We Love Katamari



If you’re going to give a game a name as egotistical as We Love Katamari you’d better have the goods to back it up, and this one does. Last year’s Katamari Damacy was a sleeper hit, and the first game I bought when I got a PS2. The concept of Katamari Damacy was simple, if exceedingly weird. You’re the prince of the universe, and you have to roll stuff up using a sticky ball (the katamari) in order to make stars. You start out rolling little things off the floor of an apartment, but as the game goes on you get to roll through town picking up cars and people and later still buildings and islands. The graphics were simple yet cute, and every level was backed by a different horrible-yet-catchy J-pop song. In other words, it was brilliant.



We Love Katamari doesn’t mess with success. The game play when you’re rolling around is largely the same, but there are improvements. The level of graphical detail on all the objects have been upped a smidge. There are some realistic physics that result in things getting knocked over or rolling away from your katamari. The camera now cuts a hole through obstructions so you can always see where you are. But best of all, there are many more environments for you roll around. The previous game really only had three (“Around the House,” Around Town,” “Around the World”), but We Love Katamari has more than I can easily count from memory. Some are quite small, like a kid’s bedroom or a few rooms of a school, while others are gigantic, like the full town or the obligatory world. The new game uses a trick, however, to make the largest worlds. The game actually stops you at certain points to load new parts of the area as you get larger, which didn’t happen in the first game.



Where We Love Katamari really excels is the art design. Everything about this game is gorgeous. The first Katamari Damacy was cute, put it looks shabby compared to We Love Katamari. Rather than any kind of menu system you select objects while directing the Prince around a cartoony field. Different objects represent options, while people spread around the field represent different levels. People trying to get your attention represent levels you haven’t finished. You can run up into a sky to see a colorful solar system that represents the levels you have finished. There are also theme based levels that are incredibly gorgeous, particularly one level where you have to roll around a fairyland sweeping up flowers and another where you roll up fireflies at dusk. Even the instruction manual takes the form of an amusingly illustrated children's book.

Posted: Sun - October 16, 2005 at      

©