The story begins with The King of the Cosmos on holiday with his family. Because the King of the Cosmos is both extremely powerful and extremely careless he manages to destroy the universe in a game of tennis. Game, set and match universe. So the King does what any all powerful universal collosus would do and gets his puny son to roll shit up into balls so he can hurl them into orbit and declare all extraterrestrial bodies replaced. You might think this sounds lazy of him but oh no, the King keeps hard at work harshly critiquing your efforts and punishing you when you fail to roll quick enough. But in all honesty the King of the Cosmos is a lovable character. Sure, he's out of touch, mentally inbalanced and destructively irresponsible. But you'll love him anyway.
Gameplay wise Beautiful Katamari is basically the same as any Katamari game. You roll shit into a ball. The ball gets bigger. Bigger balls roll bigger shit. The King belittles your efforts. Repeat. But this formula, although simple, manages to stay very refreshing and addictive with the use of clever level design and some interesting rules. There's one level where you have to quickly roll up a Katamari that is 10 000 degrees celcius by rolling hot things and avoiding cold things. Of course, Katamari logic dictates that hot and cold things are often abstract and confusing. For example a penguin counts as a cold thing and chili sauce counts as a hot thing. I'm pretty sure a penguine would burn better than a glass jar, but who am I to argue? Katamari logic can take a bit of getting used to, especially when you're trying to decide whether you are yet big enough to roll something up. There have been times where I was marching proudly along, rolling up all the puny objects in my way only to have some piddley little knick knack push me away like a repulsed blind date as you lean in for a goodnight kiss. Apparently size matters with katamari's too, but at least katamari's can grow without surgery.
Although the design sounds simple it always manages to stay fresh and fun. The mere act of rolling up something new is rewarding in itself, in a sort of Pokemon, gotta roll 'em all, kind of way. The game keeps track of your collection of crap, filing it away neatly and giving you an idea of how much of the world has been left unabused by your presence. The way a Katamari handles also feels right. You can start off a level speedily rolling up thumbtacks and gum saving up for being able to roll up that dogshit that's been giving you trouble and end up later on in the level slowly ploughing through cars, people and even buildings in the same slow, lumbering, unstoppable manner of Godzilla. People even panic and attempt to flee from your path. There's something very primally thrilling about seeing some jerk kicking and screaming as they are rolled around into other people. The levels are relatively short, usually clocking up about 6 mins. But you will find yourself replaying them over and over trying desperately to earn yourself a perfect score from the King. After doing so you unlock Eternal Mode for that level, allowing you to roll freely around it without a time limit. There's something extremely cathartic about toiling for hours for the perfect score and then going back to the level in Eternal Mode to reduce the level to an empty room or a flat area where a great city once stood.
The game still has it's flaws of course. Aside from the aforementioned Katamari logic to get your head around there's the camera. There are many occassions where I have done something I regretted because I couldn't actually see where I was going or even where my katamari was. Sometimes when your Katamari is big it obscures your vision and you find yourself crashing into unseen, mystery objects. As well as that I have found myself getting unfairly stuck because my katamari is just big enough to get wedged into some tight nook that is time consuming and damaging to get out of. Although these few flaws can be frustrating they certainly aren't dealbreakers. Katamari is as fun as it ever was.
I've heard some people complain that the Katamari games haven't changed at all. Whilst this is most certainly true I don't really care for a number of reasons. First of all, these games are so unique and fun that having more of them is definately good. Secondly, almost every katamari iteration appears on a different console, allowing more players to enjoy the game. Now that Katamari is on the Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP and iPhone I don't see any reason why you, the reader, can excuse yourself from trying a Katamari game out. It may not sound like much and may look outlandishly camp and Japanese but just trust me, it's fantastic. The only reason I'm not playing it right now instead of blabbing on and on about it is because my fucking poorly designed Xbox 360 Pro has fucked up and is yet to be replaced by a new Xbox 360 Slim. But I've already ranted about how the Xbox 360 is shit. I bet if you opened one up it's probably being run on one of those potato batteries kids make in school. Yeah, that's it. Microsoft enslaves children to build Xbox 360's out of vegetables and chicken wire. Sigh...I miss Katamari.
No comments:
Post a Comment