Beautiful Katamari Xbox 360 Review

Beautiful Katamari is a truly quirky Japanese game.  I’ve never played any of the originals, so when it was announced for the 360 I thought I would give it a try.  Those familiar with the previous installments know what is going on, but for those that don’t let’s give a brief synopsis.  The King of All the Cosmos was out playing tennis with the Queen and Prince, when one of his might serves poked a hole in the time-space continuum.  This black hole began to devour everything in its path, and the King sent the Prince out to Earth to, um, roll up huge Katamari’s in order to plug this hole and return order to the cosmos. 

I know, I know, it all sounds a bit bizarre.  As I stated earlier it is a quirky Japanese game with some fun humor involved, it really needs to be played first hand if you are even to grasp the concept behind it.

The premise of the game is you play as the diminutive Prince (or one of his cousins that can be unlocked during levels of the game) who is rolling around a Katamari.  The Katamari will then pick up stuff it rolls over, increasing its size as it rolls along.  Objects bigger than the Katamari cannot be picked up until it reaches a larger size.  You start out rather small, rolling up thumbtacks, pencils, gumballs, etc. 

As your Katamari grows, you eventually start picking up people, animals, cars, etc.  The final level in the game you are actually rolling across the Earth, picking up mountains and countries, on your way to make a Katamari that is 10,000 KM in diameter.  All in all, it’s just a bit strange.

Gameplay

Gameplay is rather simple.  You roll the katamari along, and it picks up things that are smaller than it.  While doing this it grows in size.  At the start, you are in rather small environments, like the tops of tables or on shelves in candy stores.  As the katamari grows bigger, you can explore new and bigger environments such as outdoors.  The first few levels of the game have you just trying to reach a few centimeters or one meter in diameter. 

Once outdoors, you can’t reach new areas until you hit 3 meters, 12 meters, etc.  All in all it’s rather simplistic in nature, just don’t bump into things bigger than you, stay off walls, and roll up the fattest katamari you can in the allotted time, though one level makes you roll up hot things trying to reach 10,000 Celsius as quickly as possible.

Control

The game sounds easy so far, right?  Here’s where it gets tricky, the control scheme.  You use both sticks to roll your katamari, and really no button presses.  To move forward, you push both sticks up.  Turning calls for moving the sticks in the direction you want to go and can be a bit frustrating.  Clicking both sticks in will do a quick turn, where you turn around 180 degrees. 

Alternating both sticks back and forth will allow you to charge forward at a greater speed that allows you to pick up lots of objects more quickly.  You can get stuck in corners, with your view obscured by the spotty chase camera, and this can lead to a lot of confusion.  It doesn’t destroy the entire experience, but can cause you to pull your hair out if the damn King’s timer is running out.

Xbox Live

There is vs. and a co op mode in the game, but co op is local only and cannot be played online.  Versus mode involves being tasked by the King to collect the most of specific object types he requires.  Not really much to it, but you can dash attack into and opponent to try to dislodge some of their acquired items. 

There are online leader boards for the size of your katamari rolling from level to level, this is interesting to see how you stack up to the rest of the world.  I did notice when I check them on Friday, October 19th, there were only 8000 people in the world playing it.  There is some marketplace content for download in Japan, but none for the US market yet.

Graphics

Really not much to say here, the game makes about NO use of the high definition graphics capability of the Xbox 360.  Graphics are blocky and square, looking quite like a N64 game.  There are some pretty colors involved, but you are not going to use this game to impress your buddies into purchasing a 360.

 

Audio

If you’re into Japanese pop music, this game is for you!  I quickly became tired of this and put on a custom sound track to stop my ears from bleeding, but I did enjoy the Japanese school girl singing in the one song, lol.  Sound effects consist of basically bumping sounds when you run into something too big to pick up or a wall.

Replay Value

You can go through the whole game in just a few hours.  The only real replay value is if you want to collect all the cousins and presents hidden throughout each level, or trying to make your katamari bigger on the Xbox Live leader boards.

Overall Score

Overall score 6.9/10 [not an average]

Additional Comments

I was intrigue by what a katamari was, what the gameplay was like, and what it was all about.  I can now say I’ve experience it, and I wasn’t all that impressed.  Even at the value price of $39.99 I think this game should be a rental and not a buy if it’s on your radar.  Of all the games I’ve purchased lately, this one will probably be on the top of the trade in pile.  But if you are into quirky Japanese games, this one might be a hit with you.