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Description
Oh wow. This is one of those games I wanted to play for a long time, but never got the chance. Well, now I have. The premise is very unique. Roll a ball around and collect small items until you get big enough to collect bigger items. Repeat until OH GOD IT'S SO HUGE WHERE EVEN AM I?!

Ok, so it's not completely unique. I once played a browser game a long long time ago where you were a tiny fish, and you had to eat smaller fish to get bigger and eventually be the biggest fish. But it's unique in that no one ever thought about rolling up actual cities and stuff. So how does it fare?

Well, let's start with the controls. Why? Because it's the most god-awful controls in any game I've ever played. And trust me, I've played a lot of games. A LOT. A....ok, not really. But a lot is a lot, and these controls are terrible. You have to use both control sticks to move. Moving them both in the same direction moves in that direction. You can turn quickly by moving the sticks in opposite directions, but only vertically, So up/down or down/up. That's it. Hit L1+R1 to do a quick 180. That's about it. You get this little charge up thing, but it's not really that useful. If it sounds simple, I assure you, it's not. My brain doesn't work the way it asks you to. What's even worse, I never remember which combination of up/down turns you which way. And given this game is timed, screwing up controls can be bad. Also, the camera stays behind you, and it doesn't care if there's something solid there. It will see the thing and not you, and good luck getting your clunky self with bad controls out of an area when you can't see what's going on.

Oh, yeah, did I mention each stage is timed? Because that's kind of important to the game. I don't like timed stages. I never have. I mean, games like Super Mario Bros, that's fine. The clock is rarely an issue, and is mostly just there to be there (and give you extra points, because those matter so much). But this is how the game decides to section itself. It needs stages, and the best way it can do that is to put you in an area and time you. I don't know how this game could do it otherwise, but if Tony Hawk figured it out, Katamari can do something. I mean, it's the PS2. If it has the capability to make an open world like Grand Theft Auto, this game can do better than timed stages in the same zone, right?

Yep, same zone. As you clear stages (forget the side quest stars), you begin to realize that they're all in the same location. You spend the later stages going to the same zones you did before, and basically unlocking another zone or two on top of that. That...that's not fun. Stick me in other places would you? Give me some more areas to explore (yes, the next game does that, but it has its own problems). The only benefit to this is that you learn the areas pretty easily. And good for you, because you're gonna be knocking around and struggling to roll so you better know them well if you want to do well.

And another vague segue to my next point. This game seems to pride itself on its physics. Pick up a long thin object, and your katamari bounces up and down as it rolls. That's fine, I got no problem with that. But then the physics decide to just....be right when it feels like. When you start getting a little big, you'll find you can't squeeze through pathways you're supposed to be able to get through. And it's not like you're too big. It's just sometimes the game decides that something somewhere in your ball is sticking up against a wall. And sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you roll right through a giant elephant even though you're not big enough to pick it up. But if you're having trouble getting through, you have this neat little ability where you can roll up to a wall, and then roll UP the wall. It's a handy little tactic, except it rarely works. One problem is you have to be RIGHT UP on the wall and not moving. Or else you'll just bounce off of it, and good luck getting back into position. I've also had issues where I'd get up to the top, start to roll forward, and hit an invisible wall that knocks me right back. And speaking of knocking around, the designers decided that anytime you hit anything, things fly off your ball. Meaning, yes, you lose the size it grants. While it doesn't seem like a big deal most of the time, it sucks because you're gonna be hitting a TON of things. Remember those controls. Now imagine everything that moves going straight after you if you're too small to roll it up. Somehow...they know. The weird part is, in We Love Katamari, everybody's all gung ho about seeing katamaris and wanting to be in them and stuff. And it's not just the humans, even the animals want in on the action (yes, they talk to you). But in that game, they still try to knock you around, and flee when you can roll them up. They lied. Oh yeah, and speaking of humans, whenever you're big enough to pick them up, you don't. Why? Because they and cars have this special little thing that has them go flying anytime they get hit by the katamari. So you have to use those terrible controls to go after them. And if you don't in time (for the humans), they get up and run away faster than they were moving ever before, so good luck with that.

So why are you doing all this? Because your dad is the King of All Cosmos, and he dicked up, causing all the stars in the sky to go kaplooey. And he needs you to roll up stuff on Earth to recreate them. Eh, it's a game, don't think too much into it. I've heard people say that the King adds a certain charm to the game, but I think he adds a certain amount of annoying asshole to the game. He's not funny, but fortunately, you can skip most of his dialogue. Except during the most important time, which is when you're actually rolling shit up. His face with a speech bubble pops up IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN, and it reads out slow enough that you can't really see what you're doing. Because these terrible controls weren't bad enough. And he never says anything useful. In one stage, there's a ton of bananas just after the start. As you pick them up, his face pops up and he says "Ba". Then "Na" after a few more. Then "Na" again. It's stupid, and he's stupid. And he's a terrible father. Yeah, I'm actually going there. Let's forget the idea that he's basically pinning his fuck-up on you, and making you clean it up. The entire time you're cleaning up his mess, he berates you and calls you small and keeps saying you can do better. Even though HE SETS THE SIZE YOU NEED TO REACH. So it's, "today, you have x time, and you need to be 3m." Then you reach that in the time, and he's like, "oh, 3m, you suck, it can be bigger". It's like if you went with your dad to a football field, and he got 30 yards away, and asked you to throw it to him. If you made it, then he walked up to you and said "nope, you can do better". Just get a distance away, and tell me to throw it as far as I can. Don't tell me I didn't throw it far enough when YOU TOLD ME TO THROW IT THAT FAR.

Some of the side quest stages are stupid too. Instead of going for big, or picking up as many of whatever as you can, it's just "get one of this". Problem is, if it's a bear, a damn sign with a bear on it counts. So you spend the whole time just trying to avoid as much as you can, while still getting bigger, trying to get the biggest bear or the biggest whatever. It's stupid.

Annoying character, terrible controls, glitchy gameplay. Wow. This game must suck.

No! This game is so much FUN! You roll stuff up, and you get bigger. You reach a certain plateau, and your view changes, and now you can pick up bigger stuff. You can pick up everything, and I mean everything. Going back to the Grand Theft Auto example, it's not like there's two buildings in the game you can walk in, and everything is just...there. No, everything in this game can be picked up, as long as you're big enough. Hell, you get big enough and you can pick up CLOUDS. And other weather stuff. It's so cool, and you're always progressing. That's what I like to see in games more than anything else: constant progression where you feel like your character is getting stronger, or in this case, bigger.

Ok, but, does it make up for the all the bad stuff? I don't know. It's a tough call. It's a lot of bad stuff to make up for. I played through it twice, so, I mean, it can't be that bad, right? I guess not. I give it a 6/10. It's fun, but it's frustrating because of the terrible collision detection and abysmal controls and other stuff. I would have loved a more open-world kind of thing with size objectives. A bigger zone, as it were. But the best it does is give you Eternal mode after you cleared enough of the last stage in one go. But once you get Eternal mode, you basically got everything in the entire game anyway, so it's really no fun to do it again.

Oh one last thing. I did mention We Love Katamari a couple times. So, as a bonus, a quick review for it. It diversifies the area better than the first, but it kills other things. The menu screen turned into a mini-zone you can run around, and instead of knowing what you're about to do, whether it be a "stage" or a "side quest", there's really no way of knowing. Plus you have to move through multiple screens to potentially find the next challenge. Also, some of the new challenges were just stupid. In particular, the one with the campfire. You have to get big enough to light a specific collection of firewood. Your katamari is on fire, and it goes out after a few short seconds unless you roll up something. Anything. But that's harder than it sounds, because you pretty much have to be constantly rolling things up, and the level does not give you a great opportunity to do so. If your katamari goes out, you lose and have to restart. It's stupid. Also, the King is even more annoying than before. So We Love Katamari gets a 5/10 for feeling like it went in reverse from advancing from the first game. But at least it got the camera a little better. Just...not enough.

Description
Oh wow. This is one of those games I wanted to play for a long time, but never got the chance. Well, now I have. The premise is very unique. Roll a ball around and collect small items until you get big enough to collect bigger items. Repeat until OH GOD IT'S SO HUGE WHERE EVEN AM I?!

Ok, so it's not completely unique. I once played a browser game a long long time ago where you were a tiny fish, and you had to eat smaller fish to get bigger and eventually be the biggest fish. But it's unique in that no one ever thought about rolling up actual cities and stuff. So how does it fare?

Well, let's start with the controls. Why? Because it's the most god-awful controls in any game I've ever played. And trust me, I've played a lot of games. A LOT. A....ok, not really. But a lot is a lot, and these controls are terrible. You have to use both control sticks to move. Moving them both in the same direction moves in that direction. You can turn quickly by moving the sticks in opposite directions, but only vertically, So up/down or down/up. That's it. Hit L1+R1 to do a quick 180. That's about it. You get this little charge up thing, but it's not really that useful. If it sounds simple, I assure you, it's not. My brain doesn't work the way it asks you to. What's even worse, I never remember which combination of up/down turns you which way. And given this game is timed, screwing up controls can be bad. Also, the camera stays behind you, and it doesn't care if there's something solid there. It will see the thing and not you, and good luck getting your clunky self with bad controls out of an area when you can't see what's going on.

Oh, yeah, did I mention each stage is timed? Because that's kind of important to the game. I don't like timed stages. I never have. I mean, games like Super Mario Bros, that's fine. The clock is rarely an issue, and is mostly just there to be there (and give you extra points, because those matter so much). But this is how the game decides to section itself. It needs stages, and the best way it can do that is to put you in an area and time you. I don't know how this game could do it otherwise, but if Tony Hawk figured it out, Katamari can do something. I mean, it's the PS2. If it has the capability to make an open world like Grand Theft Auto, this game can do better than timed stages in the same zone, right?

Yep, same zone. As you clear stages (forget the side quest stars), you begin to realize that they're all in the same location. You spend the later stages going to the same zones you did before, and basically unlocking another zone or two on top of that. That...that's not fun. Stick me in other places would you? Give me some more areas to explore (yes, the next game does that, but it has its own problems). The only benefit to this is that you learn the areas pretty easily. And good for you, because you're gonna be knocking around and struggling to roll so you better know them well if you want to do well.

And another vague segue to my next point. This game seems to pride itself on its physics. Pick up a long thin object, and your katamari bounces up and down as it rolls. That's fine, I got no problem with that. But then the physics decide to just....be right when it feels like. When you start getting a little big, you'll find you can't squeeze through pathways you're supposed to be able to get through. And it's not like you're too big. It's just sometimes the game decides that something somewhere in your ball is sticking up against a wall. And sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you roll right through a giant elephant even though you're not big enough to pick it up. But if you're having trouble getting through, you have this neat little ability where you can roll up to a wall, and then roll UP the wall. It's a handy little tactic, except it rarely works. One problem is you have to be RIGHT UP on the wall and not moving. Or else you'll just bounce off of it, and good luck getting back into position. I've also had issues where I'd get up to the top, start to roll forward, and hit an invisible wall that knocks me right back. And speaking of knocking around, the designers decided that anytime you hit anything, things fly off your ball. Meaning, yes, you lose the size it grants. While it doesn't seem like a big deal most of the time, it sucks because you're gonna be hitting a TON of things. Remember those controls. Now imagine everything that moves going straight after you if you're too small to roll it up. Somehow...they know. The weird part is, in We Love Katamari, everybody's all gung ho about seeing katamaris and wanting to be in them and stuff. And it's not just the humans, even the animals want in on the action (yes, they talk to you). But in that game, they still try to knock you around, and flee when you can roll them up. They lied. Oh yeah, and speaking of humans, whenever you're big enough to pick them up, you don't. Why? Because they and cars have this special little thing that has them go flying anytime they get hit by the katamari. So you have to use those terrible controls to go after them. And if you don't in time (for the humans), they get up and run away faster than they were moving ever before, so good luck with that.

So why are you doing all this? Because your dad is the King of All Cosmos, and he dicked up, causing all the stars in the sky to go kaplooey. And he needs you to roll up stuff on Earth to recreate them. Eh, it's a game, don't think too much into it. I've heard people say that the King adds a certain charm to the game, but I think he adds a certain amount of annoying asshole to the game. He's not funny, but fortunately, you can skip most of his dialogue. Except during the most important time, which is when you're actually rolling shit up. His face with a speech bubble pops up IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN, and it reads out slow enough that you can't really see what you're doing. Because these terrible controls weren't bad enough. And he never says anything useful. In one stage, there's a ton of bananas just after the start. As you pick them up, his face pops up and he says "Ba". Then "Na" after a few more. Then "Na" again. It's stupid, and he's stupid. And he's a terrible father. Yeah, I'm actually going there. Let's forget the idea that he's basically pinning his fuck-up on you, and making you clean it up. The entire time you're cleaning up his mess, he berates you and calls you small and keeps saying you can do better. Even though HE SETS THE SIZE YOU NEED TO REACH. So it's, "today, you have x time, and you need to be 3m." Then you reach that in the time, and he's like, "oh, 3m, you suck, it can be bigger". It's like if you went with your dad to a football field, and he got 30 yards away, and asked you to throw it to him. If you made it, then he walked up to you and said "nope, you can do better". Just get a distance away, and tell me to throw it as far as I can. Don't tell me I didn't throw it far enough when YOU TOLD ME TO THROW IT THAT FAR.

Some of the side quest stages are stupid too. Instead of going for big, or picking up as many of whatever as you can, it's just "get one of this". Problem is, if it's a bear, a damn sign with a bear on it counts. So you spend the whole time just trying to avoid as much as you can, while still getting bigger, trying to get the biggest bear or the biggest whatever. It's stupid.

Annoying character, terrible controls, glitchy gameplay. Wow. This game must suck.

No! This game is so much FUN! You roll stuff up, and you get bigger. You reach a certain plateau, and your view changes, and now you can pick up bigger stuff. You can pick up everything, and I mean everything. Going back to the Grand Theft Auto example, it's not like there's two buildings in the game you can walk in, and everything is just...there. No, everything in this game can be picked up, as long as you're big enough. Hell, you get big enough and you can pick up CLOUDS. And other weather stuff. It's so cool, and you're always progressing. That's what I like to see in games more than anything else: constant progression where you feel like your character is getting stronger, or in this case, bigger.

Ok, but, does it make up for the all the bad stuff? I don't know. It's a tough call. It's a lot of bad stuff to make up for. I played through it twice, so, I mean, it can't be that bad, right? I guess not. I give it a 6/10. It's fun, but it's frustrating because of the terrible collision detection and abysmal controls and other stuff. I would have loved a more open-world kind of thing with size objectives. A bigger zone, as it were. But the best it does is give you Eternal mode after you cleared enough of the last stage in one go. But once you get Eternal mode, you basically got everything in the entire game anyway, so it's really no fun to do it again.

Oh one last thing. I did mention We Love Katamari a couple times. So, as a bonus, a quick review for it. It diversifies the area better than the first, but it kills other things. The menu screen turned into a mini-zone you can run around, and instead of knowing what you're about to do, whether it be a "stage" or a "side quest", there's really no way of knowing. Plus you have to move through multiple screens to potentially find the next challenge. Also, some of the new challenges were just stupid. In particular, the one with the campfire. You have to get big enough to light a specific collection of firewood. Your katamari is on fire, and it goes out after a few short seconds unless you roll up something. Anything. But that's harder than it sounds, because you pretty much have to be constantly rolling things up, and the level does not give you a great opportunity to do so. If your katamari goes out, you lose and have to restart. It's stupid. Also, the King is even more annoying than before. So We Love Katamari gets a 5/10 for feeling like it went in reverse from advancing from the first game. But at least it got the camera a little better. Just...not enough.