Beautiful Katamari

Beautiful Katamari

Most videogames, being based on real life pursuits, are familiar enough in theme that a reviewer can skip a basic description of what goes on and launch straight into a critique. Do you really need a thorough explanation of what skateboarding is before we tell you about the latest Tony Hawk? Or must you know how to drive or how an engine works to understand if Forza and Gran Turismo are any good?

However, Beautiful Katamari is a different kettle of bananas. After all, who among you is the five inch high, green alien son of the King of All Cosmos? And which of you fills their day with pushing a sticky rubber ball (that’s the Katamari) around other people’s houses, rolling up anything not nailed down and an effort to build a ball large enough to be fired into space to serve as a new planet? Right, thought not.

Beautiful Katamari is the latest in a short line of Japanese games from Namco. The series has a large underground following because rolling stuff up like some demented dung beetle is actually really, really good fun. In Beautiful Katamari the aim of the game is same as it ever was: you progress through thirteen different levels, trying to make your Katamari as big as your father requests (measured in cm, m or km) within the time limit.

Every level the size requirement grows. To begin with you’ll be rolling up drawing pins, boiled sweets, pencils and sushi. By the end you’re rolling up cities, nations, and stars. Along the way you’ll also need to search for your cousins - creatures who look a bit like you and who hide in the rooms, towns and seas you roll over - as well as presents, which equip your character with new clothes, disguises and general items of silliness.

The principle innovation this game brings to the series is that you’re required to collect certain items above others. Sometimes this means collecting mainly ‘Japanese’ things or mainly ‘powerful’ things but at other times you’ll have to stick to more abstract items such as things that are hot. It’s a neat idea that works fairly well, although, to be honest the joy of Katamari is being able to indiscriminately pick up everything you can lay your ball onto.

Veterans of the series will be disappointed by this game’s short length, its basic visuals and the occasionally debilitating slowdown. It feels a little as though the game has been rushed and, because it’s a full-price release, it does feel like a slight package. Nevertheless, with online battle modes and a ton of items to collect, the engaging gameplay is still as bewitching as it’s ever been. If you’ve never played a Katamari game before you have to play this: it’s quite unlike anything you will have ever experienced.

4 out of 5