Well, the story behind the game is far from your conventional gaming plot. In the original, The King of the Cosmos accidentally destroyed all the stars in the sky on a mad drunken night out. In case you’re unfamiliar with the idea behind Katamari Damacy games, your aim was simple. You took control of the Prince and, with the aid of a giant sticky ball known as a ‘Katamari’, it was your job to roll up anything you could find and use your ‘Katamari’ to replace all the stars. Having become world famous for returning the stars to the sky with the help of the Prince in the first game, The King of All Cosmos has now amassed a huge following of Katamari-obsessed fans from all around the planet who have come to the King with unique requests of their own. With various humourous cutscenes showing the King’s back story of years gone by, We Love Katamari is presented beautifully with all the quirkiness and charm you could wish for.
To appease the King and his fans, the Prince is forced into action once again. Controlling your Katamari remains the same as before, with the analog sticks on the Dual Shock acting like an extension of the Prince’s arms. Pushing up on both will roll forward, while pulling down will shuffle you backwards. By using a combination of both you can turn your Katamari to change direction. You can do a quick 180 degree turn by clicking the sticks and you can execute a speed boost by wiggling them, but as far as button presses go there’s very little other than controlling the camera with the shoulder button. It’s all delightfully simple and takes no more than 20 minutes to get the hang of - once it all clicks, the controls rarely frustrate.
School wasn't like this in our day.
Early stages begin in places like bedrooms or tiny offices, where players begin on a desk with only relatively small things like paper clips, erasers and pencil sharpeners in their sights as you roll them into your Katamari. But as more and more objects attach themselves to the Katamari, it grows in size, allowing for bigger objects to be gathered up. Soon, cramped offices are replaced with city streets, gardens and busy roads as your Katamari becomes a tumbling ball of doom for anything in its way. Cars, people, houses - brilliantly, even skyscrapers - are in danger as your Katamari sucks up anything it touches, without prejudice. It’s the clever use of steady increases in scale that We Love Katamari has over it’s predecessor. You start off tiny, then things slowly get progressively larger. It doesn’t make the same big steps between Katamari sizes in the way the first game did, and by having a slower progression, the sheer sense of size your Katamari becomes later on is brilliantly exaggerated as a result.
Another improvement it has over the original is how the game offers more in terms of a variety. When you consider the entire game is little more than rolling a ball, giving the player some diversity was essential if they ever made a sequel, so it’s great to see that Namco has delivered. You won’t just be pushing a Katamari around this time, but also rolling snowballs on a icy mountain to make a head for a snowman, fattening up a sumo wrestler to prepare him for a fight (by rolling him over food, excellently), and even racing against cars around an island. There’s also a greater variety of environments this time around too with busy school classrooms, crowded zoos, and even outer space providing the backdrop for your carnage.
We Love Katamari also contains more content than the first game did. Not only does it feature more items to find (those collection purists out there will be in heaven with this game), but the main game is longer, the two-player ‘race to collect more than your opponent’ mode is improved, and there’s an excellent co-op mode available. In co-op mode, two players simultaneously roll one Katamari through the main levels, with each player’s control limited to one analog stick each. Success in co-op mode requires coordination and combination of the highest order as you really must work together. It’s not easy, but it’s very rewarding when everything falls into place. It’s also a good laugh when taken less seriously, as it tends to throw up its fair share of heated moments and arguments.
Always follow the Highway Code.
Katamari Damacy boasted one of the best original soundtracks in years. It used simple, but infectious tunes that would bury themselves in your head and wouldn’t leave for days. We Love Katamari, from the opening song, is very similar in both style and substance, which is only a good thing. Is the soundtrack as good as the original? Not quite, but it’s still wonderfully memorable, especially if you’ve never heard anything from the original game anyway. It’s easy listening with all kinds of soothing jazz and relaxing melodies mixed in with some high tempo brass samples and offbeat lyrical sound bytes. There’s even a medley of some of the original tracks, but performed using a collection of animal noises which is a personal favourite. But in all honesty, the written word can’t come close to describing it as there really is nothing like this in any other game.
Graphically, the game is equally unique. On first glance the visuals appear very basic. A low polygon count combined with plain, flat textures means it won’t win any technical awards. However, what it lacks technically it more than makes up with sheer artistic style and, above all, a steady framerate. When things start getting bigger and you’ve rolled up hundreds of items, the fact the game still runs silkily is vital. There are times when you’re almost expecting it to slow down but it doesn’t. The camera does a great job in pulling out as your Katamari grows, and while the camera still isn’t as perfect as it could have been, the game will ‘see through’ anything in the way should you be backed up against a building or wall, meaning frustrating blind moments are few and far between.
We Love Katamari proves in every way to be a worthy successor and in many cases, superior, to the original, especially good news for PAL gamers who never got to taste Namco’s first gem. It’s not the lengthiest game in the world, or the most complex, but it is immensely fun and overflowing with originality from start to finish. It's simple to control and strangely addictive as a result, while the new co-op mode is a welcome addition. And let’s not forget its infectious soundtrack, which probably adds more to the game’s unique, loveable charm than anything. European gamers will feel a little hard done by the fact it’s a full price release while those south of the hemisphere are getting it at a lower cost, but all PS2 owners out there, especially at this time of year when there’s very little else to occupy your time, are highly recommended to give We Love Katamari a try.
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