You're A Lonely Rolling Star
Katamari Forever proves that one man's simple little concept can be as timeless and amazing five years after it first debuted.
Published: October 9, 2009
It would be so very, very easy to poo-poo Namco's continued re-use of Keita Takahashi's original concept for Katamari Damacy. He left the series after begrudgingly making the follow-up, We Love Katamari, yet the series has progressed with very, very little in the way of new additions to things. Me and My Katamari tried to keep things rolling (har har) on the PSP to rather frustrating effect, the 360 got Beautiful Katamari and now, the PS3 is getting in on the HD world rolling with Katamari Forever, the fifth game in as many years.
Here's the problem: while I would love to just roundly reject the notion that the series could subsist on such obvious re-use of the original assets... it still works. Katamari Forever is still fun despite it sharing a good half of its levels with the first two games (this is explained with the necessarily insane story of the King of All Cosmos getting amnesia, creating a Robo-King that predictably wrecks the universe and you as the trusty Prince having to roll up both the original memories and the new replacement levels Robo-King needs). It makes me feel a little gross typing it, but there's enough new stuff in place here to keep the formula just fresh enough to not be annoying. Well, that and a bunch of remixes of classic tunes certainly doesn't hurt anything.
It's a testament, I suppose, to the indelible nature of the original game, that it could be lathered, rinsed and recycled so many times over without losing its charm is impressive indeed. Sure, it all feels a little soulless at times and the humor seems to be going more for weird or quirky bits rather than the magic that came from translating the original game, but that's probably just personal preference. The most important part is that people who have never played the games can pick up this version, effectively get all that was great about the original and still get the gist of the hilarity and randomness of it all while getting entirely new stuff in the process.
Some of that new stuff bleeds over into the older bits too; a set of new filters are sprinkled throughout the normal levels that give things a Valkyria Chronicles-esque (Comic) look or an etched-from-maple (Wood) feel in addition to the normal (Classic) style. Initially, the game will decide which to use, but once you've finished a level, you can re-play it with the new filters (likewise, you can swap out the soundtrack to make it feel a little more fresh, and it looks like all of the old levels have gotten a bump up in the density of their objects). The ability to jump by either nudging the DualShock 3 upward (which works about one time out of a hundred) or a tap of the R2 button finally lets you get out of areas where you'd have to either slooooooowly roll up a sheer face or try to find another way around.
Unfortunately, the jump perfectly highlights the fact that this can still be an incredibly frustrating game; the camera is inconsistent with what it lets you see through when obscured and moving the katamari around to roll over more things can be a slow, clunky process. Even the jump is reliant on things like momentum (and, of course, clearance), so it can be an exercise in futility on the level of using the stick-wiggling dash (read: effective, but not without some detriment if you run into stuff or get stuck). The twin-stick, tank-style control method could be precise (just look at SEGA's Virtual On games), but things are still as plodding and prone to hang-ups as they ever were in the PS2 days. Not good for a game in its fifth iteration.
Here's the problem: while I would love to just roundly reject the notion that the series could subsist on such obvious re-use of the original assets... it still works. Katamari Forever is still fun despite it sharing a good half of its levels with the first two games (this is explained with the necessarily insane story of the King of All Cosmos getting amnesia, creating a Robo-King that predictably wrecks the universe and you as the trusty Prince having to roll up both the original memories and the new replacement levels Robo-King needs). It makes me feel a little gross typing it, but there's enough new stuff in place here to keep the formula just fresh enough to not be annoying. Well, that and a bunch of remixes of classic tunes certainly doesn't hurt anything.
It's a testament, I suppose, to the indelible nature of the original game, that it could be lathered, rinsed and recycled so many times over without losing its charm is impressive indeed. Sure, it all feels a little soulless at times and the humor seems to be going more for weird or quirky bits rather than the magic that came from translating the original game, but that's probably just personal preference. The most important part is that people who have never played the games can pick up this version, effectively get all that was great about the original and still get the gist of the hilarity and randomness of it all while getting entirely new stuff in the process.
Some of that new stuff bleeds over into the older bits too; a set of new filters are sprinkled throughout the normal levels that give things a Valkyria Chronicles-esque (Comic) look or an etched-from-maple (Wood) feel in addition to the normal (Classic) style. Initially, the game will decide which to use, but once you've finished a level, you can re-play it with the new filters (likewise, you can swap out the soundtrack to make it feel a little more fresh, and it looks like all of the old levels have gotten a bump up in the density of their objects). The ability to jump by either nudging the DualShock 3 upward (which works about one time out of a hundred) or a tap of the R2 button finally lets you get out of areas where you'd have to either slooooooowly roll up a sheer face or try to find another way around.
Unfortunately, the jump perfectly highlights the fact that this can still be an incredibly frustrating game; the camera is inconsistent with what it lets you see through when obscured and moving the katamari around to roll over more things can be a slow, clunky process. Even the jump is reliant on things like momentum (and, of course, clearance), so it can be an exercise in futility on the level of using the stick-wiggling dash (read: effective, but not without some detriment if you run into stuff or get stuck). The twin-stick, tank-style control method could be precise (just look at SEGA's Virtual On games), but things are still as plodding and prone to hang-ups as they ever were in the PS2 days. Not good for a game in its fifth iteration.
