Katamari Forever [PS3]

When singing ducks fly across the screen over top of a mish-mash of rainbows, Japanese superheroes, flowers and flying people, you know that it can be the intro to only one type of a game: a Katamari title. The series is returning to the PlayStation family with the release of Katamari Forever on the PlayStation 3, currently slated for release on September 22nd.

Fans of the franchise know what to expect here. Playing as the Prince (or one of his cousins after you unlock them), you roll a Katamari (a big ball thing) around a level and pick up objects with it. As these things, which can be anything from a battery to a flower to a tree to houses and buildings, stick to the ball and increase its size, you can pick up bigger and bigger objects. Occasionally you'll find objectives (grab 250 flowers in said level), but generally speaking you just pick up as much stuff as you can and try to get your Katamari to a certain size before the time runs out.

The game opens with a rather unfortunate accident. The Prince is practicing his jumping skills, and the King, not one to sit back and be overshadowed, said that it's time to show off his giga-jump and launches into the cosmos. A flying black meteor hits him in the head, rendering him unconscious and without any memories. The Prince knows that someone needs to run the cosmos in his absence, so he creates a RoboKing, which then goes crazy and shoots all of the stars and planets out of the sky. So then it's up to you to roll up replacement stars and planets, and also roll around inside of the King's head to bring back previous memories and restore him to his former jackass self.

Yep, it's a Katamari game, all right.

In terms of the play mechanics, nothing has really changed all that much, although you can now perform a fairly large jump by yanking the controller upwards. This helps you get up over large obstacles and progress more quickly than using ramps or simply rolling over a ledge, but it can be a little touchy. You have to be moving forward and, from my experience, you can't be up against something, so you can't roll up against a wall and then try to jump over it - you need to jump while on the move, and some spots are tight enough that it makes this tricky.

Outside of that, this is roughly the same Katamari experience that we've been playing for a handful of years now. This preview build still has the same camera quirks that all of the other games have had, and the controls are just as responsive (or not) as before.

There are a couple interesting twists, though. Levels are split between RoboKing and the real King. Generally speaking, the levels all have the same sort of goals that we've seen in the previous games, though the real King levels usually start out black and white. Objects without color are things that he can't remember yet, and as you collect something, all of the other copies will gain color to indicate that he remembers them now. It's not a game-changer by any stretch of the meaning, but it's a cool visual touch that adds to the, err, story.

No, the game isn't all that different from what we've played before. In fact, it's pretty much the same game with different stuff to collect and a different story. But, as I'm finishing this article, I want to play more, and I think that says enough.

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