Beautiful Katamari

"I Guess Beauty Must Be in the Eye of the Beholder"

The Katamari Damacy series escapes easy genre classification, and is best put in a genre by itself labeled “really weird yet strangely addictive”. Beautiful Katamari is the first game of the series that is released on anything other than a Playstation platform, finally satiating 360 owners looking to roll up children and animals into a ball but not looking for the jail time that usually accompanies it. Beautiful Katamari is following in the path trodden by the first couple of games in the series, but is unfortunately following so closely that you wouldn't be able to even see it if the three were in a straight line. While it isn't a bad game by any stretch, the formula is starting to grow stale and Beautiful Katamari suffers from too many of the same problems of its predecessors without taking the time to add anything new or innovative to the franchise.

The story is just as strange as it ever was, and the game still has the feel that it was written by a bunch of teenagers that had just taken a variety of recreational drugs and some household cleaners. This time, The King of All Cosmos was showing off his awesome tennis serve and accidentally ripped a hole in the cosmos. In addition to putting The King under suspicion for the usage of performance enhancing drugs, the black hole that he creates sucks in all of the other planets (and ruins the tennis game). Thus, The Prince is once again accosted to help The King after he ruins everything and he must roll up the missing planets by rolling up various objects in his katamari.

The iconic weirdness is definitely still here, and the opening scene plays out like a trippy cartoon from the 1970's. The game is broken down into a series of missions, and before each one The King briefly describes what you're supposed to do and goes off on a bunch of crazy tangents. He does the same sort of thing once you've completed the level and gone on to the scoring of your performance, and each segment is usually wonky enough that it should elicit at least a smile. However, despite all of this, there is just something a little off that this game is missing compared to some of the past titles. The first couple of titles in the series were some of the oddest ones to ever be released in the United States, and what The King said was typically so bizarre you couldn't help but laugh. Yet, more and more the series is starting to feel like something that is trying too hard to be weird, and it is starting to lose its authenticity. From the dancing pandas in the opening to the long and dull speeches of The King during the last level that take up a good portion of the screen and obfuscates some of the things you're trying to roll up, the game seems to want to go out of your way to point out how weird and cool it is every couple of minutes. It feels sort of like that one kid in class that wants to jump up and down and their desk and sing about how unique they are, but you have a feeling they're only doing it for the attention, as all of the legitimately weird kids are muttering quietly to themselves. If the original game was The Clash of video games, Beautiful Katamari feels more like Avril Lavigne.

The gameplay also hasn't changed much. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that the gameplay hasn't changed at all, so if you liked how past Katamari games played you should be satisfied with this one. Essentially, you push a little ball around and roll up things until it gets bigger, and once it gets bigger you roll up bigger things. Repeat until bored. They try to mix up some levels by having you roll up dangerous things, or only roll up hot things, but it really doesn't change much and nearly all of the levels just have you rolling around in some sort of time limit. Roll up lots of the things The King asks for and you are rewarded with a high score, and if you score a 100 on any level, you are rewarded with more rolling as Eternal mode unlocks for the stage and removes any sort of time limit. You start off rolling up things like pins and coins, and by the final level you're rolling up planets and constellations, but that doesn't change the fact that you are doing the same thing in each level. It suffers from the same shortcomings as the first couple of titles, and it is fun in small doses but is killed by the repetitiveness of your tasks. The game does feature a couple of different modes beyond the normal one, but these are basically the same thing but without the time limit. The game as a whole is failing to mature, and it actually feels like a regression as some of the more difficult tasks from the first game have been removed entirely.

The controls are pretty good, but there are occasional hiccups when the katamari refuses to move. Everything is fairly intuitive and you never really have to use much else besides the two control nubs to move yourself around. While this is fine most of the time, occasionally the katamari apparently decides it is big enough (must have some sort of body issue) and will become wedged between something, making it impossible to move. It takes some persistent maneuvering to convince your katamari of its beauty and unlodge it before you can continue. I'm not entirely sure how this happens, as in other areas your katamari seems to ignore some of its surroundings and you can phase through some ledges to pick up items your katamari shouldn't be able to reach. As all you're doing is pushing and pulling a ball, the controls should have been much better than they were and it almost feels at times as if your katamari is fighting you.

The game is by no means awful, but too many of the changes made are simply cosmetic differences and while there is a lot to do, there is very little actually worth doing. There is a ton of different objects to roll up, each featuring their own little odd description but there is really no incentive to replay through each of the levels in order to complete your collections unless you are obsessive compulsive. There are numerous playable characters to find in the level and various accessories to decorate them with, but rolling around with a snowman is just as repetitive as rolling around with a donut. It usually isn't even that different, as almost all of the characters you can unlock look exactly like the original in different colors. It really isn't any fun to find all these cousins of The Prince, most of which really aren't even hidden, and they actually make things worse by getting in your way in the central hub. You can knock them over by running in to them, which is fairly amusing, but whenever you try and enter a level two or three will sneak up behind you and for some reason the button to enter a level is the same one to switch to a nearby character, ensuring you play through a round of musical chairs before you actually get into the level.

The music and visuals are also strikingly similar to the original Katamari title, so those that enjoyed the distinct art style should be appeased. Personally, the visuals really didn't look that great on the PS2 title and everything looks very box-like in Beautiful Katamari. Things don't necessarily look bad and everything is nearly identical to how it looks on the PS2, but it seems like they definitely aren't pushing the hardware to its capacity. Nothing is really detailed to any degree, which I guess is understandable as you're typically too focused on rolling up objects to stop and take that close of a look into what they look like. The music, which has always been weird, is actually almost unbearable in some levels. Saccharine Japanese pop music seems to populate every level, and while some songs are bearable there are a couple that are so annoying I had to turn the volume down.

The only real new addition to the franchise was the inclusion of online play in Beautiful Katamari, and the box goes through great lengths to advertise how extensive the online play is. However, there is more depth to the description of online play than the actual online gameplay itself, and this is one of the most limited online experiences on the 360. There are five different levels, and you roll around and try and collect more things than your opponent. The levels are all extremely small, and as you only try and collect one specific kind of object, you never really grow or expand out to other portions of the level. The roll stuff, get bigger, roll bigger stuff formula is really sort of abandoned here, and instead you just roll the same stuff over and over again. You can just roll around, crash into your opponent and try and knock some of their stuff lose, or quit and go back to single player, with the last being your only real viable option. While single player gets repetitive after a little while, multiplayer gets repetitive almost immediately. The King does give up some random cookies for your performance, which are every bit as useful as cookies in a video game sound as you can't do anything with them and they don't add anything to the game. Online multiplayer feels like something that was tacked on at the very last minute, and it really doesn't add even the slightest bit of enjoyment to the game.

Beautiful Katamari is a game that definitely has a limited audience. It doesn't even really feel like its own game, and is mostly just an expansion pack for the original with new levels and new objects. The game seems to be ignoring the typical evolution a series takes, and rather than sprouting wings and new features, the series seems more content to laze on a recliner and reminisce about its glory days. This works for a little while, and the game is fairly enjoyable before it becomes repetitive. Those who never tried a Katamari game before might want to check it out, but I would recommend hunting down the original version as it feels like a better product. Hopefully the next time The King of All Cosmos destroys everything, he'll have come up with a more interesting way of fixing it, otherwise I'll just leave it destroyed.

The King of All Cosmos (THE GOOD):
+Simple fun for a while
+Controls are straightforward and responsive
+Lots of stuff to roll up; good replay value if you're a perfectionist

The Prince of All Cosmos (THE BAD):
-Way to repetitive; gets boring quickly
-No innovation from past games in the series
-Music needs to be muted
-Terrible online play
-Some odd control issues can end up with your katamari getting stuck
-Humor/general weirdness seems a bit forced at times

The Court Jester of All Cosmos (THE UGLY): The most terrifying game over screen in the history of games. Fail a mission and The King puts you on a pool table and begins flinging giant balls to roll you over. Good luck getting that image out of your nightmares for the next couple of weeks.

THE VERDICT: 4.75/10.00

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/09

Game Release: Beautiful Katamari (US, 10/16/07)