Katamari Forever

While Beautiful Katamari was the first Katamari game to be absent from a PlayStation console, it would return to the PS3 with Katamari Forever, a tribute to five years of the franchise. I actually remember playing this game when it first came out and liked it enough to consider it my personal favorite of the series, but over time I had forgotten the nuances of the game itself. On booting the game back up again in anticipation of Once Upon A Katamari, this turned out to be because I hadn’t played it since 2011. While I was noticing more flaws this time, I was ultimately reminded why I considered it my favorite, and still is.

While jumping, the King of All Cosmos jumps high enough to get struck by a meteor and falls into a coma. Wanting to keep his duties going until he wakes up, the Prince and his Cousins create RoboKing, who ends up glitching out and accidentally destroying all stars in the cosmos. With RoboKing wanting to make amends, he tasks the Prince with rolling the stars back up again.

The core gameplay loop is the same as the original Katamari Damacy, but with some new mechanics. The most welcome of these is the Prince Hop, which uses the PS3’s SIXAXIS features by having you flick up the controller (or, alternatively, just press R2) to make the Katamari hop. This feature not only makes it a lot easier to get out of tight spots, but also increases the maneuverability of the Katamari to reach higher places. Another new mechanic are Hearts in ach level, of which there are two types: Broken Hearts that instantly magnetize nearby objects towards the Katamari, and RoboKing Hearts that do the same but for a longer period. While there are a few levels where grabbing these is actually more disadvantageous, most of the time it actually helps make rolling up the Katamari significantly easier, especially with tighter deadlines. Additionally, unlike Beautiful Katamari, you can once again turn retries into Stardust.

On the subject of Beautiful Katamari, this game takes the idea of the Princedom one step further and presents the main area as a Picture Book, which is functionally a condensed version of it complete with free-roaming Cousins, and the options are presented as flipping through its pages like a pop-up book. Levels are also divided between the RoboKing, whose levels are based around restoring stars, and the King of All Cosmos, whose levels are based around restoring his memories. Additionally, the former’s stages can end with an episode of Go! Jumbomen! And the latter an episode of The Queen’s Diary, both of which advance the plot in their own ways.

 

The Picture Book is a condensed Princedom. (Screenshots from OutNow)

Along with three new levels, the game largely consists of levels from previous Katamari games (with the exception of Me & My Katamari, whose development team is still acknowledged in the credits), fitting for a celebratory game and justified by the story. While it doesn’t include every level from the other three games, there’s still essentially about two games’ worth of content, which justifies the split between two characters. Notably, not only is this the closest one can get to a PS3 port of Beautiful Katamari, but the featured levels also include a good amount of that game’s DLC stages, making it also the closest one can get to having the DLC on a disc. While the absence of Me & My Katamari is disappointing, I can understand the decision from a development standpoint since that game was designed for the PSP. Furthering the replay value are multiple unlockable variants for each level after you finish the main story: Drive, which has the same rules but you roll even faster; Eternal, which has the same rules but you have no time limit; and Classic, which has the same rules but turns off Prince Hop and Hearts. Not every level has variants, or even every variant, but they help make Katamari Forever one of the most feature-rich Katamari games to date.

The levels also have special filters that give the game a unique visual flair. These filters can make certain objects harder to see depending on the individual, and are notably absent in Classic stages, but I personally didn’t mind them, and I especially liked one that gradually colors in the stage by highlighting objects after you start to pick them up. Fitting for a tribute game, the soundtrack consists of remixes of songs from previous games, even including some that mix two songs together, making it one of the most unique soundtracks in the series.

 

The filters give the game a unique flair, for better or worse.

 

While my thoughts on the game are mostly positive, one thing I couldn’t ignore on my most recent playthrough was the performance issues. While the previous game Beautiful Katamari runs buttery smooth, which impresses even today, Katamari Forever has some noticeable lag in places especially when a large number of objects are on screen. Said lag, which might be attributed to a difference in hardware specs, wasn’t bad enough to significantly hamper the experience, but still stood out to me more after directly coming off its predecessor.

There’s a reason Katamari Forever is still my personal favorite, at least among the post-Takahashi games, mainly for the amount of content and its gameplay ideas that improve on an already addicting gameplay loop. It may not be for everyone, but I would still encourage fans to not pass this one up.