Wadding-Up A Beautiful Gaming Experience

Japan is notorious for producing incomprehensibly bizarre video games. Last year’s Elite Beat Agents, for example, was a rhythm game in which wacky problems could only be solved by a set of male cheerleaders in suits and shades. 1999’s Irritating Stick was (very) loosely based on a Japanese game show that actually involved electrocuting contestants. And Seaman, released in 2000, asked players to raise sea creatures with human faces.

Games like these are only the tip of the iceberg: because most of Japan’s zaniest games are dubbed too crazy for the English-speaking audience, we actually see very few of them on this side of the Pacific. But miraculously, 2004’s Katamari Damacy for Playstation 2 got an English translation and—despite the insanity lurking inside—was a huge hit even in America. Beautiful Katamari, the third console game in the series, is not quite as awesome as its predecessors, though it does retain much of their ridiculous—and ridiculously addictive—nature.

The premise of Beautiful Katamari is similar to those of past Katamari games: yet again, the flamboyant King of All Cosmos has accidentally lost all of the stars in the sky—but this time it’s because his royal tennis swing was so strong that a tennis ball created a black hole. This is where you come in. What better way for the King to solve his problem than to ask his son, the miniscule Prince, to roll things into huge balls out of which new stars can be created?

This obviously makes absolutely no sense, which is where part of the beauty of the Katamari series lies. Though, aside from the main “story line,” Beautiful Katamari actually makes a little too much sense. The King’s speeches, for example, which used to seem effortlessly stream-of-consciousness, are now somewhat overwrought. Clearly, the writers were trying a little too hard to capture the qualities of past Katamari games and the results are a bit less funny than usual.

For the most part, though, Beautiful Katamari’s gameplay—the other reason the series has been so great in the past—remains thankfully intact. Despite being referred to as stars, the main levels are named after the planets—including Pluto and, seriously, giving particular honor to Uranus. Players use both analog sticks to make the Prince push around a sticky ball, the katamari, and roll everything up.

And by everything, I do mean everything—you might begin with caramels, thumb tacks, and diamond rings, but your katamari will eventually grow large enough to roll up people, animals, houses, the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian pyramids, sea monsters, islands, continents, and finally, the very planets themselves.

For social gamers, there’s also an offline VS Battle mode, an offline Co-op mode (which opens up three extra levels), and an online VS Battle mode.

Yet apart from the potential for a katamari of positively cosmic size—current record-holders have rolled well over a million kilometers worth of stuff—Beautiful Katamari does very little to add to the formula. There was nothing wrong with the series in the first place so this doesn’t detract too much from the experience.

But one thing has changed drastically: unlike the past games, Beautiful Katamari’s difficulty is through the roof. To be fair, this does serve to lengthen a game that, even with the increased difficulty, is only a few hours long. But the nearly impossible nature of a few of the levels—for example, Mars, in which one must raise the katamari’s temperature by rolling up only hot things—makes some of the game more frustrating than it is fun. And a terrible camera that plagues early levels doesn’t help.

Also problematic is the fact that the game’s background music continues the trend set by the second game (We Love Katamari) of becoming ever-so-slightly more generic with each installment. Even worse, some of the new tunes actually verge on annoying, which is downright depressing when set against the catchy J-Pop songs and hilarious Katamari-themed lyrics (“I know you love me / I wanna wad you up into my life”) of Katamari Damacy. Thankfully, after beating a level once, players can choose which song plays during subsequent attempts.

The game’s graphics certainly do nothing to take advantage of the Xbox 360’s technology, but the game is crisp, bright, and colorful, which is all a Katamari game really needs in terms of its visuals.

While it may not be as outlandish and new as the first game was back in 2004, Beautiful Katamari is still a unique, maddeningly addictive trip through a strange universe in which we are all unknowingly ruled by a rectangular-faced man in purple tights and robes—who happens to be spectacular at tennis. If you’ve never played a Katamari game before, it’s probably best to dig up a used copy of Katamari Damacy. But if you’re already a “world roller”—as the King would put it—Beautiful Katamari is definitely worth wadding up into your life.