First Look: ‘Katamari Forever’ — Major Changes For The Beloved ‘Katamari’ Series
The otherworldly feel of Noby Noby Boy only reminded me how long it’s been since Namco Bandai produced a worthwhile Katamari Damacy game. Last year’s iPhone version was plagued with frame rate and control issues and my strongest memory of Xbox 360’s Beautiful Katamari’s was the expensive downloadable content. In steps Katamari Forever, the latest game asking players to roll up objects and people into an increasingly larger ball of destructive trash. Except that’s not entirely true of this summer’s PlayStation 3-exclusive. In the Prince’s latest rolling adventure, Namco Bandai’s finally changing the gameplay up.
Other Katamari games haven’t done much to change the core concept of the series: rolling up objects. Katamari Forever smartly ditches that unnecessary rule and moves the Katamari gameplay in new directions. The story sets this up, as the Prince’s father, the King of All Cosmos, was hit by a comet and lost his memory. It’s up to the Prince and his cousins to help fill in the blanks.
Katamari Forever Reveal Trailer
Players fill in these blanks by visiting 30 stages, a mix of levels pulled from previous Katamari games (consider them "remixes") and brand-new areas. In the first stage I was shown, the Prince enters a dreary, boring black-and-white world. It’s your job to bring color back to this world, thereby returning the proper memories to the King of All Cosmos. It’s not unlike last year’s sorely underrated Wii platformer de Blob.
Restoring a damaged world is a deeply fulfilling game reward. There were few experiences more inspiring last year than finishing an area in Prince of Persia and watching a cavern filled with darkness blossom with green beauty. Like de Blob, though, Katamari Forever puts those real-time changes directly in your hands.
Another stage I was shown demonstrated a hook not unlike Prince of Persia’s. Dropped into an otherwise bland desert environment, the goal was not to pick up objects, but to roll around the world planting flowers and inserting grass. If Katamari Forever can maintain the amount of a variety shown in these two stages, we could be in for the first truly interesting Katamari since the original.
There’s some bad news, though.
Katamari and Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi publicly distanced himself from the series after producing We Love Katamari. He hasn’t worked on subsequent installments and that won’t change with Katamari Forever, a Namco Bandai representative told me. Takahashi is not involved. Katamari Forever’s team includes many folks that worked on Beautiful Katamari and Me & My Katamari.
On the bright side, Katamari Forever will feature the truly bizarre and adventurous music we’ve come to expect from the series. During one of the stages shown, the text noted that one of my favorite tracks, "You Are Smart," was playing, even though I couldn’t hear it. The nearby representative couldn’t confirm specific music selections yet, but I’m told the track list will largely be comprised of Katamari classics remixed.
This first look at Katamari Forever was hands-off, with someone controlling the action with a Sixaxis just inches away. I considered kicking over my drink to create a distraction and offer to "hold" the controller while someone cleaned up the mess, but as the idea came to me, the demo was over. Maybe next time…but that’s largely irrelevant. What is relevant is that for the first time in a while, I’m excited for another Katamari game.
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