Me & My Motion Sickness
My thoughts on Me & My Katamari are rather conflicting and I don't know how much of the bad stuff I can excuse in this game for being a PSP game unlike the previous entries in the series. There are definitely flaws because of the restrictions of the Playstation Portable, but some others are just flaws in terms of weird design choices. I'm sure you'll know what I mean once you read what I wrote below.
I'm just going to name the worst offenders straight by the name: the level design and gameplay loop. Katamari's gameplay loop has always revolved about starting small, but as you roll up enough things over time, you eventually visit locations from earlier or a past level, but with a bigger Katamari. There's a sense of scale and progression, which MMK doesn't really have. The levels always play out the same and I mean that quite literally - the first city map always has the 75cm checkpoint and 1.50m size requirement, while the lake map always has the 4m checkpoint and 10m size requirement. And you're going to play these maps a lot, since for some reason the "new" gameplay loop in MMK has you going through multiple levels in a row. You would think there would be atleast some variety here, but no. After the house map, the first city map will always follow, then the lake map and so on. Every. Single. Time.
Atleast some maps have winter variants, but they're rather monotonous after the first few times too (looking at YOU, winter lake). I didn't even mention how frustrating the object placement is at times in MMK, this becomes really apparent in City 1. Now, for some reason the bonus levels all have unique map variants, but they're never used again for the "main" stages. Why? The desert map is literally used a single time in the entire game! Atleast the bonus stages are a good time and felt very refreshing to play every now and then inbetween the repetitive main story levels.
A personal major criticism I have with MMK is the shaky camera. It can't ever decide if it wants to be a third-person or top-down camera, so it keeps shifting between those two and I noticed it gets really bad when you roll over bumps. Had to quit the game two times because it made me actually nauseous and I pretty much never have motion sickness in games, this wasn't the case in Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari either. So if you're particularly sensitive to motion sickness in games, I'd think twice about playing Me & My Katamari.
I can see how people complain about the controls too, since MMK uses the buttons instead of another analog stick like in the previous games. To be honest, I only played with the original controls for three levels before I decided to remap the buttons to my right stick and it felt a lot more natural (even if it was a bit more unresponsive than in the previous games this way). Of course this wasn't possible to implement originally because of how the PSP was built and I really believe Namco did the best they could with translating the dual-stick controls onto the device. The rolling itself feels good in this game, even if it has the same issue as Damacy, with easily being able to get stuck between objects at times.
Considering my negativity towards MMK so far, you'd think I would absolutely hate it, but I don't. There are still many cool things in here worth mentioning, like the island hub world, playable cousins, the fantastic selection of the soundtrack of the previous two games (bit of a bummer that there's only a single new song with Katamari on the Funk, but it's alright since the reused songs are very good) and the great adaption of the artstyle. Like seriously, this game manages to capture the Katamari aesthetic from the PS2 games so well. Little things like the individual island designs you get as a reward for completing a stage or the ability to equip presents again made the game really more enjoyable and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have atleast a bit of a good time with Me & My Katamari! Thanks for reading.
My thoughts on Me & My Katamari are rather conflicting and I don't know how much of the bad stuff I can excuse in this game for being a PSP game unlike the previous entries in the series. There are definitely flaws because of the restrictions of the Playstation Portable, but some others are just flaws in terms of weird design choices. I'm sure you'll know what I mean once you read what I wrote below.
I'm just going to name the worst offenders straight by the name: the level design and gameplay loop. Katamari's gameplay loop has always revolved about starting small, but as you roll up enough things over time, you eventually visit locations from earlier or a past level, but with a bigger Katamari. There's a sense of scale and progression, which MMK doesn't really have. The levels always play out the same and I mean that quite literally - the first city map always has the 75cm checkpoint and 1.50m size requirement, while the lake map always has the 4m checkpoint and 10m size requirement. And you're going to play these maps a lot, since for some reason the "new" gameplay loop in MMK has you going through multiple levels in a row. You would think there would be atleast some variety here, but no. After the house map, the first city map will always follow, then the lake map and so on. Every. Single. Time.
Atleast some maps have winter variants, but they're rather monotonous after the first few times too (looking at YOU, winter lake). I didn't even mention how frustrating the object placement is at times in MMK, this becomes really apparent in City 1. Now, for some reason the bonus levels all have unique map variants, but they're never used again for the "main" stages. Why? The desert map is literally used a single time in the entire game! Atleast the bonus stages are a good time and felt very refreshing to play every now and then inbetween the repetitive main story levels.
A personal major criticism I have with MMK is the shaky camera. It can't ever decide if it wants to be a third-person or top-down camera, so it keeps shifting between those two and I noticed it gets really bad when you roll over bumps. Had to quit the game two times because it made me actually nauseous and I pretty much never have motion sickness in games, this wasn't the case in Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari either. So if you're particularly sensitive to motion sickness in games, I'd think twice about playing Me & My Katamari.
I can see how people complain about the controls too, since MMK uses the buttons instead of another analog stick like in the previous games. To be honest, I only played with the original controls for three levels before I decided to remap the buttons to my right stick and it felt a lot more natural (even if it was a bit more unresponsive than in the previous games this way). Of course this wasn't possible to implement originally because of how the PSP was built and I really believe Namco did the best they could with translating the dual-stick controls onto the device. The rolling itself feels good in this game, even if it has the same issue as Damacy, with easily being able to get stuck between objects at times.
Considering my negativity towards MMK so far, you'd think I would absolutely hate it, but I don't. There are still many cool things in here worth mentioning, like the island hub world, playable cousins, the fantastic selection of the soundtrack of the previous two games (bit of a bummer that there's only a single new song with Katamari on the Funk, but it's alright since the reused songs are very good) and the great adaption of the artstyle. Like seriously, this game manages to capture the Katamari aesthetic from the PS2 games so well. Little things like the individual island designs you get as a reward for completing a stage or the ability to equip presents again made the game really more enjoyable and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have atleast a bit of a good time with Me & My Katamari! Thanks for reading.