Preview

Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Namco Bandai Games, Inc.
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games America
Previewed by Justin Fassino on 2007-07-11

Namco's strategy with the Katamari series has been small, incremental change from iteration to iteration. It's no surprise then that the newest title, Beautiful Katamari, continues with the same gameplay found in previous titles. The story too is as outrageous as it ever was.

The King of the Cosmos apparently got the sporting itch, and during a game of tennis with the Queen, served a ball so hard that it ripped a hole in the fabric of space time, creating a black hole that started sucking up everything in the sky. Eat that, Andre Agassi.

After that mishap, it's up to the Prince to do what he does best: roll up the stuff from Earth to fill in the gaps. Using both analog sticks to guide the giant rotund mass, players will receive different tasks depending on the level's theme. In the demo we got to play, the Prince had to roll up a katamari made entirely of hot objects, with the goal being to achieve a total temperature of 10,000 degrees. Scattered throughout the level are various hot items like ramen, hot dogs, tea, and frying pans fresh off the grill. Unfortunately, someone decided it would be a good idea to leave snow cones, ice cream, and a lake mingled in with all the thermal material. Picking up the offending frigid paraphernalia will lower the temperature of your katamari, and if it gets to zero degree, it's game over.

Beautiful Katamari's graphics aren't going to impress anybody. While they are in HD and give a nice crispness to everything, it's still the same, super-deformed art direction that the series has always displayed. What IS different, however, is the sense of scale. Beautiful Katamari is bigger in just about all areas, from the size you can grow your ball to the size of each individual level. And the game itself will be bigger, too, as Namco plans to support it with downloadable content at some point in the future, including new levels and objects to pick up.

The game will also include multiplayer modes and online play. Locally or online, players can battle it out to see who can make the biggest katamari, and a two-player offline co-op mode is in the mix as well.

One of the biggest draws of any Katamari game is the music, and for this edition, a series of J-pop bands are recording original tunes for the game's soundtrack. From what was audible in the demo, expect the same genre-defying stuff of the past.

Beautiful Katamari is scheduled for a fall release sometime in late October to early November.

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