Katamari Past Reviews

Miraculously meditative and insane at the same time, Katamari Past captures the same carnal yearning that characterizes the rest of the series. It offers endless charm, laugh-out-loud humor, brain-chemistry-altering music, and psychedelic-tinged soulful yet simple gameplay. This time-traveling adventure rolls out the red carpet for the Prince, the King of the Universe, the Queen, and their band of goofy little cousins ​​with aplomb. With more levels and a greater emphasis on replayability, there's more Katamari than ever before. The first new mainline Katamari game in 14 years doesn't try to reinvent those misshapen objects you roll around, which is fine by me because Katamari doesn't need fixing.

At first glance, you might not be able to tell the difference between 2004's original Katamari Damacy and Bandai Namco's latest release, aside from the obvious jump from 480p to 4K. That's because developer Rengame understands the task: Once Upon a Time Katamari is as fun, satisfying, joyful, and dynamic as ever.

After demonstrating his juggling skills with the powerful scroll, the divine Lord of the Universe flung it into the night sky, once again destroying the celestial beings that inhabited it. His son the prince and his cousins ​​were to travel to Earth, roll up everything in sight, create stars and planets, and repopulate the sky. This probably won't make sense if you haven't played the Katamari games (or, frankly, even if you have), but this setup has proven to be about as reliable as Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach, and can serve as a vehicle for some very interesting stuff.

The King is a flamboyant, self-righteous, all-powerful god who – although generally benevolent – likes to wear tight pants and is loved by everyone, even though he talks down to the prince and his goofy cousins. Making the most of every syllable of the dialogue, I laughed at least once every time he mused on the nature of the universe or complimented himself with his record-scratching voice. Once Upon A Katamari is a masterclass in comedy writing and localization, effectively using its humor to set the goals of each level before the roll begins without letting the jokes get stale.

Completing a level usually leads to a quick and silly scene showing the king or queen up to some kind of mischief, like rolling a bunch of wild west outlaws into Katamari after a standoff in a nod to the good, the evil and the ugly, or the king grabbing a giant crab and throwing it into the sky. There's something cheeky about not passing a level, as the king will scold you for messing up, softening the sometimes frustrating blow of missing a goal. While the humor is all over the place, it never becomes cloying or overly self-aware, and with the exception of King's bombastic monologues, smiles are reliably delivered at nearly every turn. The level selection map of the main world is also full of interesting elements, such as cats and dogs wearing Spartan armor wandering around the ancient Greek market, or a cow sitting near a campfire like a human, warming itself next to its owner.

Each level makes use of what can be found in the seemingly chaotic candies, flowers, statues, lanterns, and TVs that hide a subtle, light-hearted sense of humor and direction amid the madness. Tumbleweeds chase cowboys in circles, giant Super Sentai-esque heroes practice wrestling with monsters on the horizon, bears and cows prepare for all-out war, and mummies make a TV show under a pyramid. Again: crazy. But even within the vast, sometimes overwhelming chaos of each level, every object you can roll up is carefully placed, either for comedic effect or in a satisfying sequence, like an octopus wreaking havoc on a pirate ship, or a soy sauce bottle set up like a bowling pin that quickly pushes you into the next weight class so you can eventually pick up that bowl of ramen in another room.

Ranking every mainline Katamari game

Ranking every mainline Katamari game

Controlling your assigned roller, you'll spin your giant ball of stuff through different time periods, such as the Jurassic period or Edo-era Japan, picking up anything smaller than your dung beetle ball. You might start a level the size of a pushpin or a matchstick, but you can end it by selecting a city or even a planet at the end. The classic goal is just to make your Katamari (which literally means mass or mass in Japanese) as large as possible, but sometimes you need to follow special rules. They can be as simple as gathering as much fish as possible or as complicated as just rolling up something sweet while avoiding salty or bitter things like hot sauce or charcoal because the kid asking you to do this wants something sweet after a big meal.

Whatever you pick up, your snowball will increase Foot Collecting more and more books, cannonballs, eggs and cutlery is a strange act of the brain. There's a Zen feel to the tidy Japanese palaces, Ice Age caves, and low-poly daylight pirate ship decks that share the same mind-bending, mind-bending feeling you get in games like Tetris or PowerWash Simulator.

The strange and gripping maximalist soundscape of “Once Upon A Katamari” passionately confronts this tranquility. Different items will stick to your strange ball in satisfying ways Zhou Pusomething that makes a unique sound like a cat's wail or a street punk's scream, giving your Katamari the weirdest chorus you've ever heard. Once Upon A Katamari has an equally eclectic soundtrack to match your collection as you roll up a ball made of various bits and pieces. Inspired by the poppy smorgasbord of Japanese pop music known as Shibuya-kei, Once Upon A Katamari's soundtrack stands shoulder to shoulder with the musical giants it follows, and is a fantastic album in its own right, with or without the game accompanying it.

The only unifying theme in these notes is the this Katamari riff (you know: That catchy one After you play any game in this series, it'll be permanently tattooed on your hippocampus. Beyond that, Once Upon A Katamari's soundtrack is a diverse hodgepodge of different sounds and genres, from the energetic techno-rap opening theme, katamari timeto the funk-jazz fusion jam “The Power of Katamari,” to the unexpectedly lovely choral title track by Asuka Sakai, one of the series’ original composers, with the San Francisco Boys Chorus. Not one of these 36 songs is bad.

But Once Upon A Katamari is also happy to satisfy your sonic nostalgia for other games, with nearly every track from the series' 21-year history available in the music selector, with a few options to tweak. You can make a playlist of your favorite songs from the entire series, or loop specific favorites throughout any level in Once Upon A Katamari. It's frustrating that you can't just play a single game's soundtrack in order, and that multiple games are inexplicably clustered into two different eras rather than game-by-game, but the playlist feature at least more or less makes up for these shortcomings. The shuffle feature also has a weird issue where when you start the next level, the last played song starts over. Since some of these levels are shorter than most of the nearly 100-song track list, you may end up hearing certain songs more times than you'd like in a row when you choose shuffle, but you can always work around this by selecting a new song before starting a level.

Rengame surgically recreates the series' timeless charm, deftly avoiding the uninteresting pitfalls of empty nostalgia. As essential as the 1-1 games in the Mario series are, the iconic levels from the original are considered a boon destined to be eliminated in every Katamari game, and nearly every level here is completely original. Katamari's latest keeper plays with the formula with careful precision, complementing what I expect to be a feel-good time with new level types and power-ups to enhance your scrolling, while being careful not to disrupt Katamari's defining balance of calm and chaos. Combine this with subtle modernizations established in recent Katamari games, such as a clearer scoring system, and Katamari Once Upon a Time bridges the relationship between the old and the new surprisingly well.

For example, using two joysticks to control where and how you scroll was always awkward, and as you scaled exponentially, the mass became harder and harder to maneuver. Once Upon A Katamari makes scaling at smaller sizes feel more precise than before, which I didn't like at first, but it ultimately helps accentuate the bright yellow sense of proportion that the series has always excelled at.

These power-ups also add a nice layer to scrolling, and allow Rengame to play with new design philosophies that emphasize puzzle elements that effectively find a way through – even breaking out of the trance-like flow of a level or part of a level and instead trying to solve puzzle-like problems. For example, the rocket upgrade helped me brave a powerful storm and pick up a few extra items, but it only lasted a brief burst of speed, adding an extra level of challenge and strategy that I'm not usually used to. The radar enhancement helped me find specific items to complete a series of requests made by the Pharaoh in one level in Ancient Egypt, when he asked for 10 bananas or a dozen eggs. None of this completely reinvents or redefines Katamari's core scrolling, but it does open up new level design concepts, providing a different approach to standard “make your Foot as large as possible” level.

Once Upon A Katamari is the largest game in the series to date, although the overall scope is still relatively small – it took me around 10 hours to complete each major level at least once. Rengame acknowledges this and helps back it up with new collectibles and unlockable challenges found in each level that keep me coming back for new things. In addition to finding your cousins ​​as additional playable characters and gifts to unlock new customization options for them, there are three crowns hidden within each level, adding an extra layer of challenge and a legitimate reason to revisit the level. Having a certain number of cousins ​​or crowns also opens up additional levels, adding even more reasons to scroll in the same spot a few times. The challenges don't offer the same rewards, but for players like me who regularly revisit completed Katamari games, it's a nice recognition.

Still, the available levels are unfortunately unbalanced, with the majority of them taking place in Edo, Japan – which has more than twice as many levels as the next greatest era. I know the series has always embraced Japanese culture, but within the context of Once Upon a Time Katamari's time travel concept, it feels like there's a lot left unexplored in the other nine eras, some of which only have three or four levels.

Rengame also builds on the multiplayer modes established in other Katamari games, making it the best multiplayer mode in the series to date. While there's no cooperative control of individual Katamari this time around, PvP mode once again lets you and other rollers try to pick up the most stuff. But unlike previous entries, you can earn points by storing your hard-earned stuff in the UFO, giving new power-ups more utility and adding a more dynamic flow to competition rather than just rolling as much as you can. Once your time is up, the King steps in, handing out bonus points in Mario Party-style rounds that reward competitors for the number of times they use power-ups or defeat their opponents. It's not revolutionary, but it's an advancement that makes multiplayer more than just an afterthought.