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The Katamari series – now seeing its fourth
European release – is an unusual success given the face of today’s
modern videogames industry. Not often in recent years has such a
quirky, wholly eastern title managed to persuade western audiences
of it’s worthiness for a third outing, let alone a fourth. When
Rumble Roses stuttered at a second outing on the Xbox360,
Rumble Roses XX,
Electroplankton seems unlikely to be
repeated and the Harvest Moon series appears to have hit a
point of drastic decline in Europe, the only real acclaim can be
taken by just a handful of titles; the
Dynasty Warriors and
Phoenix Wright series being two of note – both of which have
tangible qualities known to do well in western markets. So what is
it about the Katamari series?
The
WarioWare and Super Monkey Ball series
had something in common; simple, addictive gameplay - something
which the Katamari series has also carried in spades. And
while this may have been enough to carry the series to a fourth
release, could the magic have faded?
Beautiful Katamari is an Xbox360 exclusive title,
and has gained much publicity due to this fact. With every previous
title having been PlayStation console exclusives, Beautiful
Katamari raised eyebrows when it was announced for both
PLAYSTATION3 and Xbox360. And further still, when it was announced
that the PLAYSTATION3 version has been cancelled. Since the title’s
Japanese release, it has been stated that both Wii and PLAYSTATION3
versions will
 appear before too long, however the Xbox360 retains
the honour of offering the first Current-Generation release.
The idea of the game is fairly simple; you must roll
your Katamari around an arena in order to meet special requirements
– usually a specific size – by rolling over objects and adding them
to your total. As you collect smaller objects, your Katamari will
grow in size, allowing you to collect larger objects that may
previously have been dangerous obstacles, and also travel to new,
larger areas within the arena. Beginning around the size of a
thumbnail, it won’t be too long till you’re roaming the city
collecting people, cars, houses and, eventually, planets. Control of
the Katamari, however, takes some getting used to. Once a small
amount of playtime has been incremented, the controls seem natural,
but following the a-typical videogame tank controls – both Analogue
Sticks forward to move forward, left down to turn left, right down
to turn right, and so on – the title will be ill-at-ease with
beginners.
The main adventure consists of only nine main Requests,
but to see this as a short-coming is to miss the point. Beautiful
Katamari is not a game concerned with getting from start to
finish, it a game concerned with attention to detail. Finding all
the titles’ Cousins and Presents, completing one-hundred percent of
the Inventory, getting a High Score of a justifiable position on the
Online Leaderboards – learning each stage from beginning to end, and
learning how to navigate it in the quickest time possible, this is
the essence of the Katamari series, and here Beautiful
Katamari does not disappoint.
However, there are many elements of the title that do.
The Multi-Player Mode, although now allowing for online play, is
desperately lacking any real substance and frustratingly difficult
to navigate between gamers of appropriate skill level. The offline
story hasn’t moved-on from the second title, and with a lack of
other gameplay options, Beautiful Katamari
 really hasn’t
progressed as well as it should. Akin to the Mario Party
series; a winning formula may do well for a while, but without
refinement and exploration, little new will be achieved.
Beautiful Katamari retains the child’s play-brick
look of its predecessors and, while never looking bad, never strikes
the player as if it’s challenging the Xbox360. A great deal of
physics processing lies underneath, but little that couldn’t be done
on the previous-generation of systems, and it seems as though
Beautiful Katamari doesn’t really want the High-Definition
tagline it’s been warranted. Aurally, Beautiful Katamari
shines. As has been a trait of all its predecessors, wacky and
inspired tunes accompany the rolling rampages, mixing Electronic,
Rock, Country and Pop with multi-lingual tracks to create a
pitch-perfect backdrop for the mayhem on-screen.
If Beautiful Katamari had an agenda to please the
fans that have moved into the Xbox360 camp, it has succeeded. If the
title was a hope to entice newcomers to a system they thought was
simply not to their tastes – akin to the likes of Scene It!
Lights, Camera Action! and
Viva Piñata: Party Animals –
it’s unlikely to convert any who don’t already own a previous title
on another format. While Beautiful Katamari retains the
series delights and charms it never even attempts to slightly
repackage them, and so can easily be considered either a warm
gesture, or a missed hit.
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