't try to make the game ultra-realistic. The visuals are just like they have always been. Just like the game's graphics, Beautiful Katamari's music doesn't stray too far away from its predecessors. The light, airy tunes coming from your speakers are filled with soft dum's and da's as you take your Katamari all around the world. Much like the graphics, if this aspect of the game had changed, it would feel very different and I don't know if I would like it anywhere near as much.
Gameplay: People who follow the Katamari games and love the formula will know exactly what to expect with Beautiful Katamari. The goal for this game is just like it has been for all the others. Well, there are a few more special win-conditions in this version than past ones (like getting your Katamari to a certain temperature or collecting only wet objects), but it's all basically the same. It seems the King of All Cosmos has done it again. This time, he has created a black hole that has sucked up everything in the universe, except, thankfully, Earth. Now, it is once again up to The Prince of All Cosmos to take to his Katamari and roll things up so that the King can recreate the universe. Between missions, you will walk around your Princedom which lets you do everything from view the different items you've rolled up, examine the pictures you've taken and enter new levels. Each level starts off with the King explaining what heavenly body you will be replacing and what you need to collect in order to create it. The series seems to have gotten even further away from the original "Make a Katamari as big as possible" missions that were present in the first game, and now most missions are specialized. For instance, instead of just getting a Katamari to be a certain size for a satellite, The King of All Cosmos wants the ball to be made up mostly of playthings (because the satellite will be lonely all by itself and it will need toys to play with). Another example is recreating Mars - the King wants you to collect only hot things and your mission is only complete once you've gotten your Katamari to a certain temperature. I'm not saying this is bad, but I tend to find the missions where I don't really care what I'm rolling up to be much more enjoyable. With each release, not only are there more items to roll up and new visual effects when rolling them up, but there are also new cousins. Combining all of the cousins from the previous game with the new ones found in Beautiful Katamari will let you choose to play any of 50 characters. To say that nothing has changed between this game and the previous ones is wrong. While the core gameplay and graphics are the same, there are a few details that really make the game smoother and better. One very noticeable aspect is how cleanly your Katamari grows. In the past, there has been a bit of a noticeable jerk when your Katamari levels up. But now, even though you experience the same blurring and sound effects when your ball gets to a new level, the flow between the two forms is much better. The other noticeable benefit to being on a next-generation system is the size of the levels. In past games, the levels you rolled in felt big, but you could tell there was some magic asset/map swapping going on when you went from one scale to the next. Much like the smooth transitions between Katamari sizes, the blending between maps is a lot better and thus the size of each level just feels much bigger and more complex.
Difficulty: The Katamri games haven't always been the easiest games. There have always been some missions that had harder objectives than others, and there are always a few in each game that I can't do well enough to really please the King of All Cosmos, but it seems like Beautiful Katamari is even harder than normal. Even in the first few levels, I found myself having to repeat missions way more times than I ever really did in previous games. And, I'm sorry to admit it, but there were quite a few times when I just had to give up and put the game down for a while (something I found rarely or never happened with the previous games). So while many things have stayed the same in this game, it seems like the win-conditions might be just a tad too far on the hard side.
Game Mechanics: Beautiful Katamari's controls don't differ in the slightest from previous versions, so if you've been following the series, you can just pick this game up and play. On the other hand, this is the game's first run on something other than a PlayStation system, so those gamers out there who haven't been able to take part in the Katamari fun before might want to listen up. Controlling the Katamari isn't as simple as moving your Left Stick in a direction while controlling your camera with the other. The camera is locked in directly behind The Prince and you are always looking where he is. You have to manipulate both sticks in order to guide your ball-of-things in the direction you want it to go. For instance, if you want to go straight or back up, simply nudge both sticks forward or backwards, but if you want to turn left, the left stick needs to go back while the right one gets pushed forward (and vice versa for the other direction). Once you get the hang of these controls, you get a much finer degree of control, which is really good for navigating across bridges made of rulers or other narrow passageways. This direction-disconnected control scheme also makes co-op play possible since you and another player each control a side of the Katamari. Essentially, one player controls the Left Stick and the other one controls the Right Stick. As you would expect from a situation like this, communication is the key to getting your Katamari where you both want it to go. When it comes down to it, Beautiful Katamari isn't very different from its predecessors. There are new levels and a new story to explain why you need to roll everything up (but not all that different really), but ultimately Beautiful Katamari is more of the same. Personally, I like it. I am a fan of Katamari and even when I utterly beat a level so that I unlock infinite time, I can't stop playing it, so "more of the same" is exactly what I want. Now, I know there are other gamers out there who view this as bad, and if you are one of those, then you might want to avoid this latest version.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
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