Hello Again.

Didn't I post a blog at one time?

No excuses or promises this time. Let's just enjoy this while it lasts.

I don't think I have been more excited about a game ever in my life. Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360. The first two games, Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari, both for PS2, are amazing. Quirky gameplay with beautiful, stylized visuals and fantastic music. The music is probably the best part. Oh, that and The King Of The Cosmos. That's him below with his wife.



There really is no game that compares to any of the releases. Maybe Tetris. You play the Prince Of The Cosmos. Each level, you have to take a ball, called a Katamari, and roll it around a level. While you roll, things will stick to it. Your goal is either to get it to a certain size before time runs out or as a speed run, where you try to get it to a certain size in as fast a time as possible. Maybe this picture will help y'all:



So, as you roll and your Katamari gets bigger, two things happen:
One- Your perceptive in the game changes. The prince stays the same size, but you are able to see more of the room. which leads us directly into...
Two- You can roll up bigger things. For example, on an early level of We Love Katamari, the Katamari is 1cm and you start out by rolling up thumbtacks and matches. The goal is to get up to 1m and get outside, where you can roll up stuff like cats and trumpets and milk cartons. That may be the coolest feature about the game (well, after the music and the King). You can literally roll up everything you see in the game at one point or another. Tennis rackets. Rubber ducks. Wrestling championship belts. People. Cars. Elephants. Buildings. Continents. All are fair game. When you are done, you present your Katamari to Your dad, the King, and he judges it. He then throws it into the galaxy and makes a star or planet out of it.

It's an incredibly easy game to pick up and play. It uses solely the two thumbsticks for movement, similar in style to the old arcade stand-up Battletank. Push both sticks forward to move forward. It's that easy. No button pressing at all. Each level has different music and that is where the game really shines. Every song is catchy and mostly in Japanese. My favorites are Katamari On A Swing, which is a straight forward swing song, and the one I can never remember the name of, a hip-hop song with the line of "number, number, num-num-number one!".

The reason for all this Katamari love is this screenshot from Beautiful Katamari:


Oh my goodness. That is one big Katamari. It is definitely confirmed for American release, but with the vague release date of "later this year". On the bright side, they announced that this one will have over 5000 objects to roll up this time. The second one only had 1300. There will also be Xbox Live support in the form on four-player online battles. Look for it "later this year" on Xbox 360 and the evil PS3, with it showing up on Wii "sometime next year".

(all pics from this post at the mighty Destructoid!)