Katamari Forever

So I got a PS3 for Christmas. And since I got a PS3, this opened me to a whole world of exclusive games that I have always wanted to play, but haven't had the chance to. My current plan is to still use the Xbox for games that go on all platforms, for a very petty reason. I am invested in achievements as opposed to trophies. Switching now would be like switching my main in WoW. All that work down the toilet, no thank you. So yes, my PS3 will be seeing a lot of play, just not exactly as much as my Xbox. But anyway, I have started a few games on the new system, most notably God of War. The first one, yes I have dabbled in the game, but never really plowed through it, so I am hoping to change that, and when I do, I will review the trilogy as a whole. For right now however, I am going to talk about one of the games I was most excited for, one of the reasons I really wanted this system. Hit the jump to see me babble about Katamari Forever.
Katamari Damacy was one of the biggest surprises of my life when it first came out. It was...well no other way to say it, a twenty dollar gaming orgasm. For all of the simplicity, it delivered such a quirky and addictive experience that I could not put the controller down, and I think for many people who were heavy gamers during the PS2 era, this is a classic that will always be remembered. But we're now in the next generation, and like switching out the Enterprise for something bigger between series, it was instantly evident the kawaii simplicity in the first Katamari game was not enough for today's sequel heavy market. This started in the second game (We <3 Katamari), adding that little map, open-ended gameplay setup that pushed the game in a good, logical direction. With such varied levels in the game, why not let us re-experience them in any order we wish? That game was one that was still full of life, not the same sort of new, unexpected flash of brilliance that was the first Katamari Damacy, but one that decided to show how you can take that simple concept and flesh it out, and in adding new music and some new theme stages, made for a very welcome experience that may actually be considered the seminal Katamari game. After that, no game bearing the quirky title would be released on the Playstation 2.

It was after this that the series took a turn that I can only really describe as aimless. It seems after the games stopped being on the PS2, we got the functional but ultimately forgettable PSP Me & My Katamari, and then the Xbox 360 game, Beautiful Katamari. Now both these games were interesting and both suffered from problems, mainly stemming from not feeling as imaginative as the first two games, while also having other, game-specific problems. Could it be that the rolling magic could not last forever? Well if Katamari Forever on the PS3 is any indication, then yeah...it seems simple, unadulterated fun can indeed get stale, the joy that comes from rolling up a town can get routine and when you decide to stop exploring the possibilities within a genre and just wallow in its own glory and bullcrap then it is indeed time to up and die.

I should probably do my best to qualify that last statement with something resembling an actual explanation of how the game is. Well first of all, the game is the most uninspired work to ever come out of this series. Almost, if not all of the levels are copy/pasted from old Katamari games, with no effort made to ever think outside of the box already established by the earlier entries. This may not seem like a horrible offense for a game like Katamari Forever, as the levels are still outside of the established box of what we see in most games, however Katamari now has enough entries in its own, self-contained library that it has indeed created its own box. Not only does this entry fail to think outside of this established box, it curls up as much as it can into the fetal position, trying to be in as much of the center of the box as possible, if nothing else, creating a smaller, more annoying box where it looks out at what has come before and thinks of it as some sort of bizarre ball filled dogma, not to be changed or broken in anyway, lest some Japanese god become angry and smite Namco. Not only is every stage copy/pasted from a previous entry, but even the themes are re-hashed, giving the whole game an entirely lazy feel.

On top of the whole re-used level design of gameplay, everything honestly feels more empty than their previous incarnations, almost as if they were trying to increase the difficulty. They tried to pull this crap in the Xbox Katamari as well, difficulty is not something I want in my rolling sticky-ball games. I play the games to calm down and have fun with a friend or two, I have no desire to have to re-roll a continent because some man with a long head tells me I was not fast and/or good enough.

I said before the themes on top of the stages are something that are completely redone. On this note I mean they are redone to the tee. Not one gameplay element is redone, and the most egregious examples come in the stages that are manifested in the King's subconscious. Not only are these stages old and done before, being redone with the lack of imagination you see in today's cinema, but even worse, are black and white, only coloring themselves object by object as you collect things to "help" the comatose King's memory. There is one stage in which this is a damn nightmare. Anyone remember the old stage where you have to roll around hot objects to get your heat level up? Well you get to do this again, only everything is black and white, and sometimes this makes telling what is hot and what is cold a horrible game of trial and error...and failure. My god the failure. Like playing spin the bottle in a Leper colony.

Somewhat less annoying are the stages that in the end only wish you to get as big as possible, doing the will of the Robo King, if nothing else apologizing for the exacting goals of the Real King's levels. But even in these stages, do you get ultimately vestigial goals, often not needed as they are only fulfilled by rolling up as much as possible. Oh roll up as many powerful things as possible, what the hell does that even mean? I did not bother thinking too much on what this really means and instead just got as big as possible. Everything worked out in the end, so really there was no point in them saying anything like that in the first place. This problem again, adds to the lazy feel of the design, while some of the goals are hard...at least, others like this just feel like they were tacked on to pad out the script and make you feel like you have a goal besides get huge, which is sad. Getting as big as a pregnant Godzilla is pretty much what I always want to do in these games.

Remember what I said before about not one gameplay element being redone? While nothing is refined, the game did decide to tack on two new gameplay elements that range from pretty useful to controller-through-TV angering. The first, and usually good new happy fun snack is the King's Broken Heart, which comes in two forms. One will suck everything small enough to be sucked within a certain radius to you, instantly increasing your size, sometimes many times over. This is really handy when timed right. Just because you can grab one of these nom noms, it doesn't mean you should right away. Any stage can be beaten without it, where as getting a good overall score in stages will sometimes rely on you grabbing this item right away and growing at times to that stage swallowing girth. The other version of this heart is a lot less useful. What it does is make you an object magnet for a short period of time. While this would seem like a much greater boon, in that it lasts for the 10 seconds or whatever it goes on for, but the magnetic type pull is very small, and usually you will find yourself simply pulling up things you were rolling to anyway accomplishing crap-all in the end. This power-up I never found to be speeding up my roll times, no matter how strategically I would try to use it, definite downgrade from the first form.

The other addition to the core gameplay is nothing short of totally useless, although I would expect nothing less fueled by the six-axis control system. By flicking your controller, you can make your ball jump...like it's six bottles of Delerium Tremens in. The Katamari jumps unnaturally high and is never particularly useful, except when the game goes out of its way to put the aforementioned Broken Hearts in an awkward place requiring a well-timed hop, in which case, you will find your mind going blank with rage as you try to precision jump your ball, which works as well as putting your testicles in a gasoline-soaked flaming vice. After you pick the pieces of controller plastic out of the fresh hole in your TV, you will eventually find out (or have someone else notice) that R2 also makes the ball jump, totally bypassing the horrible controller flicking. While this will now have the ball jump 100% of the time, that doesn't mean it will make the jumping work in the way you want it to, ever. No, if nothing else now you did the stupid thing and raised your expectations, and while now you don't have to rely on a sensor that is dodgier than the NES Zapper setup, you're still trying to make your Prince jump in a way that suggests the smack withdrawal is just too much and needs the help of a Methadone clinic.

After you give up on trying to make the Katamari jump at all, you're going to notice something else that shows at this point Katamari Forever is just a game masturbating to the high-quality stuff that is the first two games. All of the music in this entry are remixes of older songs. Now don't think I am totally knocking this idea, some of the songs are great, while some would be better used as punishment for people in one of the deeper circles of Hell. The best songs tend to be the 8-bit remixes, but that is largely a matter of personal taste. At least they didn't pull a Me & My Katamari and just use old soundtracks all over again, nothing done to them at all. In the end though, the music in the first two Katamari games, while representing some of the greatest songs in a video game I have ever had the pleasure of hearing, should not be used as a stand-in for new music to come out and maybe take their place among my favorite songs in gaming. While again not bad by any stretch, it is almost cheating, grasping at the nostalgia factor, even if Namco seems to consider nostalgia being less than five years old in some cases.

Really when it comes down to it, Katamari Forever is a game that while fun, was not needed whatsoever. It feels like a greatest hits album for a band that might have had some life left in it if it simply tried. But no, it seems after the dismal game Noby Noby Boy, Namco cannot rush their colorful series into the wasted on a couch making a VH1 Behind the Music stage of life. If they wish to take their shotgun and put two between the eyes of the dog before they're sure it has rabies, that's their business, but it is a shame. There was the fun that we have come to expect from Katamari Damacy in Katamari Forever, it was just unfortunate all the fun came from fun we have already had. So if you're a fan of the endless re-hash, then go grab Dipp, he's in the exact same firefly stage we have seen him in before, and start making the ball bright so that kid can read his damn book.

-Kesith