Rough Draft

I Love Katamari

I stopped by GameStop on my way home from work today to pick up We Love Katamari, the sequel to Katamari Damacy. After only an hour or so of playing time I have to say it is a perfect sequel.

So I ended up writing quite a bit, so I'm adding this here: if you have a PS2, get this game. If you've never played Katamari Damacy, you are missing out on an awesome gaming experience. If you already own the original, there seems to be plenty of improvements and new levels in the sequel to keep you entertained for a good while. Now on to my observations on the game so far.

The core gameplay is unchanged, you roll around your katamari to pick up stuff to have them turned into stars and planets. However, the developers did not just sit back and release the same game with some new levels. The biggest improvement is a fix for the camera problems which plagued the last game. The camera movement is pretty much the same as the last game, but now when you are rolling underneath something, or a large object is positioned between the camera and your katamari, an area of the large object becomes transparent so you can always see your katamari. It works really well.

The physics of the katamari have also changed slightly (and for the better). First, it's stickiness seems to have improved, as even when running into larger objects, things seem to stay attached to the katamari much better. I like this because in the last game you very often had things flying off your katamari, but the amount of stuff that flew off never really had a very large effect on the katamari's size so it ended up just being a visual distraction. The katamari also seems a bit bouncier. It doesn't make quite the same thunk when landing after falling a large distance. The last change to the katamari physics is that it is much easier to roll up hills. Sure this makes the game a bit less "realistic", but it makes dealing with hills a lot less of a chore.

I'm guessing the reason for making hills easier is the new ability to roll your katamari underwater. The cheap way for them to add this new feature would be to have levels that were strictly underwater. But sticking with "the whole game is one large level" concept, you can go from being underwater to being on solid ground all within the same level. Of course getting out of the water normally involves rolling up a large hill, but there are other clever ways to get back above ground.

Another great part of the original game was the incredibly amusing dialog with phrases like "Royal Rainbow" and "It's not your fault. It's our fault for believing in you". We Love Katamari has had plenty of amusing dialog thus far. And if you can't tell from the title, it really plays on the fact that so many people loved the original game. The menu system for choosing levels involve talking to people that want to meet the King of All Cosmos for one reason or another.

The last thing I'll mention is the music. The sequel contains a lot of the same songs as the original, remixes of those songs, and new versions. I was cracking up in the tutorial level which had the theme song being sung by what almost sounded like William Hung. We Love Katamari also lets you choose from a selection of different background tracks for each level which is a nice touch.