Beautiful Katamari Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 29th February 2008

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Erm.... it's wierd it's Beautiful Katamari.

Beautiful Katamari Details:

	Adventure
	Xbox 360
	Namco Bandai
	Atari

Out Now

N/A

Beautiful Katamari isn’t the type of game that would appeal to me if I was just your average gamer, but that’s the curse of being a games reviewer you have to play all types, no matter how bad they are! So after not expecting much from this Namco-Bandai offering I was pleasantly surprised, and a little disturbed.

Trying to describe the story of Beautiful Katamari is a little difficult not because it’s complex, but while watching the opening sequence for the game you can do nothing other then sit back and think “what the???????” But the general gist of it is the King of all the cosmos has returned, and while on holiday on one of his favourite planets he has a game of tennis with the queen. Whilst showing off his skills and his extremely strong swing, he manages to rip through space creating a black hole that starts to suck up everything in the cosmos. The king manages to block up the black hole, but not before it’s swallowed up all the planets and stars except earth. This is where you come in, as the prince; it is your job to recreate all the stars and planets.

The idea behind Beautiful Katamari is simple. You roll a Katamari (a small ball with smaller balls sticking out of it) around various environments gathering all kinds of objects to a predetermined size, in a set amount of time. Once done the Katamari is then transformed in to a planet or star that will repopulate the cosmos. While this may sound easy it’s not, while you Katamari is capable of picking up anything some objects can only be picked up once it has reached a certain size, this means you can often get stuck on obstacles, or knocked around the environment by moving objects.

The game is set around a central hub, where you access each mission, and view prizes you’ve unlocked. You can also switch to different characters that roam around the hub after being unlocked. The games versus, co-op and online modes are also accessed from this hub.

Missions in the game vary in scope, the game starts small with you only having to roll Katamari’s that are around the 1-2 metre mark, however the game soon has you rolling 25, 50 and even 500m Katamari’s! As you roll your Katamari gets bigger and upon reaching a certain size new areas for you to roll in are unlocked, meaning there’s more for you to collect. As you reach about two metres you can start to pick up people and larger objects, soon you’ll be able to roll up cars, followed by boats, small buildings and whales. In later missions your Katamari’s become so large you can gather up entire cities and mountains. It’s all very strange, but strangely addictive.

Adding to the challenge, in certain missions you don’t have to reach a certain size, but roll a Katamari that is a certain temperature, this is done by rolling up hot things, such as freshly cooked food, camp fires, ovens and so on. If you roll up cold things the temperature of your Katamari will begin to plummet and if it reaches 0° then you fail the mission. Most of the games missions require you to roll up objects that are specific to the planet you are making, for instance when rolling a Katamari to create Neptune you have to collect “sea things” as the king puts it, this includes items such as boats, fish, whales and so on and while it doesn’t affect the outcome of your success it does affect your score for that planet which is given at the end.

While the game sounds a little basic it is strangely addictive and fun, it’s very humorous to watch an enormous ball devour everything in its path. However, on a more negative note the game features a rather strange control system that requires you to use both analogue sticks to move forwards and turning is rather confusing as each stick seems to move you in a different direction, it is an over complicated system that is hard to get to grips with.

From the games hub you are able to travel into the Cosmos to view all the planets and stars that you have created, each has a satellite orbiting it that when selected lets you see how you rank on the online leader boards.

As mentioned above you are also able to access the games online mode from the hub, this comes in the form of versus battles in which you compete to collect the most of a certain object set by the king before each game. However, you are able to hinder the other players progress by charging you Katamari into theirs knocking them off course. The games battle mode is also available as an offline split screen mode.

Beautiful Katamari’s graphical style is very unique if not a little strange! You could describe the look of Beautiful Katamari as Japanese psychedelic cubism! It’s very colourful, almost as if the developers had being challenged to use every colour imaginable. You will see some strange sights too as you roll around the games environments. To put it simply it’s strange, weird but does a wonderful job of portraying the wackiness and fun feeling of the title.

Sound isn’t very notable in Beautiful Katamari! Each mission features a Japanese pop soundtrack, whilst sound effects are mostly bumps and thumps as you move around the games environment. There’s no speech either as all instructions from the king are handled by text, meaning you will often have to read little bits as you roll.

While Beautiful Katamari won’t appeal to some gamers, it certainly is worth a look for those who like Japanese influenced titles or fans of puzzle games! It may not have the most playing options ever and it may be a little strange but it’s addictive and weird fun.