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Reviews » We Love Katamari [PS2]

Reviews I've seen for We Love Katamari have been all over the spectrum. I don't really blame them, it's a very hard game to review. It doesn't follow standard rules. Generally, with a sequel, if all you get is the same thing as the first, the average response is bad. You know, like "I waited all this time to get more of the same thing?" Katamari Damacy is Different. It's a game where the changes could be so minute and so seemingly insignificant that to someone who "Doesn't Get It" it would seem like the exact same game. It most certainly isn't the same game, but it is more of the same stuff. Luckily, this is exactly what the world needed.

We Love Katamari follows Katamari Damacy, but experience with the first isn't entirely necessary. The beginning starts with a wonderful recap of the first game, and sets up the second. After going on his intergalactic drunken bender, which resulted in the destruction of all the stars, The King of All Cosmos sent The Prince to Earth to fix things. Armed with a Katamari, a sticky ball of Stuff, the Prince must roll up things on Earth into massive objects with which to repopulate the sky. That was Katamari Damacy. We Love Katamari doesn't take itself seriously whatsoever, so the premise blends reality and the game. People worldwide loved Katamari Damacy, and started making requests regarding what else to roll up. Katamari Damacy just replaced the stars (and the moon), so there were still planets left to replace. To solve both at once, the King sent the Prince back to earth to once again set things right, this time rebuilding the planets of the galaxy. Thus begins We Love Katamari.

We Love Katamari works more or less exactly like Katamari Damacy did. You roll around, you collect stuff, you reach a certain size in a certain timeframe and move on. None of those perfect gameplay mechanics have been changed. What did change is somewhat difficult to pin down. It's not really an issue of added polish, because Katamari Damacy was already perfectly polished. They kept everything that was already there (size levels, speed levels, collection levels, gimmick levels) and just refined them all to absolute perfection, and then added even more variety.

In Katamari Damacy, the real focus was on "large as possible" levels, but there were extra things you could do like speed runs. For starters, We Love Katamari formalizes this process of getting speed runs. On the five main levels, you have two flavors: "Large as Possible" and "Fast as Possible". On your first runthrough you do "Large as Possible". If you go back to that level you get "Fast as Possible". Go back a third time or any more after that and you'll get to pick. Unlike before, Large vs Fast are sublevels with different goals and UI's (Fast as Possible has a digital timer and your size counts down from the target), rather than before when it was one level, and the target was just based on whatever you did. Like before, these levels are split up into sections blocked off by size-restriction pylons, but unlike Katamari Damacy, there's only one big world for this set of levels, it's just a matter of how far you progress through it. This may seem like a step backwards, but it isn't really. It adds a sense of cohesion to the Size/Speed levels, unlike Katamari Damacy where there was a set number of maps you could go roll in. But again, the focus is no longer on these levels like it was in Katamari Damacy, so your map variation comes from all the other types of levels.

Speaking of the other levels, most of them are gimmick based. Like, "we are playing Katamari Damacy . . . but now it's underwater" or "we are playing Katamari Damacy . . . but now it's on a racetrack". This may seem trite, but it turns out different and good. The change is a welcome one. On the underwater level, for instance, you have to deal with the new dynamics of rolling around underwater. You float a bit, and it's harder to roll because you're moving through water rather than air. This turns out to be pretty neat, since it means dashes can be sustained aboveground. There's also fun variations like the "Save the Pandas" level where you're brought in to do some fundraising. Rather than your size or time being the relevant factor, what matters here is the total monetary value of your katamari. So that 2m tree is worthless compared to a 2cm diamond ring.

Collection levels are back, too. There's a thousand-origami-cranes level that takes place in a school, one where you have to collect up all the animals at a zoo, one where you have to roll up all the candy items of a gingerbread house, etc. Many of the collection levels are crossovers with gimmick levels, so it's a collection level but with an extra gimmick added to the mix. Like one level where your gameplay mechanics have changed because you're rolling up clouds. Your katamari starts floating on a 2d plane at cloud-level, and your camera is down on the ground angled up at the sky, leaving your viewpoint completely upside down from usual. The best crossover example is the set of sumo levels, though. Your goal is to help a novice sumo wrestler bulk up in time for his match. To do so, you roll him around in place of your katamari, and he grows in size only when you roll over a food item, and to end the level you have to be able to roll up his opponent before time is up. Similarily, there's a level that takes place at a campground, where your katamari is on fire and you have to roll over flammable items to build up the size of your fire. If you stop adding kindling for too long, your fire will go out and you'll have to start over. Same goes for if you roll into the river.

Apart from your normal rolling around, they added some extra stuff to do. The standard extras are back, of course. Cousins and presents are hidden thoughout the game, but just like the levels, these have been revamped and refined. For starters, there's a UI to track what you've collected for what level. Before diving into a level you're able to see your record times and sizes, plus you can see how many presents and cousins there are in the level, and how many you've gotten so far. Presents themselves have been added to. Not only are there more, but you can wear two at a time. Personally, I like rolling around with my giant jewel-encrusted crown and bright pink flying-v electric guitar. Cousins are also souped up. There's about 36 of them now, and once you collect them, they show up on the select screen. If you talk to them, you'll take over and get to play as them. Nickel is my favourite. He's a robot. Cousins are actually important this time around, too. There's an extra two levels to unlock by collecting them all. Beyond these extras, there's also the standard features like shooting stars for fast rolls, plus now we have glowy planets for if you do a really good job on the level.

For a review about a Katamari Damacy game, it's impossible to not talk about the soundtrack, because the soundtrack was such a big part of the first game. I've heard rather split reactions regarding the We Love Katamari soundtrack. Like the first, it's a split of electronica, jpop-y tracks, jazz-ish tracks, and other stuff that defies classification. The We Love Katamari soundtrack is much of the same, though no tracks are ported over directly. Personally, I didn't like the new soundtrack. There's about four tracks on it I really like (like Katamari Holiday and Sunbaked Savanna), and several others I absolutely can't stand (like the new acapella version of Katamari on the Rock and the new Katamari on the Swing). Despite this, I like how the soundtrack is implemented better in We Love Katamari. In Katamari Damacy, certain tracks were bound to certain levels. If it was Make a Star 1, you were listening to Katamari on the Rock. In We Love Katamari you get to pick your track during level selection, and each new level you hit will unlock a new track. So if you don't want to listen to 5 minutes of Japanese beatboxing, you can skip that track. Again, some people really love the whole soundtrack, I didn't, but that's my opinion.

I, unfortunately, haven't been able to give the new multiplayer features a proper look. I only have one PS2 controller, and don't exactly have anyone around with which to play quirky videogames with. However, the multiplayer has some pretty big changes since Katamari Damacy. The original mode is still there, head to head rolling in a level. The only real difference here is that rather than being lame arena levels like in the original, now you're rolling in actual levels, slightly modified to work for MP. A completely new feature that's been added is a cooperative mode. Two players, one katamari. It works like you'd expect it to. Instead of one force vector working on the katamari, now you have two . . and much yelling will most likely result.

I can find very few faults with We Love Katamari, but there are a couple. First is a carryover from Katamari Damacy: some of the levels (I am looking at YOU CowBear level) are still infuriatingly difficult. Back in Katamari Damacy we had a Cow Level and a Bear level. Levels absolutely full of cow and bear related items. Your goal is to roll up the largest bear or cow possible. These were unbelievably difficult because it took your first one, and so many things were considered cows and/or bears. You could, for instance, be very careful in rolling up to a size of 6 meters . . and then have your 10 minutes of careful rolling ruined because you ran over a cow-patterned orange cone, and have the King come down and scream "IT'S A COOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW" and end the level. In We Love Katamari, they combined these two levels, into the CowBear level. Run over a cow or bear related object and you're done. Luckily, you can now quite easily choose to restart a level, but that doesn't make the level concept any less infuriating.

Another problem I had was that apart from the cowbear level and a couple of the other collection-based levels, the game really isn't that hard. This may just be because I've spent untold hours of time practicing in Katamari Damacy, but the game just overall seemed quite easy. It only took me a couple days to get to get all levels ulocked, all the cousins collected, all presents collected, and all shooting stars. Sure, there's still stuff left for me to do, but getting to this point in Katamari Damacy took me much longer. Not to say I feel disappointed or anything, since there's still quite a bit left for me to do, but it's still something worth nothing.

Another quite large sticking point is that - as far as we can currently tell - there are no "eternal" levels. In Katamari Damacy, if you got to a certain size (usually several times the level's goal) on certain levels, you could unlock the "eternal" version of that level, which was basically a duplicate of that level with no time limit, you just roll until you don't feel like rolling anymore. This was a nice way to relax and screw around for as long as you want, at whatever pace you want, and was a great way to go after items you missed. These aren't in We Love Katamari. I mentioned that this is as far as we can tell because we don't know, really. After you get all the cousins, you get one last level that has an unimaginably lofty goal. Sure, it's possible to beat, and it isn't really hard per-se, but it's long. VERY long. So long that I have yet to hear of anyone completing it. There may still be eternal levels in there after you beat this level, or there might be something completely different. We don't know yet. But as-is, there aren't eternal levels. This kinda sucks, but in my opinion, this goes hand-in-hand with the fact that they took the focus off pure rolling levels. There's so much else to do now that I really don't miss eternal levels. The thing with eternal levels is that usually they were very confined. If you load up Large as Possible 5 in We Love Katamari, you go straight up from street-level to well over 3000 meters. This beats eternal levels by quite a bit if you just want to roll around. And if you don't, well, that's why the focus of We Love Katamari is on variety.

Another unwelcome change is mid-level loading. In Katamari Damacy, once you loaded a level, that was it, you were done loading and you could zoom out and out and out and out and it would never have to load again. Now, whenever you make a significant transfer, like moving from the inside of a house to the outside, or jump from the first core set of continents to rolling over the entire globe, there's a short interruption for loading. The King will break in like he ususally would to say "hey, this area over here with the giant cones is open now", but also takes about 5 seconds to load the new previously-unavailable area. Yes, loadtimes suck, but they're very short in We Love Katamari. And if you think back, they're at the logical breaks in the level, breaks which have always been there. And it gives you another chance to hear the insane ramblings of the King. Some people will obviously be irrationally angry at this, because they believe no game should ever have any kind of loadtime ever, but really, it isn't that bad.

So is it still fun? Of course it is. Is it still quirky and funny? Of course, possibly even more than before. Is it still a great value at $30? Yes!!!! Does it require past experience? Not at all! Katamari Damacy has one of the lowest learning-curves ever (I tend to just tell people "Here. You drive it like a tank. Go."), and the games are so similar that you can quite easily just jump right into the sequel, skipping the first. I would, of course, HEARTILY recommend that you go back and pick up the original when you can, but if you need to pick one first, go with We Love Katamari. It's $10 more, but you'll have a much easier time finding it in stores. So please, go buy this game. Buy it right now. Buy a PS2 for it if you don't have one, just go and do it right now. Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari are both absolute must-play games, and you are doing yourself a great disservice by not running out and purchasing it right this second.

We Love Katamari - PS2

Presentation

Though it's more of the same kind of stuff from Katamari Damacy, it's still special and wonderful.

Gameplay

I've been wary of giving a game a perfect score for anything, but We Love Katamari deserves it. Namco managed to take any of the few tiny gameplay problems in Katamari Damacy and eradicate them. Then, on top of that, they added so many new little variations to keep it from going stale. And they did it all in under a year. I have no idea how you could possibly make the gameplay of Katamary Damacy any better.

Replayability

You could sorta say that the whole game is nothing but replayability. After you unlock and find everything, there's still a giant amount of gameplay in there to get "good" scores on all the levels.

Value

While We Love Katamari has more to do in it than Katamari Damacy, it's also more expensive. But then, it's still incredibly cheap compared to other games, resulting in a really good overall value.

Overall

We Love Katamari is one of those unbelievably perfect games that you just have to buy. It's cheap, it's fun, it's easily accessable, and it's challenging to master. Low risk, high quality, incredibly fun, and DIFFERENT, what more do you want? Go get it. Oh, and get Katamari Damacy if you haven't already.