They See Me Rollin
Katamari Damacy, a Playstation 2 game that was released on our shores in 2004, was probably the epitome of eccentric games that was released that year. Three years later its still the same case, this time simply on another system. The story of Beautiful Katamari, miniscule that it may be, follows yet another blunder done by the great King of the Cosmos as, while in the middle of a tennis match with his wife, does a power serve that goes out of court. Way out of court, as it flies into space and cracks a hole in the sky, creating a black hole that sucks up everything in the solar system except for the Earth. Once again passing the buck to his lowly son, the Prince is charged with the task of rebuilding each planet and eventually plugging the hole. Yea, its that deep.

Katamari plays almost exactly like it did when the first title was released three years ago. The controls are, like its predecessors, incredibly simple to grasp and utilize and never once become a frustration. For the uninitiated, players are given the ultimate sticky ball, each one different in size depending on the level, and uses both thumb sticks to roll it around and pick up objects that litter the world around them. Rolling bigger balls allows you to pick up larger objects and as such travel to different areas within the level. While the initial levels start you out at just a few centimeters high and has you rolling up paper clips, chess pieces and the like you eventually move on to larger much larger balls and stages, rolling up everything from people to cars and even entire buildings. The scale of the levels can range from minute to beyond massive, from within houses to spanning continents and even into space itself. The only regrettable item about the game is that there are a lack of levels in comparison to the previous games, whose number would usually be near 20. As such there are only about a dozen levels which will leave you wanting more.

The scoring system in Beautiful Katamari is one of the few features that is quite different from the previous iterations. Each level, while having you specifically reach a certain size or bigger also has you role up a certain type of object. While this is a good idea in theory in the initial few minutes of a level after a point it becomes almost impossible to roll up just the specific type of object you need. At the end of the level your score is tallied by the size of your katamari and its contents. Having a large number of the item you were assigned to pick up will yield a larger score obviously but flaws are abound in the scoring of the size of the katamari wherein, even if you double or triple the requested size you can still get penalized for it not being bigger.

In addition to the single player Namco has taken it upon themselves to include a robust online multiplayer for Beautiful Katamari. Players can engage in duels against one another or engage in online co-op . While the co-op is a good idea for when you are with your buddy in the same room it becomes a difficult task at times online, as each player handles a part of the same katamari and, without a really strong sense of coordination between the two players, you’ll have a hard time trying to roll the way you want to.

One of the things the previous Katamari games have been lacking in however is the replay value of the game. Beautiful Katamari attempts to rectify this in several ways, specifically utilizing the Xbox 360’s achievement system. Cousins and presents hidden throughout each level will have you returning to roll several times each level in order to get everything, especially if you are a gamerscore whore. One will notice that the overall gamerscore limit for the game is 1250, which will confound players until they realize that several of the achievements are not possible without downloading more levels. Namco promises to release new content in the future, with several levels already available in Japan at 200 points ($2.50) a piece but who knows how long it will take for them to transition to our shores.

High Plains Roller
Beautiful Katamari isn’t a revolutionary title in any way; Katamari Damacy three years ago took that title for being one of the very few quirky Japanese games to make it to our shores and have a strong following. What Beautiful Katamari does for the series is it gives players the most polished Katamari experience ever created. The graphics are the best the series has put out to date, with hi-res textures abound on almost every surface. That is not to say that the visuals are one of the best on the market; far from it. The game still utilizes the cel-shaded technique used in the previous games and doesn’t look anywhere near the quality of games like Gears of War. Instead everything is polished to a mirror shine with nary a bad texture in sight.

Thanks to the power of the Xbox 360 players will also find at least triple the amount of objects to roll up in comparison to its Playstation 2 brothers, which is a very welcoming inclusion as the previous titles had you at times hunting for things to roll up. The frame rate is also very solid though there are some very miniscule slowdowns at times when picking up a exorbitant amount of objects. Probably one of the most outstanding features of Beautiful Katamari in terms of graphics are the load times within the levels, or lack thereof. Previously in the series players, when transitioning to a larger-scale levels players would have to endure a load time that could last as much as 30 seconds long, but thanks to what Namco could accomplish with the Xbox 360 players will find a completely load time free experience; the entire game is designed to be a streamlined experience with little or no interruption when transitioning.

One of the items of interest that players have found enticing over the years has been the audio of the game, particularly the music. Namco certainly knows exactly how people will feel when encountering the game for the first time and has an appropriate track list that’s just a quirky as the game itself is. Everything from Jpop to an orchestrated anthem is included with some tracks being remixed versions of music from previous Namco titles. While you can select what song you want to play before beginning a level it doesn’t play the actual track so unless you already have the track list memorized it’ll end up being a trail-and-error experience trying to find which one you want.

I’ve Got the Biggest Balls of Them All
Beautiful Katamari isn’t your typical game. If it were not for its quirky nature then the game probably wouldn’t have succeeded here in the States at all, let alone outside of Japan itself. With a nice replay value, enjoyable gameplay and simply sharing it with others the game its overall something you will enjoy having in your library, though I wouldn’t blame you, given the line-up coming up over the next 2 months if it was suddenly replaced one day with something like Assassin’s Creed or Mass Effect. At a typical price of $39.99 at launch its definitely more friendly to the wallet than a lot of the other titles coming out this year but its probably better to make this one a rent.

Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Interface: 8
Replay: 7
Gameplay: 9
Stability: 9
Overall: 8