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PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

We Love Katamari Review 210

Posted by CmdrTaco from the games-i-want-to-play dept.
Balbanes writes "Tim Rogers reviews We Love Katamari. He calls it Katamari Damashii: The Videogame." The original is probably my favorite non World of Warcraft game in the last year or two. I can't wait for this game. This article has a lot of commentary on the gameplay, the music, and more. And really, if you haven't played it the original you owe it to yourself to try. The infectious music and hysterical gameplay are a serious treat.
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We Love Katamari Review More

We Love Katamari Review

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  • come on man, why else would you be writing "it's a lot longer and tighter than the original" if you weren't selling the usual snake oil. :) (OMG a smilie on /., i'm a dead man walking now)

  • Dupe (Score:2, Informative)

    by ZiakII ( 829432 ) *
    Was posted yesterday the link can be found here [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Dupe (Score:2, Funny)

      by ThndrShk2k ( 805287 )
      Although i may be crazy, but i think someone may have found time travel and forgot to adjust to a week later.

    • Re:Dupe (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:33PM (#13066177)
      No yesterday's article was
      We Love Katamari Preview
      Today's article is
      We Love Katamari Review

      Clearly this is not a Dupe.
    • There can't be enough dupe stories about this game on slashdot...

      I picked the fist game up about a month ago for 20 bucks, I think <i>that's</i> the retail price... my wife played it... me three year old daughter plays it! People just pick it up and play, it's <i>that</i> good.

      You know, that game? The one hardcore players always talk about in the prophecy? The one that will not feature graphics but instead will focus on really good gameplay?

      I think this is the one.</Morpheous
    • Bayesian. Too many duplicates required to train?

      Other suggestions?

    • Was posted yesterday the link can be found here

      I didn't see this in either of the articles or threads. Can someone tell me if non-modded ps2 owners can even run this game. It looks pretty Japanese, also are translations available?

  • Drugs... (Score:3, Funny)

    by x.Draino.x ( 693782 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:22PM (#13066059)
    Can someone here tell me what kind of drugs the Katamari Damacy soundtrack producer was on? Cause I want some.

  • Slow News Day? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why something like this is on the main page I'll never know.
    • We had articles about HL2 and Doom3 on the main page and in both threads half the posts were bitching about the lack of innovation in the games industry.

      Now we have an article about a truly innovative franchises on the main page and the ACs are bitching that it's not HL2 or Doom3

    • Because it is a great, original game, in an era of stagnation and hollywoodization of the games industry. We need more of these....

  • Blah Blah Blah (Score:5, Funny)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:24PM (#13066084) Journal
    Half way through the first paragraph I wanted to shoot myself just to make him shut up. Then I remembered the back button. That was close.

    • Is that site a blog? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:38PM (#13066215)
      I ask because that was the longest-winded, most self-indulgent review I've ever read of anything.

      I'll sum it up:

      "Blah, blah, I have rarified tastes in J-pop, blah, blah, I know the producer's name, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's good, blah, blah, the game succeeded because of Japanophiles with less knowledge of Japanese culture than me, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's bad, blah, blah, I suggest that the producer drop his name in connection with newer projects that have nothing to do with Katamari."

      The review was incoherent and was 20-30% about the author of the review more than the game. I smell blog.

    • Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:3, Informative)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      Half way through the first paragraph I wanted to shoot myself just to make him shut up. Then I remembered the back button. That was close.

      You made it that far?! I'm impressed. I started skipping around thinking "it can't ALL be mindless drivel".

      I believe was wrong. I'm not sure because I refuse to read it all just to prove a point. But, I'm fairly confident about it.

      -Charles

    • Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:4, Funny)

      by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:53PM (#13066339) Homepage Journal
      I'll hold him, you hit him.

      The guy needs to hit Enter a little more often.
      • If he learned how to write coherently, it wouldn't hurt either. His sentences ramble on endlessly, while saying absolutely nothing. In short, it's 100% pure blogarrhea.
    • Im right there with you...
      I actually managed to get about halfway through, in speed mode... only to find it he NEVER comes to any kind of point.
      Then i took the link to his review of the prequel, thinking "maybe he was a bit more precise the first time...", and it was EXACTLY THE SAME!

      God, why oh why does he need to stuff 3 weeks worth of livejournal-class blogg crap into ONE review?

    • Obligatory Tenacious D (Score:5, Funny)

      by emilng ( 641557 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @03:31PM (#13066752)

      This is not the greatest game in the world. This is just a review.
    • Heh, I made it as far as the third paragraph, I think... He was still droning on about the soundtrack being sung in an annoying voice, and how whatever her name was matured into a diva, and how she would've been a better choice for the soundtrack etc... Really, I got the point the first time... After that, I gave up. I was curious about the game, but not THAT curious...

    • Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:3, Interesting)

      by javaxman ( 705658 )
      At least we now know to avoid like the plague anything attributed to Tim Rogers.

      If his writing doesn't make your head hurt, you might want to up your medication. That's not a video game review, sorry- it's a demonstration of what's wrong with the concept of everyone being a content producer. Sometimes the content just sucks. Sure, he talks about the video game, but is it really the focus of the article, or is Tim Rogers the focus of the article?

      Ouch, looking around the site, it looks like this guy write

    • Re:Blah Blah Blah (Score:5, Funny)

      by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @04:20PM (#13067212)
      Wow, that was the worst case of blogorrhea I've ever seen.

  • What a review (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChrisF79 ( 829953 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:25PM (#13066092) Homepage
    I can't get over the fact the guy basically wrote a book here to review a video game. That's one long review!
    • He does very little talking about the actual game. In fact, I'm not even sure you could call it a review.

      To summarize the not-entirely-incomprehensible nuggets:

      Some J-pop singer replaced herself, but just isn't the same and that makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.

      The producer catered to the masses by producing a more polished, yet less quirky version of the original. This makes the reviewer sad, yet happy.

      Blacking out stars and extinguishing life makes the reviewer sad, yet happy, which incidentally remi

  • Release (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mfloy ( 899187 )
    I just hope it ends up living up to expectations on release. Games that have loyal fans often set unrealistic and unobtainable goals and in the end the fans get upset because of unpromised features or they don't think the new one is as good as the original.

  • Is this G4? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by astyanax ( 8365 )
    I think another duplicate story about the US not releasing control over ICANN would generate more interest than this story. FWIW I love the original game as well, but would NOT expect to see a review of the sequel as a slashdot story.

  • King of All Cosmos (Score:4, Funny)

    by kammat ( 114899 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:28PM (#13066130)
    I just want whatever this guy takes daily. Seriously.

  • Wish it was in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:28PM (#13066134)
    Y'know it'd be great if the original was released in the UK, since I hear it was a real classic. AFAIK it's not even available anywhere in Europe. What are Sony smoking? Surely with all the great reviews the game(s) would sell here.

  • a simple clarification (Score:4, Funny)

    by drunken dash ( 804404 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:30PM (#13066155) Homepage

    The original is probably my favorite non World of Warcraft game in the last year or two.

    So, in other words, it is your second-favourite game. Just say it, god damnit.

  • In Response to the Spam Claims (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:31PM (#13066160) Homepage
    In response to the "spam" claims, and general distaste for the style of article, I'd like to pose an alternate perception. Katamari Damashi is one of the all-time under-the-radar hits for any console (perhaps any game). Every person I know who has a PS/2 had not heard of it before I started passing it around. Everyone loved it. It is brilliant in its simplicity.

    In addition, it came out new at $20. An outstanding market concept that few if any had really tried - a new game that was cheap to develop, with little or no marketing, priced to sell. An unfortunate side effect is that there was very little big media attention payed.

    As for the part about fawning over the larger scope of the game - the original was short. Necessarily so given the target of a cheap-to-create, cheap-on-the-shelf game.

    It's a good game, And the review is fair and accurate.
    • An outstanding market concept that few if any had really tried - a new game that was cheap to develop, with little or no marketing, priced to sell. An unfortunate side effect is that there was very little big media attention payed.

      Maybe the second part of their strategy is to continue to release cheaply developed Katamari games in the hopes that as the ball is rolling it will pick up more and more fans, thus eventually drawing big media attention.
    • Every person I know who has a PS/2 had not heard of it before I started passing it around. Everyone loved it. It is brilliant in its simplicity.

      In addition, it came out new at $20. An outstanding market concept that few if any had really tried - a new game that was cheap to develop, with little or no marketing, priced to sell. An unfortunate side effect is that there was very little big media attention payed.

      As for the part about fawning over the larger scope of the game - the original was short. Necessar
    • As for the part about fawning over the larger scope of the game - the original was short. Necessarily so given the target of a cheap-to-create, cheap-on-the-shelf game.

      It may be short, but it's not like you play through it once and never look at it again. I'm playing it almost every night, mostly because I want to get the Eternal level on "Make the Moon", damn it! It's making me crazy.

      So, it's short, but replay value is high. Not just because of locked "eternals" either... it'd still be fun to play even

      • I am not trying to be rude.. But the eternals are pretty easy to unlock. My best advice to getting Eternal #3 (the moon level) Don't fret on the small stuff, and learn where all the good clumps are. Also at about 600 meters, use the charge run thing. You need it to find islands fast enough.
        • I am not trying to be rude.. But the eternals are pretty easy to unlock. My best advice to getting Eternal #3 (the moon level) Don't fret on the small stuff, and learn where all the good clumps are. Also at about 600 meters, use the charge run thing. You need it to find islands fast enough.

          No, really, thanks for the advice. I've been getting really close, around 740m, actually, and haven't really been playing very long. I unlocked the first Eternal right away, and haven't even worked on the second one... I

          • Just so you know, once you've rolled an 800M katamari, having more time to roll a bigger Katamari isn't all that much more fun. What the eternals _ARE_ good for is just exploring, and trying to find those last few items in the inventory.
  • seriously, look at that monolithic article with the red borders!

    MY EYES ASPLODE!
  • if you haven't played it the original you owe it to yourself ot try

    I've never played the original, though I really wanted to - they never released it in the UK! Rah!

  • Those wondering what it's all about... (Score:4, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:34PM (#13066183) Homepage Journal
    and lacking access to a PS2 and/or motivation to get the game, I found a rudimentary flash version of the game here [cwru.edu].

    Not sure how close it is to the original, but I'm certain the original one is much better if folks are liking it so much.

    • Interesting attempt, they have the basic elements down, but could stand to assign weight values to the objects rather than depending on the number of on-screen objects collected to move up to larger ones.

      This could probably be moved into isometric 3D fairly easy, which would tremendously add to the value of this version.

      If not anything else, it's an interesting look at where the Nintendo DS version of the game may go.

  • WTF!? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by paco3791 ( 786431 )
    Can someone please explain to me what the point of this game is? I read about 2/3rds of the linked review and still have no idea; what the objective of the game is or what game play is like.
    All I know is that the author feels really bad about swallowing a continent, and that he/she really likes the music, maybe, I think.
    The only explination I can come up with is that this article was translated, and lost what little coherence it had to begin with in the process.

    • Re:WTF!? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angelaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:58PM (#13066387) Journal
      Find out more about the original here [1up.com].

      In general, the game is about you controlling a "prince" who has to replace all the stars in the sky. He does this by rolling around a "Katamari", which objects stick to. When you start out, you've got a 1 cm tall Katamari, and you're rolling over thumbtacks and coins. As you collect items, the Katamari gets bigger, and can pick up bigger items. So the mouse that was chasing you around and knocking items off your Katamari eventually finds itself PART of the Katamari.

      And the great part is that the items don't just disappear into the Katamari - they're all quite visible on the outside, and actually affect how the Katamari rolls. Grab a pencil, and suddenly it doesn't roll well at all in the direction of the pencil, and you need to roll a different way to even it out.

      The later stages are really fun - you can start off rolling items sitting under the car next to a house, to rolling over items around the car, to rolling up the pets, then the owner of the house, then the car itself, then the house.

      It really is an amazing game.

      • Re:WTF!? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by paco3791 ( 786431 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @03:05PM (#13066459) Journal
        There has to be something fundamentaly wrong with the slashdot-iverse when I get more information from those few lines than the entirety of the article to which the front page links. Surely things cannot be MEANT to work this way.
    • Can someone please explain to me what the point of this game is? I read about 2/3rds of the linked review and still have no idea; what the objective of the game is or what game play is like.

      Well, imagine a first-person shooter without shooting. Ok, now cross that with an RPG with no underlying point. Now mix that with a Dance Dance Dance soundtrack, and pass that thru a mix machine.

      Now imagine it's in a foreign language and your babblefish is sick and translating everything incorrectly.

      It's like that.
      • So THATS! how they got the King of all Cosmos....

        It actually makes sense..
      • My old roomate has a friend who met the guy who did the translations (only two degrees of seperation as I met the friend once.) English is his native language: the team just thought that engrish would be more funny/appropriate. I happen to think it adds to the atmosphere.

        I think a better way of explaining the game rather than gameplaywise is by explaining other uses of the game. If you know someone who is debating trying drugs, just have them play Katamari Damacy. If they beat the game, tell em "yeah

  • I RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

    by Godeke ( 32895 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:37PM (#13066205)
    ... and want to know what drugs this guy takes.

    I liked the original game quite a bit. It was short, clever, fun to play. Even "innovative". However, I find it *scary* that the guy spent that many bytes fretting over so many minor details. In the end he could have said:

    "The sequel is better technically but perhaps a bit overproduced (particularly in terms of music) for what it is. Fans of the original will enjoy the cleaner level design and improvements, but it doesn't stray far from the original. People who missed the first game shouln't miss it them time. 8 out of 10"

    • But that would not have been as fun to read, will surely have been written by myriads of game reviewers in 1440 days and ... And well, it could even be written without having seen the game, just from plain logic.

      At least this article has tons concept-hyperlinking.

  • screenshots (Score:3, Informative)

    by Talisto ( 818715 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:38PM (#13066217)
    C'mon, what's a videogame review without screenshots? Here's some for the curious, courtesy of IGN.. http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/716/716651/imgs_1.h tml [ign.com]
  • ...for the shortest time between /. duplicate articles. :D
  • For the love of god, man, review the farging video game! I couldn't give two craps less about some japanese pop star for which you have massive wood. Just tell me about the sequel to the game I love.
  • One single letter prevents this story from being a dupe. ONE LETTER!

    http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/07/ 134220&from=rss [slashdot.org]

    YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THE LAST OF ME, SLASHDOT!

  • What's wrong with Damacy? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @03:21PM (#13066632) Homepage
    Why do people insist on spelling it "Damashii"? "Damacy" is the official transliteration of the name used by the original creators of the game; who can overrule that?
    • Otaku insistence at maintaining "purity" in the name. The same people will quibble over whether or not the character in FF7 was named Aeris or Aerith (an example off the top of my head).

      It's all rather silly when you consider that Japanese have a completely different character system than us. But Japanese fanboys tend to place great importance on appearing to have a superior knowledge in these sorts of things.
    • Well if you're reasonably familiar with Japanese and you hear people sing "Damashii" enough times over the course of playing, "Damacy" just doesn't seem right.
      • "Doesn't seem right" doesn't make it wrong. It *seems* wrong, but isn't. They spelled it Damacy in the title, in the game, in the manual, on the cover, and everywhere else. It's Damacy.
    • Because they're Wapanese weirdos who want to show off the fact that they learned a bit of Japanese?

      Even better are the ones who misspell it "Damashi", which is a completely different word. That won't stop a Wapanese!

      • Even better are the ones who misspell it "Damashi", which is a completely different word. That won't stop a Wapanese!

        Let me guess; these are the people who use "bishonen" as a synonym for "bitchin'", right?
    • I guess it's because this affects how you gonna pronounce it. "Damacy" provokes English reading (deh-meh-see or something, close to "damage" in other words), "damashii" provokes Romaji reading (dah-mah-shee(ee)).

  • but I don't own a PS2, and at the point when the original came out, there wasn't much reason to buy one (it was so late in this console cycle that buying any machine prior to the inevitably price-drops is questionable; and particularly the PS2, which was pretty obviously eclipsed by that point).

    I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an Xbox 360 release, though.

  • wtf (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Thaelon ( 250687 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @03:28PM (#13066707)
    That was the most incomprehensible body of text I've ever attempted to read.

    I got tired of him imagining the girl singing the music (in the video game?) after about 3 paragraphs, so I skipped closer to the end only to find out he was still talking about her and relating the game to Armageddon the movie?

  • Simulation Game (Score:4, Funny)

    by Guppy ( 12314 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @04:00PM (#13067029)
    After watching this game, I think it's high time Maxis came out with Sim Dung Beetle.
  • I just beat the game last night... It's longer than the first one, and overall, MUCH better. I couldn't understand it (JP version), but you don't need to know any Japanese to play it. I'm definitely picking it up and beating it again as soon as it's released in North America.
  • Here's a torrent for over 2 hours of music ripped from the new game:

    http://torrentspy.com/search.asp?mode=torrentdetai ls&id=352259&query=katamari [torrentspy.com]
  • Katamari is more about visuals than listening to some long-winded super-emotional Pitchforkmedia/Livejournal discussion.

  • Wow. You bet it's a good game (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Must be a hell of a game if even its review gets me this -
    You have tried to access a web page which is in violation of XYZ Office internet usage policy.

    URL: www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=katamari 2
    Category: Pornography
    Must be my kind of game :)

  • Dear God... (Score:2, Funny)

    by rlbond86 ( 874974 )
    That was, without exception, the WORST review I have ever read. That wasn't even a review. It was a love letter to Nomiya Maki.
  • Personally, I love Tim Rogers' writing.

    The problem is that many of you go into this "Review" thinking that you are going to be reading a review of a game, but in actuality you are reading a story. An experience, if you will. Kind of a review of what was going in Tim's life when he played Katamari Damacy, rather than a review of the game itself.

    It might put off a lot of the people here, but I think it is quite interesting. His writing is frenetic at times, and most certainly stream-of-concious, and

  • Here is *MY* We Love Katamari Review (Score:3, Informative)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday July 14, 2005 @09:11PM (#13069316) Homepage
    There's a much wider variety of objectives this time. All of the major level types from the first game are back (the infamous cow level and infamous bear level have been replaced by the extremely frustrating cow-and-bear level) plus some new ones, asking the player to roll up objects that cost the most, roll up the most flowers or fireflies in super-saturated stages, roll up the most food (the player's ball in this level is actually a sumo wrestler -- this is a highlight of the game), roll up clouds in a level where the ball seems like it's full of helium, an underwater stage with floaty physics, roll up a burning ball while continuing to feed the fire so it doesn't go out, a level where the ball constantly rolls forward at high speed and you can only steer where it goes, one where you get 100 items as fast as you can, one where you try to make the biggest ball you can within 50 items, and best of all, the Cosmos stage, which contains all the planets you made in the previous levels, and have to make a ball bigger than the freaking sun. The collect-the-nations level is back (with a kinder camera this time), but I still can't seem to get them all in time, dammit.

    There are still a few size levels, but they seem like less of the thrust of the game this time around. Many levels now feature multiple versions; at least two, maybe it was three, have three versions. (Including the Sumo level, hooray!) Many levels, including most of the raw size levels, have a normal version that works like the prior game, and a time attack version where you can't fail, but the level ends once the target size is reached.

    My favorite part of the original game, what I affectionately call The Big Level, the one with the largest scale and the one that makes people say "wow" the most, is now surpassed by The New The Big Level.

    The problem with the original The Big Level is that, once you know what you're doing, you can quite easily clean out the whole place, leaving you and your ball alone in an ocean of blue, with four or five minutes left on the clock. Once this happens, you will probably have a ball size of 878m, give or take one meter. And that, as we say, is that. The New The Big Level has a tighter time limit (17 minutes as opposed to 25), and seems a lot harder to max out; I've been up to 2200m+ with no end in sight. One really cool thing: The King of All Cosmos is in the level! He's so large in size that it looks like he'd be super hard to collect... but not impossible.

    There is one super-disappointing thing about the game so far, and that is there doesn't seem, at this point, to be any Eternal levels. While I never played the original Eternals more than twice each, The New The Big Level is so vast (featuring capsule versions of several countries: you gotta love a game containing the Hollywood Sign, the Effiel Tower and the Great Wall of China, among others) that I can't help but think the only way you could get everything is without a time limit.

    As for the music... it's great, but not at catchy as the first game. It's growing on me, though. It has at least three really nice songs. The beatbox version of Katamari On The Rock, surprisingly, isn't as engaging as the originsl (which, unlike what the the linked-to review thinks, I think was *wonderful* for the first game's last level theme).

    Overall it's a worthy sequel. It doesn't seem to have as much of the odd grandeur of the original game, but the Cosmos stage is *awesome*. There are so many clever little touches: for example, the "NA" "M" and "CO" letters from the save screen, as well as the (R) symbol, are on the Collection screen! (I'll leave it to you to figure out how to get them all on one file....) I wish it focused more on size objectives, but there's still a lot to like here.

    The game, it must be said, is ultimately just more levels of the same, but considering the the original was one of those games that was just *begging* to have more levels added to it, I'm not complaining. If there's room for disap
  • So when is the hot coffee mod coming out for We Love Katamari?

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