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Exactly one year later, Namco has blessed gamers once again with another hearty helping of katamari goodness, this time in the sequel “We Love Katamari.”
For people who are completely baffled on what exactly all this katamari hubbub is about, here’s a brief explanation. After a long night of drinking, the King of All Cosmos drunkenly destroys the very cosmos he rules over. In response to this he sends his very tiny and green son, the Prince, to Earth in hopes of restoring the cosmos to their former glory.
But how can such a tiny Prince restore the vast cosmos by his lonesome self? With katamaris, that’s how!
Katamaris are little oddly shaped balls that the Prince can roll around on any surface to collect random items strewed about. Once the katamari touches a smaller object on the ground, it instantly picks it up and attaches itself to the katamari ball. As you roll more and more items up, the ball becomes bigger with those items, allowing you to roll the bigger sized items up.
Confused yet?
Just try and think of it as rolling a snowball down a snowy hill until it is mammoth in size, which I know is hard to imagine with it being summer and all. Once the katamari is the right size, the King of All Cosmos will take the ball, turn it into a planet or star, and place it into the cosmos for all to enjoy.
For as confusing as that explanation was, gamers should not be worried about how the game plays. “We Love Katamari” is so simple to pick up and play, little kids and grandparents can pick up a controller and immediately grasp the game’s concept.
The analog sticks are really the only thing gamers will use while playing. To move the ball forward, press both the PlayStation 2’s analog sticks in the forward direction. To move back, of course gamers move both analog sticks in the backwards position. Both sticks left moves the katamari left, both sticks right moves it right, and one stick up and one stick down lets the Prince run around the katamari ball so he can move in any direction quickly.
Once gamers get a feel for the controls, they’ll be rolling around creating huge balls of junk in no time.
Veterans of “Katamari Damacy” will feel right at home with the sequel, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing that the game engine has been left completely untouched with new levels and music available.
However the curse begins when the game starts to feel more like an expansion pack rather than a direct sequel. This is because the only new addition to the game is two-player co-op, which in a certain reviewer’s opinion just simply isn’t enough for a full year of planning and development.
“We Love Katamari” is so alive with creativity and weirdness that it cries out to be played regardless of its few shortcomings. The level designs are genius, the music is quirky, and the whole game is so over-the-top with Japanese fun that gamers will simply not be able to resist its simplistic charm.
All this, plus the option of playing with or against a friend in two-player mode, makes this game one sweet deal.