Beautiful Katamari

All right, Beautiful Katamari, a game about using a magic adhesive orb to roll up various objects to create celestial bodies like satellites, moons, planets, even stars. What's not to love? Let's play with some giant, sticky balls!

What?

Surprisingly, this cover art is still less gay than Tyler.

So the intro video features dancing pandas, pocket sized elephants, extreme gardening, gratuitous amounts of color, and more glitter than my pitiful human eye was ever meant to behold. LSD would only make this less trippy. The music is an upbeat dance/techno melody sung in Japanese with occasional English lyrics thrown in, as seems all the rage these days. From what I can glean from the lyrics, everybody, it's time for starlight, there's a party tonight, we should dance dance and get together, stand up for galaxy Friday wonder night, clap clap, I'm going to show you the fantastic starlight play, ride on a lightspeed starway...I'm sorry, this is all way over my head. Come on! Where's my goddamn ball!?

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Lucky me, I get treated to another intro video explaining my motivation for rolling things up into a ball. As if I needed motivation to cause massive property damage. Anyway, it appears that God has somehow created a black hole that swallowed up the cosmos, and must send his only begotten son down to Earth to reveal unto the Jews a New Testament and...wait, sorry, got a little sidetracked there. But seriously, the King of All Cosmos, as he styles himself, has accidentally created a black hole, and it's up to our lone adventurer, clad in green, to take up sword and shield, find the missing pieces of the Triforce and defeat Ganon once and for...damn it! Well, Beautiful Katamari certainly has one thing going for it: it reminds me of all the things that are better than it.

Take a long, hard look. This is the guy that f&#@ed up the universe.

So, yeah...where was I? Oh, right, the King of All Cosmos was playing a game of tennis with his grotesquely muscled wife, and apparently his serve is strong enough to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Well, at least it makes more sense than most Star Trek plots. So, because the King is a lazy bastard, he volunteers you, the Prince, to go roll up a bunch of junk which he can then turn into stars.

Right off the bat, it's obvious that the King of All Cosmos is a retarded man-child who probably does something like this every other day. It's actually an effective and chilling portrayal of what would happen if you gave a ten year old godlike powers, although I don't quite know if that was what they were going for. While explaining the wonderful adventure I'm about to embark on, the King gets off on this tangent about how he's the star and I'm the sidekick. Sure, buddy, whatever you want. Just let me roll my goddamn ball.

The first level is, of course, the obligatory tutorial, where you go over the controls and skills for the game. Thankfully, the controls are very intuitive and easily mastered, making this level a breeze.

I really wish that last sentence was true.

No, instead of making this simple by having the left analog stick control movement and the right analog stick control the camera, they've created this byzantine control system where each stick seems to control one foot, causing the Prince to handle like an aircraft carrier. Eventually, I get a basic grasp of how to move forward and backward, turn, about face, and I start awkwardly moving my Katamari about the level, which seems to be a house made of puzzle pieces, hovering somewhere in space. Trippy.

The King occasionally interjects to mention interesting objects you may have rolled up while you're playing, oblivious to the fact that his crazy ramblings are taking up a good quarter of the screen. Add this to the size meter and clock in the upper left and right hand corners, and the rather unnecessary close up of the Prince in the lower right hand corner, and the screen becomes an incomprehensible assault on my senses.

See if you can figure out what the hell is going on here.

Hidden throughout each level is at least one present, which the King will try to pass off as being intentionally planted there, despite the fact that strategically placing presents in the Prince's often unpredictable path requires far more foresight than this artard seems capable of. Oddly enough, you can also find other family members scattered throughout each level, presumably stranded when the King suckered them into rebuilding the universe, and promptly forgot about them. At least, I think they're family members. They're all as tiny as the Prince, and wear the same ridiculous sort of outfits. For all I know, the King might have abducted random people and transformed them into the hideous little mockeries of life they are now.

So, after bumping into as many solid objects as possible, I finally build a Katamari big enough for the King's purposes. Before I can leave the training level, however, I have to find someone named Marcy, who is apparently stuck in one of several balls rolling in a circle around this hexagonal puzzle house. Of course, my Katamari is still too small absorb the balls, so I go around ripping the puzzle pieces from the floor and walls, basically tearing the spacehouse apart from the inside out. Finally I'm able to pick up the balls, and absorb Marcy's rolling prison into the jagged, cardboard mess that is my Katamari. Then the King's disembodied head comes from out of nowhere to take me away from this place using his magic royal rainbow powers. I'm not kidding.

Still less gay than Tyler.

Afterwards, the King sits the Prince on his lap while he callously picks apart all of the Prince's hard work under the guise of 'constructive criticism.' Kind of like what I'm doing to this game. Anyway, it turns out that my jumbled mass of puzzle pieces has a radius of about 23cm and is made mostly of "Weird Things." Right. After criticizing it's size and asking whether my lackluster performance was part of a documentary about failure, the King turns my jumbled ball of puzzle pieces into a new Moon. Awesome, maybe this will restore the Earth's tides and stop those mega tsunamis from forming. Finally, the King assigns an overall score to my Katamari. My moon rates a score of 43 points, which, judging from the off screen booing, isn't all that impressive. The King finishes by offhandedly remarking "well, at least it won't take up much room." Gee, thanks Dad.

After that ordeal, I'm brought to the Princedom, a series of floating space islands that basically serve as the game's menu screen. Each structure or building in the Princedom serves some kind of purpose. For instance, on the main island, the giant cake houses all of my presents, the rocketship connects me to Xbox Live, and the bulbous misshapen dome allows for co-op and multiplayer. Pretty self explanatory if you ask me. On the other islands are buildings that take me to new levels to roll my Katamari around. The only one that seems available at the moment is a mission in a toy store to create a 'fun satellite.' Being the stupid foolish curious person that I am, I decide to give it a whirl.

This time, the game is taking the training gloves off. It's playing for keeps now! This is the real world and there are real consequences! COME ON, LET'S DANCE MOTHERF%#$ERS!!!

Turns out I have to make it at least 20cm before five minutes are up. Okay, that's a little anti-climactic, but it's still just the first level. I start on top of a shelf somewhere high up in the toy/candy shop. The King starts some kind of monologue explaining what I need to do, but I don't really care, and start rolling things up while he's talking. The King throws a hissy fit, starts talking in Spanish, and then proclaims "We're not talking to you!"

Thank heaven for small mercies.

Anyway, I'm rolling up what appears to be ticket stubs and small hard candies. I can't really tell because the graphics, while ultra stylish and pretty, consist of polygons so sharp you'd swear you were playing a N64 game. My Katamari is gradually getting bigger, and I'm starting to roll up larger objects like milk cartons, power ranger action figures, mice, and-OHMYGOD I JUST RAN OVER A CAT! Holy crap! This is hilarious! There's a screaming, flailing cat attached to my Katamari!

Eventually I hit the size requirement and the King tells me I can quit now if I want. Thanks, but I have over a full minute of time left to pump this thing up. In that minute I venture out onto the street, touring the local neighborhood and running over all the junk left on the ground. This brings me to my next point: Are there no garbage cans in this city? So far the floors and streets have been completely littered with miscellanious objects like bowling pins, food, and penguins (WTF?). Eventually, the timer runs out, and the Prince's completely heterosexual father uses his rainbow powers to warp me and the Katamari out of there.

I get judged once again, and despite getting a majority of "fun" objects, and being 13 cm over the size limit, the King still says I did a bad job and I should feel bad. I'm starting to get mixed messages here. What's more, my score comes out to 19 points this time around. 19 points!? That's worse than when I had no clue what I was doing! The King makes a new satellite, laments the failures of his son, and I go to therapy. I'm starting to see a pattern here.

So the next series of missions are very similar to this one. There's a certain theme to the objects I need to pick up, like liquids for Mercury, expensive objects for Venus, hot things for Mars, plants for Jupiter (WTF? x2), etc. With each new mission, you start with larger and larger Katamari, allowing you to reach much larger sizes during the missions. Once you hit a certain size, you're allowed to leave the city, and explore the world with your rolling mass of rubbish and filth. The outside world is a sparse and disturbingly segmented hodgepodge of cities. Right next to your starting city, which I'm assuming is the equivalent of Tokyo, is a place that can only be appropriately referred to as "Americatown." It's an odd pastiche of the downtown areas from every famous American city. The Empire State building is sitting right next to the Sears Tower and the Space Needle, while Liberty Island is getting chummy with Alcatraz, and the Apollo Theater is only half a block away from the Golden Gate bridge. Just across the ocean is Moscow, set in a stereotypical Siberian wasteland, with the Kremlin and St. Basil's cathedral at the center. Right next to them is a desert featuring Egyptland, complete with the Valley of the Kings and it's own set of Pyram-HOLY CRAP THE PYRAMIDS ARE TAKING OFF INTO SPACE.

The Truth Is Out There.

Somebody feel like explaining why the pyramids have rocket engines?

Moving on, things start to get more interesting the larger your Katamari gets. Once you reach a certain size, you can start rolling up people, then cars, then buildings, then skyscrapers, then small islands, then parts of continental plates. I'm not making this up. Your Katamari will be able to rip out gigantic chunks of earth from the...well...Earth. It looks completely ridiculous, but in a way that's very satisfying.

I've got big balls
I've got big balls
They're such big balls
And they're dirty big balls
And he's got big balls
And she's got big balls
(But we've got the biggest balls of them all)

Eventually, I come to the final mission. Everything comes full circle. I must set right what once went wrong. I am getting rid of that black hole once and for all! I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of gum!

Now, you might be asking, "What's the plan, Cameron?" If you are asking that, you're a bit daft. What has the plan been for the previous 10 levels? Roll up stuff into a giant frickin' ball! Only this time around, the ball will be galactic in size. Once we have a ball big enough, the King will use it to, and pay attention here, plug up the black hole. Everyone who's taken high school physics, please join me in the refrain: BLACK HOLES DO NOT WORK LIKE THAT!

Okay, so the King starts me off with a 1cm Katamari. I have 18 minutes to turn this into a 10,000km cork for a black hole. Yippie-kay-yay motherf@#$%&.

Fairly quickly, I'm able to roll up to 1.5m around the town, and head on over to the local TV station, where I hit the jackpot and roll over like, 25 cameras, and get to 3m. Making my way out of the station, I quickly swell up to 6m and decide to terrorize other towns. I forgot to mention earlier that once you get big enough to roll up people (never thought I'd type that), said people will start to notice you and totally freak out. News crews will film you, average Joes will run away, cops will pull out their guns and shoot you, but it's all pointless, because you can't stop the Juggernaut!

Nothing can stop the Juggernaut!

So, pretty soon, I'm touring the world again, and my gigantic garbage ball is about 60m. Wait, is that Godzilla fighting Mecha-Godzilla? Sweet! Now I just ran over them! Hahahaha! I defeated Godzilla! I did in 3 minutes what the Japanese Self Defense Force couldn't accomplish in 29 feature length films!

Now I'm about 300m, and am sucking up things like airplanes and cruise ships. I wonder if insurance companies cover "being rolled up in a giant ball." I hit the 1km mark, and now I'm rolling up icebergs, islands, and the occasional cloud or two. Apparently clouds are now solid objects. Before I know it, I'm at 1000km, and I'm ripping continents in half, pulling up entire mountain ranges, and draining the world's oceans. Honestly, I never considered the Earth being torn apart by a giant sticky ball a likely doomsday scenario, but, here I am.

Soon, I'm at 10,000km! Success! I've rolled up the Earth!

Huh? It's not ending. In fact, I've just received two extra minutes and now th-HOLY CRAP I CAN ROLL AROUND THE MILKY WAY!!!

This is Beautiful Katamari's Crowning Moment of Awesome. I'm literally rolling in space! I just rolled up Alpha Centauri! Take that Epsilon Eridani! Deny me a credit card application, Sigma Draconis? SUCK ON MY GIANT STAR BALL! Holy crap! I'm up near 1,000,000km now! My Katamari has become this ginormous glowing ball of stellar matter! My God, it's full of stars!

I can't let you do that joke, Dave.

Finally, the timer runs out, the King pops in, and rainbows fill my screen once more. The King blathers on about how all his hard work saved the Cosmos and what not. Jerk, coming in and stealing my thunder. Just which idiot started this whole mess in the first place, huh? Of course, the King can't hear me yelling at my TV, and goes on to bemoan the size and composition of my galactic katamari.

What!? 39 points!? It's over 1,000,000km for f@#$'s sake! This is infuriating! You've got my pride. But you don't have me. You were going to kill me. You're going to have to come down here. You're going to have to come down here!

KHHHHAAAAAAAAN!

Well, there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Beautiful Katamari. One of the most addicting and simultaneously frustrating games I've ever played. If you have an Xbox 360 or a PS3, and are a masochist, by all means, go out and rent it. It's good for a laugh or fifty.