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Description
Another Katamari! These games aren't the best, but they're quirky and fun with their unique gameplay. So, first game I had to play once I got a PS3 was Katamari Forever. Overall, it's not much different. Roll stuff up, get bigger, yada yada yada. But, something seems off about this game:

Plot: So, the King was jumping, bumped his head, got knocked unconscious. Lost his memory, and so the cousins built a Roboking to replace him until then. Roboking accidentally destroyed all the stars. Sound familiar? Who cares, really. These games aren't about the story. It's about rollin shit.

It's the PS3, so the graphics should be even better. 1080P, right? Wait. What is this shit? It's some kind of cell shaded stuff. Now don't get me wrong. I have no issue with cell shaded games. I'm not the kind of guy who is all "OMG the graphics suck, 0/10". But the first two games were much more realistic. You don't just change the graphic style three games in and expect it to be ok. Plus, the more realistic graphics made you feel like you were in a real world. When that changed, the game felt less like you were rolling up the world, and it felt more like the fictional universe it really is.

Hey, as long as there's a bunch of new fun stages to play, new environments to explore, new places to roll up. Oh...you mean there isn't? Something they might have wanted to mention on the front of the box is "this is not a new game". Out of the thirty-something stages in the game, only THREE are new. I said THREE. It would be ok if there was some kind of improvements with the stages. But all they did was take shit away. They made the stages harder, because apparently they weren't hard enough. In the first Katamari, Make a Star 4 I think was one of the stages you could earn an eternal mode. I could do it in my sleep in that game, and probably did at one point. But in this game, I failed to even clear the one meter mark multiple times before I BARELY finished it. Similar problem with Make a Star 8 in Katamari Damacy. Incredibly easy to get eternal, could not get close in this version (but at least I cleared it the first time). And no, it's not memory loss, that's the King. These games are still very fresh in my minds. I know them very well. For example, in Make a Star 8 for Damacy, once you roll down the road to get outside, if you turn right and follow the road a bit, there's a farm on the right with a bunch of stuff to roll up, as well as some stuff on the road nearby. All that's gone. Items in other stages have been replaced with others, and everything is harder. This might be ok if it's the first game you play, but when you're super familiar with the stages, you're not going to play it any differently. Also, they had the audacity to include certain stupid bullshit stages. Like the "roll up a cow/bear" from We Love Katamari, or the GODDAMN CAMPFIRE STAGE. Fuck you. You don't deserve to pretend like these were good ideas the first time. But what about the new stages? Eh. I mean, it's cool that you get to go outside the world. The flow of collecting and growing is so much smoother in the new stages, but they didn't translate that to the older ones; they just made them stupider than they already were. Also, they have the stupidity to actually number some stages as before, like "Make a Star 1" and so on, but they're not even in order. 4 might be to get to 300 meters, but 8 might be to get to one meter. It's stupid, and pointless. There's no sense of progression. Oh, and the worst new stage is the worst thing I've seen a game designer make. Pure evil in someone's braindead mind. You're in this room, and your goal is to get hot. Ten thousand degrees I believe. In order to do so, you have to pick up hot items, and avoid cold ones. Of course, the cold ones lower your temperature. See a problem already with this? You can't avoid items like that. And to make it worse, you can't even tell what items are in order to avoid them anyway which you can't always do. To make it worse again, when you get outside, it's really cold and your ball's temperature drops really fast. To make it even worser, there's traffic outside who's only goal is to get in your way and knock you into the water they've so expertly placed every-fucking-where. I haven't raged that much at a game, any game, in a long time. Whoever designed this stage and goal needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun. Another new stage has you watering a desert. You're not rolling anything up. You have water, it squirts out, makes plants grow in the desert. You run out, you have to go back to the oasis thing to get more water. It's stupid. Take away what makes this game fun, rolling shit up, and add in the terrible gaming trope of "you have to backtrack over and over because we don't know what makes fun games". Let's take the designer of this stage and drop him off in a real desert, with nothing but a real ball, and see how he fares.

The game did add two new gameplay features though. Gotta give em credit for that, right? Nope, they fucked that up too. The first one is a heart thing you find around each stage. When you get it, it activates a vacuum-like ability that sucks everything in toward you. Of course, it only affects things you can pick up yourself, and only things within about a foot of you anyway. And it lasts, oh, three seconds. Sometimes more, sometimes less, it doesn't seem to have any kind of consistency to it. But if you reach a new growth level, it stops either way. So, overall, it's rather pointless. And in the aforementioned bullshit heat stage, is instant death. The other gameplay feature is the ability to hop. Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is a great idea". And you're right, it is. However, they don't even do THAT right. They tell you in order to activate the jump, you have to shove the controller up for the motion-control bullshit to sensor blah blah. First off, motion control anything is beyond a level of stupid. Secondly, motion-control bullshit that works MAYBE 10% of the time is a level of stupid that will doom the human race. What the game DOESN'T tell you, though, is that you can activate the ability by just hitting R2. Thanks, game designers. Fuck you. Of course, that hop would not be necessary if they'd just fix the goddamn vertical roll to where it actually works, instead of leaving it alone for three games because "oopsy, we forgot?".

Oh, wanna talking more reusing crap? My favorite song on We Love Katamari is Everlasting Love: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf64_r… This song appears in Katamari Forever as well, which at first sounds good. But they remixed it, and it sounds like really bad. So let this be a lesson, game designers. Rehashing content is bad and you should feel bad.

If you haven't played any of the games, go grab Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari for PS2. They're fun. If you've played them, or not, and you thought about getting this game, DON'T. Don't give them the satisfaction of buying their poorly rehashed shit.

Description
Another Katamari! These games aren't the best, but they're quirky and fun with their unique gameplay. So, first game I had to play once I got a PS3 was Katamari Forever. Overall, it's not much different. Roll stuff up, get bigger, yada yada yada. But, something seems off about this game:

Plot: So, the King was jumping, bumped his head, got knocked unconscious. Lost his memory, and so the cousins built a Roboking to replace him until then. Roboking accidentally destroyed all the stars. Sound familiar? Who cares, really. These games aren't about the story. It's about rollin shit.

It's the PS3, so the graphics should be even better. 1080P, right? Wait. What is this shit? It's some kind of cell shaded stuff. Now don't get me wrong. I have no issue with cell shaded games. I'm not the kind of guy who is all "OMG the graphics suck, 0/10". But the first two games were much more realistic. You don't just change the graphic style three games in and expect it to be ok. Plus, the more realistic graphics made you feel like you were in a real world. When that changed, the game felt less like you were rolling up the world, and it felt more like the fictional universe it really is.

Hey, as long as there's a bunch of new fun stages to play, new environments to explore, new places to roll up. Oh...you mean there isn't? Something they might have wanted to mention on the front of the box is "this is not a new game". Out of the thirty-something stages in the game, only THREE are new. I said THREE. It would be ok if there was some kind of improvements with the stages. But all they did was take shit away. They made the stages harder, because apparently they weren't hard enough. In the first Katamari, Make a Star 4 I think was one of the stages you could earn an eternal mode. I could do it in my sleep in that game, and probably did at one point. But in this game, I failed to even clear the one meter mark multiple times before I BARELY finished it. Similar problem with Make a Star 8 in Katamari Damacy. Incredibly easy to get eternal, could not get close in this version (but at least I cleared it the first time). And no, it's not memory loss, that's the King. These games are still very fresh in my minds. I know them very well. For example, in Make a Star 8 for Damacy, once you roll down the road to get outside, if you turn right and follow the road a bit, there's a farm on the right with a bunch of stuff to roll up, as well as some stuff on the road nearby. All that's gone. Items in other stages have been replaced with others, and everything is harder. This might be ok if it's the first game you play, but when you're super familiar with the stages, you're not going to play it any differently. Also, they had the audacity to include certain stupid bullshit stages. Like the "roll up a cow/bear" from We Love Katamari, or the GODDAMN CAMPFIRE STAGE. Fuck you. You don't deserve to pretend like these were good ideas the first time. But what about the new stages? Eh. I mean, it's cool that you get to go outside the world. The flow of collecting and growing is so much smoother in the new stages, but they didn't translate that to the older ones; they just made them stupider than they already were. Also, they have the stupidity to actually number some stages as before, like "Make a Star 1" and so on, but they're not even in order. 4 might be to get to 300 meters, but 8 might be to get to one meter. It's stupid, and pointless. There's no sense of progression. Oh, and the worst new stage is the worst thing I've seen a game designer make. Pure evil in someone's braindead mind. You're in this room, and your goal is to get hot. Ten thousand degrees I believe. In order to do so, you have to pick up hot items, and avoid cold ones. Of course, the cold ones lower your temperature. See a problem already with this? You can't avoid items like that. And to make it worse, you can't even tell what items are in order to avoid them anyway which you can't always do. To make it worse again, when you get outside, it's really cold and your ball's temperature drops really fast. To make it even worser, there's traffic outside who's only goal is to get in your way and knock you into the water they've so expertly placed every-fucking-where. I haven't raged that much at a game, any game, in a long time. Whoever designed this stage and goal needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun. Another new stage has you watering a desert. You're not rolling anything up. You have water, it squirts out, makes plants grow in the desert. You run out, you have to go back to the oasis thing to get more water. It's stupid. Take away what makes this game fun, rolling shit up, and add in the terrible gaming trope of "you have to backtrack over and over because we don't know what makes fun games". Let's take the designer of this stage and drop him off in a real desert, with nothing but a real ball, and see how he fares.

The game did add two new gameplay features though. Gotta give em credit for that, right? Nope, they fucked that up too. The first one is a heart thing you find around each stage. When you get it, it activates a vacuum-like ability that sucks everything in toward you. Of course, it only affects things you can pick up yourself, and only things within about a foot of you anyway. And it lasts, oh, three seconds. Sometimes more, sometimes less, it doesn't seem to have any kind of consistency to it. But if you reach a new growth level, it stops either way. So, overall, it's rather pointless. And in the aforementioned bullshit heat stage, is instant death. The other gameplay feature is the ability to hop. Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is a great idea". And you're right, it is. However, they don't even do THAT right. They tell you in order to activate the jump, you have to shove the controller up for the motion-control bullshit to sensor blah blah. First off, motion control anything is beyond a level of stupid. Secondly, motion-control bullshit that works MAYBE 10% of the time is a level of stupid that will doom the human race. What the game DOESN'T tell you, though, is that you can activate the ability by just hitting R2. Thanks, game designers. Fuck you. Of course, that hop would not be necessary if they'd just fix the goddamn vertical roll to where it actually works, instead of leaving it alone for three games because "oopsy, we forgot?".

Oh, wanna talking more reusing crap? My favorite song on We Love Katamari is Everlasting Love: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf64_r… This song appears in Katamari Forever as well, which at first sounds good. But they remixed it, and it sounds like really bad. So let this be a lesson, game designers. Rehashing content is bad and you should feel bad.

If you haven't played any of the games, go grab Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari for PS2. They're fun. If you've played them, or not, and you thought about getting this game, DON'T. Don't give them the satisfaction of buying their poorly rehashed shit.