Beautiful Katamari

Just like the previous Katamari games on the PS2, this game is tons of fun (quite literally). The basic concept involves rolling a sticky ball around that picks stuff up when you roll over it. As you pick up more and more things, the ball grows in size, like a snowball when you're making a snowman. You start off picking up stuff like paper clips and thumb tacks, but you eventually get to the point where you are picking up skyscrapers and even entire islands. And it's all done in wacky Japanese-style insanity.<br><br>Graphically, the textures are crisp and vibrant, but it still looks about the same as the old PS2 games. Of course, the game retails for only $30, so it's definitely priced accordingly. Unfortunately, it's also quite short. Most people would probably run through the entire game in 2-3 days. On the plus side, however, the fun doesn't end there. Beautiful Katamari features a full-on versus mode for up to 4 people over Xbox Live.<br><br>Your Katamari controls using both analog sticks like a tank - both sticks forward to go straight, just one side forward to turn, and one forward and the other backwards to spin in place. It's slightly tricky at first, but you get used to it. The music is also quite odd at first. It's a mixture of easy listening, jazz, and some kind of kiddy pop. Surprisingly, these are actually quite enjoyable and catchy tunes, even for those people brought up on first-person shooters.<br><br>Overall, this is definitely an enjoyable game. It's simple fun that can be enjoyed by hardcore gamers, but is also a casual family experience. It's worth a rent just to check out the zaniness, but it's nothing new for people that played the previous Katamari games. If you loved those games, however, you'll feel right at home playing this one. Given the price tag and online capabilities (especially the many leaderboard varieties), fans of the series might just want to buy this game instead.

The game is really short (2-5 hours) and doesn't really offer that much replay value, but the original gameplay, style and humor definitely make it one of the best rental games there is for 360.

I loved Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari, so I was excited to play this game. I had heard that a different team developed this one, and it shows.<br><br>The major complaints:<br>- No Auto-save<br>- The game makes you feel stupid for not getting a perfect score on a stage. "Learn to roll better.", "You are no good.", etc.<br>- The time is tuned very hard making this the most difficult Katamari game yet.<br>- Slow method to go between levels and menu options (forcing player to "fly" through the menu.)<br>- Frustrating camera. It isn't quick enough to show what's around you, and items block your view constantly.<br>- The katamari doesn't go up walls as well as it used to.<br>- Turning is harder than ever, near impossible at times.<br>- The katamari feels slower. I would think after three games the user could gain a speed increase or have actual analog speed input, not just direction.<br>- Unecessary messages from the king explaining things never even mentioned in the frist two games, which clutter the screen: --(Imagine every time Mario got a mushroom a message box popping up saying: 'You know, Mario is bigger now and can destroy blocks.')<br>- So many items sometimes, the katamari gets stuck in the clutter.<br><br>The graphics keep with the traditional look of a Katamari game, and the essence is still there. But for my money the first two Katamari games stand up better, and are a lot more fun.

I'm rather new to the Katamari series myself, but several friends have played it, so it came highly recommended. However, within about an hour I found myself straining to keep playing.<br><br>The first thing I would have liked to see was a difficulty setting. Experienced players should be able to accomplish the challenges, but as a newbie, I found myself in a constant pattern of failing each level (even the first non-tutorial level) several times before passing.<br><br>The types of items can be confusing at times too. For example, when rolling the planet Venus, you're told to gather expensive things. When my Katamari was complete, I was berated for gathering Rich things (which the King described as Luxury items) instead of Expensive things. How am I supposed to know the difference? Of course, this assumes that I can even see around my Katamari to make those decisions, or that I have the time to seek out specific types of items, rather than frantically gathering anything and everything so I can slide in under the time limit.<br><br>Also, I realize that Japanese games don't encourage and hold hands as much as their American counterparts (see also: Dance Dance Revolution), but the King is just irritating. Even an above-average Katamari merits a response of "Okay, I guess this'll do." Anything less (and again, the scoring system appears quite arbitrary) earns derision and ridicule. Yeah, that makes me want to play again.<br><br>Finally, there are the Xbox Live downloads. It seems pretty sleazy of the developers to require about $20 of paid downloads in order to complete all the Achievements; those items should either be free or voluntary, especially considering how little content there game contains as shipped.<br><br>Overall, this was a pretty disappointing game, especially for something so highly praised by my friends and fellow gamers. I'm willing to give the earlier installations a try, because I love the idea of Katamari, but this version isn't worth anything close to full retail.

Well i only ever played the 2nd Katamari game, and I loved it, i let all my friends borrow it and they loved it.<br><br>This beautiful katamari somehow loses the fun. I think its the much more amped difficulty, while its possible to beat a level, its just soooooo hard to get a good score on them. I could only stand this game for a couple of levels, but it seemed to just recycle too much. The play control seemed less responsive, I'm not sure if this is because of the xbox 360 controller, as apposed to the ps2, or if it just sucks more. The off the wall comedy of the last game has been replaced by just off the wall.<br><br>The king of the cosmos talks WAAY too much, and when yer retrying a level for the 20th time, trying to get a score better than 40%/points it really gets on yer nerves. Somehow the camera angle on this katamari has gone from workable to devastating. In a game that's all about speed and efficiency having a camera angle that hides you from view at every opportunity is infuriating.<br><br>Yes, and of course the graphics haven't really improved at all, but even if this game had the best graphics ever it'd still drive you nutz real quick.<br><br>If you haven't played any Katamari yet, start with We Love Katamari, that game was awesome, if you played katamari and want more, give up, this game will disappoint you and make you wonder if you ever really liked katamari to begin with.

Can you name a game where you can roll around the world as awesome things like people and cars stick to you? Well i can!! its called Katamari and it's beautiful. You start off as a tiny guy just picking up what you can, then poof, the ball is huge and your picking up houses an buildings..yesss..I can hear it now, little foreign voices singing melodies while I roll up the world! Survey says: 4 Golden Woots on the WOOTOMETER..

Half of the game is locked and the only way to unlock it is by buying downloadable keys. There's already 8 individual downloads on Live. Each one cost 200 points, and consist of cousins and accessories. You also have to buy keys to unlock levels, and mission objectives but they're not available yet.<br><br>Isn't there laws against these kind of things?<br><br>Virtual Fighter 5 for the 360 is doing the same thing (unlock accessories). Though this kind of thing has been going on since last year.<br><br>Please help and boycott against crooked practices like this

Ok, let's keep this simple. BK is a fun, freaky, and addictive game that not only makes you laugh but also gives you some really addictive gameplay. The main problem is that there isn't much to the game at all. Many can finish the game in two to four hours. There are only a handful of levels and they do offer a touch of replayability if you want to try to find all of the presents and cousins but honestly. There isn't enough content to keep many people interested.<br><br>The online play is actually kinda fun but very limited in what it has to offer. The dialog in the game can be funny but really gets annoying after a while. You have to manually push the buttons to speed up the very slow moving dialog boxes and sometimes the boxes will pop up right in the middle of your screen as you are playing the game. This is a big annoyance that can be played through but ends up being a pain in the butt.<br><br>There are also some achievements that cannot be gotten other than by downloading some future content from XBOX Live. This is really weird since the game itself (while cheaper than most new releases) simply doesn't have much content to offer at retail.<br><br>So, BK is fun, annoyances aside. But the fun simply doesn't last long enough. With only a handful of levels, last-gen graphics, etc. the game falls well short of what it could have been.