Katamari Forever (PS3) Review

Posted by Trace Aber on 10.28.2009

Is Namco's latest Katamari game worth saving the cosmos over? Find out in Trace Aber's in-depth review!


Game Title: Katamari Forever
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Namco Bandai
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
Rated E for Everyone

In 2004 publishers Namco released a little game called Katamari Damacy that put you in the shoes of a tiny little fellow simply named the Prince. Thanks to your father, the King, accidentally destroying the cosmos, it was your responsibility to clean up the mess and put everything back together. Instead of thousands of years of work it turns out all you need is a really sticky ball to collect any and everything laying around to create stars and the like. Despite it’s rather odd premise the game still found success in both Japan and North America, even winning the nod for Game of the Year from Time magazine. A sequel was release the following year titled We Love Katamari which featured the same gameplay mechanics but also added multiplayer support. Much like the original, the sequel sold fairly well and even garnered a 2005 E3 Game Critics Award for best puzzle/trivia/parlor game. Two years later Namco published the first Katamari game to be published on a non-Sony console, entitled Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360. Despite being currently ranked as the 25th best selling Xbox 360 game in Japan, the repetitiveness of the series was beginning to become fairly apparent and, coupled with some controversial DLC, some fans began to grow sour on the series. It is now 2009 and Sony fans can one more roll their Katamari to save the cosmos, but is there anything new to the series that makes this game worthy of a purchase or simply a rental?

Gameplay

The Katamari series have never been known for their in-depth and riveting storylines, and Forever does very little to break that tradition. In typical royal cosmos family fashion, The King of All Cosmos was trying to out-jump the little Prince and in the process hit a flying meteor, knocking him unconscious. For reasons not entirely explained, the Prince decides it would be more logical to skip getting the King medical attention and instead build a robotic version of the king and call it a day. To his credit, the Prince does come up with the very original name of RoboKing. Since all robots are destined to one day destroy the universe, RoboKing freaks out (or perhaps was acting entirely normal, I’m not entirely sure how robots think) and knocks everything out of the sky. Which really is the moral of the game here – medical attention always beats out robot replacements. So, per usual, the Prince is left to clean up the mess of the much larger leaders by dragging his old Katamari out and run around the world, picking up objects worthy of floating in space forever.

Once you wrap your head around the rather ridiculous storyline, you will have to choose between which King you’ll first do levels for. If you choose the still-unconscious King of All Cosmos you will participate in levels from previous games that initially start completely in black and white. Due to some serious memory loss, the King has seemingly forgotten everything he ever knew, but thankfully all you need to do to help him get his memory back is pick up an object. From that point on, any time you run into that item it will already be colored. The King’s levels also tend to be more goal oriented, even if the goals tend to border on the more ludicrous side of things. One of the King’s mission in particular has you trying to find the largest bear or cow possible but ends whenever you pick up one, no matter how small. Trying to avoid objects in any Katamari game is hard enough, but when the item is placed all throughout the level it’s nearly impossible without a lot of practice. RoboKing has more open-ended levels with the goal typically involving you getting to a certain size within the time limit and thus I found these to be more fun than the King’s levels. Either way, this set-up allows for a nice mixture of both styles of play that should please new and old fans of the series.

Also new this year is the ability to jump. While you can use the Sixaxis controller by shaking it up and down to jump, it’s much easy using R2 (and you don’t look nearly a stupid to boot). This comes in handy for some levels but overall it does not handle like I had hoped it would. While this does allow you to get to higher ground it’s sometime unresponsive and inconsistent, making the feature less than fully-realized. Absolute precise timing and a little bit of luck are necessary for this function to work properly, meaning it’s pretty useless during clutch situations. The Prince can also collect hearts to become magnetic and attract any object around him, though this only lasts for a short while.



Graphics

You won’t notice too many graphical improvements from Beautiful Katamari, though I must admit things look a bit more crisp and clear with the 1080p support. One thing that Namco had added to this edition is the addition of graphical filters. Unlocked after completing certain levels, these filters include classic, wood, comic and new. The classic filter is the original Katamari that we are used to while new gives the game a “sketched” look and is the default filter. Wood gives everything a wood grain in addition to more brown tones which is certainly interesting when playing such a colorful game like Katamari. The last filter, comic, gives a slightly darker look with everything looking more cartoonish. When I first heard about these filters I was quite intrigued but unfortunately they do not live up to expectations. Nothing is changed dramatically and after a few games it’s hard to notice the difference between any of them.

One oddity is the rather frequent hiccups and pop-ins. The game will slow down if you’re in a highly populated area and sometimes smaller objects will appear out of nowhere, which can be really irritating on the aforementioned CowBear level. Despite the unique art style of the game, there is no discernible reason for these faults to occur.

Sound

The sounds you hear in the game are almost identical to the previous iterations of the game with little new sounds added. Forever has no new musical tracks but instead remixes of older tracks from previous games. Even though there are over 36 tracks available, the lack of new material hurts things considerably.



Lasting Appeal

Replayability is Forever Katamari’s biggest shortcoming. For starters, of the entire game only three of the levels are new. The rest are recycled from We Love Katamari and Beautiful Katamari. While this makes sense for the King’s levels (you are restoring his memory, after all), there is no excuse for nearly 95% of the game to be recycled material. For players who are experiencing Katamari for the first time this won’t be an issue but for those of us who have played all of the games this is just lazy on Namco’s part. Some people have claimed that this is a “tribute” to the series, but if that’s the case the game shouldn’t be full-priced.

In the off-chance you enjoy playing the same levels multiple times, there are four different play modes in Forever. By default you play under ‘new’ rules which include power-ups and the ability to jump while classic is the Katamari we’ve played before. Drive, a new mode, gives the Prince the ability to roll the Katamari at twice the normal speed while eternal gives players no time limit. These modes do switch things up a little bit, but overall there’s nothing worth getting excited about. You will probably play each mode once or twice then forget about the option all together.

Fun Factor

Despite the repetitive nature of the game, Forever Katamari is still a really fun game to play alone or with a group of friends. For those new to the series you may find it an odd concept at first but there’s something surprisingly addictive about rolling up the world for the betterment of the sky. Despite starting small (only able to pick up similarly small objects such as crayons) you will eventually be able to pick up larger objects such as houses, mountains, mythical beasts, and eventually the world itself. These levels are when Katamari really shine and at that point it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve played the level – you just want to roll up as much as humanly possible. It’s just unlocking these levels will be a huge trip through memory lane for long-time fans, which may be a deal breaker for some.

The 411

Long-term fans of the series will probably be disappointed in Forever Katamari simply due to lack of new content. But, for those new to the series or for players who haven’t tried out any new games since the originals, this is definitely a great way to go. The game is rather short if you simply play through each level, but for fans of collection games this is certainly worth a purchase. There are plenty of gifts to collect (which let you modify your character), cousins to find (whom you can play as afterwards) and 4,143 items to pick up. It’s a fun party game but unless you’re into collecting everything you probably won’t get your money’s worth out of it.

Graphics	7.5	While the game looks slightly better thanks to 1080p support, the hiccups take it down a bit
Gameplay	8.0	Even though the new features could have been done better, the same gameplay we all know and love is here
Sound	6.0	While the music fits in with the Katamari universe, the lack of new tracks hurts the overall experience
Lasting Appeal	5.0	Perhaps the game's biggest weakness, with 95% of the game being rehashed material this will only have lasting appeal to players new to the series
Fun Factor	9.0	Despite all of the game's weaknesses, Forever Katamari is still extremely fun and great for large groups of friends.
Overall	7.0   [ Good ]