Katamari Forever

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I'm certain others will be more detailed on the history, but there was a storm regarding "Beautiful Katamari". That storm happened because it was released on the XBox 360, but not the PS3 even though up to that point, the entire Katamari franchise had only been released on Playstation systems (PS2/PSP). But thankfully the developers went forward with "Katamari Damacy Tribute", which would in the US be known as "Katamari Forever". So for fans of Katamari Damacy, the wait was over and we get to see the game in HD for the PS3. I'll try to explain the game without giving too much away. So be forewarned, there might be a minor spoiler there in terms of gameplay.

First, this is NOT like the XBox 360 version. The story fits in line with any other Katamari story. Short, basic and (sometimes) confusing. The king takes a knock to the head and it's up to you, with the help of "Roboking", to restore his memory. Among other things. The overall gameplay remains consistent with one major change. You can now (spoiler) jump! Hard to reach places are no longer an obstacle and on some levels you will really need to do this to get higher scores and to different areas, not to mention collect gifts and cousins. Otherwise you use the PS2 sticks the same as always. The other difference is that the Prince gets a bit tired from doing dashes and stays that way for a bit longer, which is a little annoying to be honest.

The "Tribute" part of the game comes because really, there's not a whole lot of new material here. Whether it be items or even levels, chances are if you've played the previous incarnations of the games you've already seen all of the levels available. Within the "King" are mostly levels from "We Love Katamari", including familiar levels with Hansel and Gretel and the campfire levels. The Roboking levels are a mix, but do contain a few innovative challenges, like watering a desert with the katamari. There are several new challenges and levels available that differ even from the 360 version while adding some of what's in the 360 version to it, like the 'Rich' level.

Overall, I think this was a pretty good game however I found it easier to put this one down after a little while. The graphics were beautiful and the gameplay was relatively smooth (although jumping definitely increases the ability to get stuck between things). Also, IMO, the music wasn't quite as strong as the other versions; in some ways, the tracks felt cheaper as they're mostly remixed versions of the great originals. Hopefully in the future you'll be able to pull those off of the store or something. ALSO, and this is A BIG knock there is NO online game-play. Just leaderboards. So you can't connect with someone else playing the game for a co-op or battle like I believe you could on the 360 version. Having said all of this, if you're new to Katamari Damacy you won't feel like you've missed a ton of history. But if you've been there from the beginning, you might be a little under-whelmed. Overall I'd rate it a bit better than the 360 version as the controls on that one weren't quite as good, IMO.

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I now own three Katamari games Katamari Damacy, We Love Katamari, and Katamari Forever. And while this one might be the "best" of the bunch, I'm starting to wonder...about the wonder. The fact is, we have all been here before. Literally.

"Katamari Forever" essentially repeats the stages from "Katamari Damacy" and "We Love Katamari". And when I say repeat, I mean it literally. You'll see a race stage. You'll see a sumo stage. You'll see a stage to create the moon. You'll see an underwater stage. Yes, the total number of stages are pretty staggering (and more so when one considers the different modes more on that in a moment). But they are just like their earlier counterparts. OK so the graphics are in HD. I wasn't aware that this game was selling itself on graphical prowess.

But anyway, on to

Pros:

Fun. This game is still fun. And while I have played nearly all of these stages before, it doesn't change the fact that it is a lot of fun to create a massive sumo that eats an entire town.

Game Modes. OK Katamari Forever mode is what you expect, and if the whole game was simply this, it would rate 3 stars. But then, you unlock "Katamari Drive" mode, which puts everything into super speed. And honestly, this is what Katamari should be about. The super speed levels (and you can play them ALL in super speed) are, simply put, the most fun I've ever had playing Katamari. Play well enough here, and you can unlock Eternal mode, which allows you to roll as long as you want on any stage. It's great if you are wanting to complete your collection, but it's also nice if you just want to roll a really, REALLY big Katamari. Finally, you can unlock Classic Katamari mode, which essentially lets you play the stages without the new bells and whistles, and in the original graphics. This didn't wow me, but it was surprisingly different to be so similar.

Colorful. One thing about the great graphics we see on the PS there is no real aesthetic beauty. In an attempt at realism, many games look bland, dark and dull. Not a problem with Katamari. While the graphics are nothing special, there is so much color that it astounds. All the colors of the rainbow.

Multiplayer. It's fun. I like both the co-op mode and the versus mode.

Trophies. They are tough, but well thought out.

Cons:

Control. At times, you will be frustrated to no end with the control. Is this a ramp I can roll over? No its simply a step that is destroying my katamari. I hate the sixaxis motion controls, and their use here is no exception. Thankfully, you need not use the silly motion to jump there is a button command as well. Unfortunately, the hop never goes where you want, and is generally a pain in the rear.

Graphics. Yes, I like the color. But We can do more in our royal majesty. I mean, when you rehash levels, the least you can do is enhance the graphics. I do like the new graphics mode (although "comic" and "wood" leave me cold). But let's put a little more effort here, shall We?

Minigames. I generally like minigames. I only like one here (the "Beautiful Katamari" endgame, which is fantastic).

Price. Fifty bucks?!? Really?!?!?! I remember the original was twenty, immediately upon release! This seems a little steep. Still, you will be playing for a while, so maybe it isn't so bad.

All in all, I would recommend this game to fans and newbies. But if you weren't wowed by the original offerings, this isn't going to change your mind.

Buy Katamari Forever Now

I was lucky enough to get the first Katamari game for the ps2 when it first came out, and experience it before seemingly everyone got Katamari fever. The game was completely original, fun, had an excellent soundtrack, and I place it in my top 10 ps2 games. It got a sequel fairly quickly, and then another one on the PSP a few years later. I enjoyed the PSP game a bit, though was a bit curious as to why so many levels from the first game (and apparently the second, though I never got to play it all the way through) were in there. Now with Katamari Forever, I can see that the developers don't know what to do with this franchise, and it's easy to see why the creator has moved on to other thingsthis is more of the same.

If you haven't played a Katamari game before, then you'll probably really enjoy this game, and can add another star to the rating. You play as the Prince, a little green guy who rolls around a Bumble Ball-looking object called a Katamari. You roll it around rooms, streets, towns, and over the entire world eventually, collecting everything in your path. Your Katamari will start out small, but can grow to be thousands of kilometers in size! An example being that you start out in someone's messy bedroom, but after you collect enough, you'll be big enough to pick up cars and people outside, and after that, you'll be picking up islands, boats and entire countries. When done in a level, your Katamari is used to create an object in space like a star, satellite or planet. It's totally fun, and somehow relaxing, though there are a few problems I'll get into in a bit. You control the Prince/Katamari with both analog sticksif you want to move forward, you tilt both up, etc. You're collecting objects this time because your dad, the King of all Cosmos has lost his memory, and to have someone in his place temporarily, the Prince and his cousins made a robot king, but he's going a bit crazy. You'll be rolling up in levels for both the King and the RoboKing.

And here's where my problems kick inthe King's levels start out in black and white, which is cool because as you pick up more, the world comes into color, showing that he's regaining his memory. But from what I could tell, all of these levels are from the previous games. While that makes some sense because they're things that happened in the past, I see it as the developers just being cheap and not wanting to put time into creating original levels. There were many times when I thought to myself "hey, I played this in 2005". Again, if you haven't played the games before, it'll be no big deal, but for myselfsome of these levels are making their appearance for the 5th time now (twice on the ps2, once on the PSP and maybe once on the Xbox360's game). Next, the camera is still just as bad as it was in the old games. Sometimes you'll get in front of a wall and the camera won't zoom in more, or do the nice x-ray thing it does every now and then, and you'll be trying to get your way around whatever it is you may be stuck on. There's also a lot of slowdown in some levels, which stuck me as odd considering how powerful the ps3 is, and how light this game is in the graphics department. If games like SoulCalibur 4 and Dead Space can play smoothly, why is Katamari Forever getting such bad slowdown here and there? Finally, get thisremember all the great songs from the first game? The same songs that got remixed and put in all the sequels? They've been remixed again and make up most of the soundtrack! Granted, 2 or 3 of the remixes are good, but once more, can we get something new PLEASE??

There are a few new things thrown in, but nothing too big. The Prince can now jump(!) with the Katamari if you press R2 or shake the controller. You're better off with R2 because everyone I know can never pull it off by shaking, and it's not the controller's fault either. This jump is useful but still has some control issues. There's also a multiplayer optionyou can battle another player on the same console and try to roll up more objects than them or get a certain item before they do and hold it until time's up. Or you can play cooperatively and complete a level together...using the same Katamari. This is pretty clever but requires a lot of communication since one person controls the left side and the other controls the right. There are also a lot of Trophies you can get here to keep you busy, though a few require more patience than skill. And finally, I have to give them some credit for having a level where you roll around a sumo instead of a Katamari, and collect food to make him bigger in order to challenge another sumo. I can play that level at any time and still smile seeing this giant sumo rolling around with dogs and bikes stuck to it.

Don't get me wrongI enjoyed playing this game, and I can't stress it enough when I say that if you've never played a game in the series before, the score gets an extra star. But after 5+ years, the series should be making progressnot be stuck with the same levels with a story of amnesia to be used as a cheap excuse for it. And at that price? Ouch. Either until it drops, or borrow it and then see how you like it. You'd think that with it being so close to the previous games, it could've stayed at their price points when they first came out too.

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Katamari is a strange game. If you're playing this when someone who knows nothing about this game walks into the room they're gonna be wondering what the heck you're doing. It's very fun and addicting. The problem that I have with the franchise is that they don't make me feel like I'm playing a new title. I've read a lot of reviews cutting the game some slack for the fact that it doesn't change too much about the previous titles. I was ok with that on the last game, but now I feel a little cheated. This time even more than the last time I feel like I'm playing the same game because in some instances you are actually playing the memories from the last game. I think that's great for those who may have missed the others or people who just want to play the same thing, but I was expecting more from this title being that it's nextgen on the PS3. I understand that the 360 has already had a Katamari grace it's console, but this has been released a lot later and I just expected more. Another disappointment is that the music feels a lot more like easy listening as opposed to the strange, quirky tracks that were in the previous outings. In most cases they're the same songs just remixed differently. All in all this is a great place to start if you're new to Katamari. If you're on the fence and own previous titles I would just recommend waiting until the price drops into budget range.

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I LOVE it. I have nothing bad to say about it at all.

Its extremely addicting. Not only does it have some of the levels from the previous games, but it has tons of new and unique levels. Its no longer just 'roll up the katamari to be as big as possible' type game play, there are a lot of really interesting new things to do. My favorite part is that you can now play as the other cousins. (Okay, I do have one negative thing to say.. They changed Dipp's colorful strobe-like spots to stars. ); He lost the spot as my favorite character.)

I still haven't completed the whole game, but once you finish all of the levels there's new ways to complete earlier levels which makes them as fun as the first time I played them again. :) Maybe its not like the typical shooting or sports game, but its worth buying!!