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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Life's a ball., 2 Mar 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Hmmm. Hmmmmm. This is a dificult review for me to type, given that "We Love Katamari" is my favourite game ever, and I was looking forward to this new katamari offering so much I have been feverishly playing the demo repeatedly and re-visiting stages on "We Love Katamari" until I could finally run down to my local shop and nab the retail version. 3 hours later, I lay down my controller and watch the end credits roll, and although it's been a fun 3 hours, I can't help feeling slightly, well, miffed.
For anyone unfamiliar with katamari, the general idea is you have a small, sticky ball that you roll around the scenery, picking up small objects until the ball gets large enough to pick up bigger objects. You start with thumbtacks, you move on to cats, to cars, to houses, to godzilla, to cities, to countrys... well let's just say by the final level usually space looks a little emptier. It's mad, it's colourful, and it is very very addictive.
The good -
+ It's more Katamari!
+ The graphics have improved in resolution, okay so they are not photorealistic but this is a game about rolling people into a ball and blasting them into space and if it was realistic looking, this would make it somewhat disturbing! I like the quirky charm of the square world anyway.
+ the load times are way down.
+ Some really nice touches. Like the level where you must only roll cold things and one room is filled with Xbox 360 consoles. le ha ha!
+ Online play, if that is your cup of herbal tea.
The bad -
- Occasional framerate issues from hell!
- The camera is worse than any of the other games. You end up staring at a object/wall you're stuck on the other side of far too often. Also? first katamari game where i've actually got stuck and hit to quit out of the game.
- There's far fewer levels than "We Love Katamari". yeah you can download extra levels but as this is not a budget release in this country, I can't say I'm thrilled to pay 800 Microsoft points on top of full retail price to get a game that is still smaller than previous offerings. The added kick in the teeth is that these levels are contained on your game disc, the payment is just for the key to unlock them. In such a short game this feels like needless greed. I understand the thinking behind it in countries where this *was* a budget release, but it's not applicable here.
- The levels there are are mostly in the same house/shop/town. What happened to the flower garden, the campsite, the school, the pond, the gingerbread house of We Love Katamari?
- Very little variation in challenges. Sure, you get asked to collect different types of stuff but it makes little difference unless you are going for points. The levels of the past with rules like "make the largest katamari you can with the fewest objects", "clear the skies of clouds" or"fatten up the sumo wrestler" are not here.
Okay well reading all that back it sounds like the bad outweighs the good here, which is actually not the case. Yes, "We Love Katamari" is the better game, it's had far more love lavished upon it and presents a more engaging, varied experience. However, "Beautiful Katamari" is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. The criticisms I level at it are really no more than nitpicky distractions when weighed against the sheer joy of pushing a ton of screaming people stuck to a giant ball round a town and velcro-ing up the local citizens' cars, boats and giant squids. Yes, giant squids.
So, in summary, newbies to Katamari will probably love this, as Katamari is like no other gaming experience known to man. Fans looking for a sequel to rival "We Love Katamari" (It may be worth noting I don't actually own the NTSC-only "Katamari Damacy" original) may need to tone down their expectations a little bit to avoid disappointment though :)
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I *LOVE* this game, but there's something you need to know!, 11 Sep 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Just like all the other people have said: it's fun, quirky, everyone who plays it falls head over heels... but there's a snag, and it's a big one!
The game is shipped with 6 of the 19 levels locked, and the only way to play them (and therefore complete the game 100% with all achievements) is to shell out 1400 MS Points (or £11.90 if you're using a credit card) to unlock the levels. What's more, buying these "extra" levels is not a download as they're already on the disc.
For this reason alone, I cannot recommend buying this game for anyone other than die-hard Katamari fans who have played the PS2 games to death already. As a matter of principle, boycott this version as it sets a precedent for "crippled" games on general sale. Imagine if Final Fantasy VII had required a £10 kicker before you could load the 3rd disc and complete the game, there'd have been outrage. What Namco has done here is just that, and their cynical handling of an extremely loyal fanbase needs to be given some real media attention.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Katamari (a retrospective take), 1 Mar 2009
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
When Katamari Damacy rolled on to the Playstation 2 scene in 2003 amid the numerous big-studio race-, fight- and shoot `em up franchises, it was a breath of fresh air. Based on an idea from a school project and developed on a fraction of a typical gaming budget, it was quirky, charming and genre-defying. Reviews were unanimously excellent, it received numerous awards and word of mouth was wondrous. Yet even with its modest price-tag, it only managed to achieve moderate sales. Some claim Katamari was a victim of its own originality, with its refusal to be pigeon-holed making it tough to market to the console crowd who like to know what they're getting. Regardless, Namco were undeterred and released a number of sequels for Sony's machines before it finally made it to the Xbox 360 in the form of Beautiful Katamari.
The reaction to Beautiful Katamari has been mixed. If it could be considered in isolation, you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who views it as anything other than pure, unadulterated fun. Things, however, are not that simple. Beautiful was the first full-price outing for Katamari, and yet has distinctly less content than its predecessors. Granted, there are plenty of additional downloadable levels, which possibly combine to make the best iteration of Katamari to date, but these will empty your bank account even further. Without a doubt someone somewhere is taking the p.
But Beautiful is now a couple of years old and can picked up for pennies. With the price issue no longer relevant, how does it fare? Very well, it turns out. Yes, it's basically more of the same: You use the analogue sticks to push a big ball (the titular "katamari") around various locales, rolling up everything around you like a giant snowball. The bigger you get, the bigger stuff you can collect, sometimes graduating from sweets to skyscrapers and beyond. Typically, the goal is to reach a certain size in a certain time. Despite a sense of urgency imposed by the deadline, it's actually an incredibly relaxing and therapeutic experience, thanks largely to the off-beat humour, cartoonish visuals and the brilliant soundtrack. Beautiful's music, ever a Katamari strong point, is all-new, but retains that simple magic which will leave you humming misheard fragments of Japanese lyrics for weeks. And though the graphics hardly showcase the Xbox 360's power, they're crisp, clear and full of character. One area where the new technology has been harnessed, however, is in the clever use of Xbox Achievements and Gamer Points: Even with the extra downloadable content, it won't take long for a single play-through of all the levels. And while there's always been a collection element to the Katamari games, it was largely ignored by all but the most obsessive/compulsive players. But the additional incentive of Achievements for discovering hidden goodies is the perfect way to encourage your average gamer to return to the game again and again, and have fun doing so. With some games the inclusion of the Achievement system feels like an afterthought, included merely because Microsoft require it, but here's an example of it really adding to the gaming experience.
While the criticisms levelled at Beautiful Katamari were undoubtedly valid - its price-point was all wrong, and it doesn't really push the concept forward in any way - I defy anyone to play for more than 5 minutes without breaking into a huge grin. And there's no stronger recommendation than that.
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