We Love Katamari: Review and First impressions
I've been playing We Love Katamari for nearly a week now. It has to be just about the most addictive game I've ever experienced. For those who don't know about it, We Love Katamari is a Playstation 2 game, the sequel to last year's Katamari Damacy, where one rolls objects up into balls, progressively from thumbtacks and coins up to people, cars, houses, buildings, islands, and continents. Still confused? Check out the official site at .
Though I really enjoyed the first game, We Love Katamari is better. For one thing, it's bigger, and longer, and with quite a bit more variety than the previous version. The gameplay and controls haven't changed, but there's interesting new objectives, such as rolling a giant fireball, or rolling a sumo wrestler over food. My favourite new addition is the racetrack level, in which the Katamari ball speeds along by itself while you roll up fellow racers as well as people and objects on the sidelines. The racing level is so good that I genuinely think a whole game could be built around it... I'd certainly rather pick up a Katamari racing game than one of the dozens of dull kart racers which seem to keep getting released as bad rip-offs of Mario Kart.
The story is simple but highly amusing. In the first game, your goal was to roll up katamaris to replace the lost stars from the sky. This time, it's planets, which is odd as nobody ever seems to point out that the original planets are missing, and if so, what happened to them. Probably the best part is that We Love Katamari is that it knows that it's a video game... or at least, it knows that the original Katamari Damacy was. Much of the storyline has to do with appeasing "fans" of the original game. I'm surprised that more video games don't try this... television shows have been breaking the fourth wall for years. By taking itself less seriously, We Love Katamari is a breath of fresh air.
I've only played through We Love Katamari once, and haven't yet experienced everything it has to offer, so please don't consider this a full review. I'll be going through it stage by stage in the coming weeks. However, I've played enough to heartily recommend it. If you're a gamer, you must own this game. If you're not a gamer, make this your first. It's a great place to start. If you're cheap, it only costs $29, much less than most games. If you don't have any thumbs, buy this game and a helper monkey. If you have no thumbs and you're allergic to monkeys, I'm sorry, friend, you're out of luck.
Though I really enjoyed the first game, We Love Katamari is better. For one thing, it's bigger, and longer, and with quite a bit more variety than the previous version. The gameplay and controls haven't changed, but there's interesting new objectives, such as rolling a giant fireball, or rolling a sumo wrestler over food. My favourite new addition is the racetrack level, in which the Katamari ball speeds along by itself while you roll up fellow racers as well as people and objects on the sidelines. The racing level is so good that I genuinely think a whole game could be built around it... I'd certainly rather pick up a Katamari racing game than one of the dozens of dull kart racers which seem to keep getting released as bad rip-offs of Mario Kart.
The story is simple but highly amusing. In the first game, your goal was to roll up katamaris to replace the lost stars from the sky. This time, it's planets, which is odd as nobody ever seems to point out that the original planets are missing, and if so, what happened to them. Probably the best part is that We Love Katamari is that it knows that it's a video game... or at least, it knows that the original Katamari Damacy was. Much of the storyline has to do with appeasing "fans" of the original game. I'm surprised that more video games don't try this... television shows have been breaking the fourth wall for years. By taking itself less seriously, We Love Katamari is a breath of fresh air.
I've only played through We Love Katamari once, and haven't yet experienced everything it has to offer, so please don't consider this a full review. I'll be going through it stage by stage in the coming weeks. However, I've played enough to heartily recommend it. If you're a gamer, you must own this game. If you're not a gamer, make this your first. It's a great place to start. If you're cheap, it only costs $29, much less than most games. If you don't have any thumbs, buy this game and a helper monkey. If you have no thumbs and you're allergic to monkeys, I'm sorry, friend, you're out of luck.
posted by Andrew Lenahan at 5:28 PM
2 Comments:
My favorite game in the whole wide world was the first one...Im still brand new at checking out the second one here...though...so far so katamari!!!! that means awesome! Your link to the official site seems to have been swallowed by a big black hole of doom...ya might want to check that out.
"Though I really enjoyed the first game, We Love Katamari is better. For one thing, it's bigger, and longer, and with quite a bit more variety than the previous version."
hehe...you said bigger and longer!
can I have a monkey helper even though I have both my thumbs? maybe he could help me get past the underwater part.
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