Katamari Forever is one of those games that's so unique and so out there, it has to be experienced, as it's impossible to understand it just from reading about it. I know this because I experienced this first-hand, originally having bought it on the recommendation of a friend, knowing nothing about the series except that it was supposed to be incredible. Even with the game in my hands, reading the back of the box only made me more confused.
The King of All Cosmos bumped his head and lost all his memory. The Prince and his cousins created RoboKing to replace the King, but it went out of control and destroyed all the stars in the Cosmos. Now, you must clean up the mess made by RoboKing and bring back the King's memory by rolling up everything in the Cosmos!
Not that helpful, huh? Most of what it says regards the plot of the game. The King of All Cosmos hit his head while performing a stunt of sorts and fell in a coma. The Prince and company, unable to awake His Majesty, decided the best course of action would be to build a robot that would replace him in his royal duties; however, due to a bug, the robot went berserk, flew into the Cosmos and destroyed the stars. This leaves you, the player, with two tasks: one, rolling up new stars to refill the sky, and two, rolling up memories inside the King's head to restore his consciousness.
Rolling up is the keyword, the one piece of information on that text blurb that relates to the game's mechanics: in every stage, your character is placed on some kind of place from Earth -- a table, a garden, a city -- with a ball in front of them. Any objects touched by it stick to it, so long as they are smaller that what you currently, forming an ever-growing mass of objects that the game calls a Katamari (a word that literally translates to 'cluster'). Your job, as the Prince, is to take a Katamari of a certain starting size and grow it to a certain diameter so it can be flung into space to make a new star in the sky.
There are often special conditions to this that make the trip to Earth more tricky: it could be that there's a time limit, or a limit on the amount of objects that can be rolled up, or a certain type of object that must or must not go into the Katamari. This variety of different challenges combined with ever transforming stages where greater Katamari sizes open up new pathways and interactions, as well as a fantastic soundtrack about as iconic as the game itself, keep the game feeling ever fresh even after rolling dozens of Katamari.
Which is to say, just talking about Katamari Forever makes me want to go for a spin, or rather, for a roll, even though I've completed the game a couple of times on all of its modes. It's fantastic on so many levels, unique in all the things it does, from how it's visuals, to its sound, to how it tells its story, but it's the mesmerizing gameplay that really ties it all together. It seems simple enough at first, and its frantic pacing might make one think they can roll everything and win, but there's a lot of strategy into when and how to visit certain parts of the stage to get a good time.
And I do want to emphasize "mesmerizing": the game creates a bizarre spin on the idea of a power fantasy, turning the "I bet can kill that" thought that's so common in games into "I bet I can roll that". Every slightly larger item is taken as a challenge and made into a mental note, culminating into the amusement of seeing your ever-increasing ball of mayhem grow even larger by trapping household items, bikes, horrified screaming pedestrians, houses and so on. It's that Hotline Miami feeling of behaving like an absolute lunatic, and not even noticing it until the music stops.
It's such a thrill. Katamari Forever is one of my favorite games of all time, and even within its series it shines as one of the largest and most varied entries. I wish Bamco would port it everywhere instead of drip-feeding ports of older releases.
The King of All Cosmos bumped his head and lost all his memory. The Prince and his cousins created RoboKing to replace the King, but it went out of control and destroyed all the stars in the Cosmos. Now, you must clean up the mess made by RoboKing and bring back the King's memory by rolling up everything in the Cosmos!
Not that helpful, huh? Most of what it says regards the plot of the game. The King of All Cosmos hit his head while performing a stunt of sorts and fell in a coma. The Prince and company, unable to awake His Majesty, decided the best course of action would be to build a robot that would replace him in his royal duties; however, due to a bug, the robot went berserk, flew into the Cosmos and destroyed the stars. This leaves you, the player, with two tasks: one, rolling up new stars to refill the sky, and two, rolling up memories inside the King's head to restore his consciousness.
Rolling up is the keyword, the one piece of information on that text blurb that relates to the game's mechanics: in every stage, your character is placed on some kind of place from Earth -- a table, a garden, a city -- with a ball in front of them. Any objects touched by it stick to it, so long as they are smaller that what you currently, forming an ever-growing mass of objects that the game calls a Katamari (a word that literally translates to 'cluster'). Your job, as the Prince, is to take a Katamari of a certain starting size and grow it to a certain diameter so it can be flung into space to make a new star in the sky.
There are often special conditions to this that make the trip to Earth more tricky: it could be that there's a time limit, or a limit on the amount of objects that can be rolled up, or a certain type of object that must or must not go into the Katamari. This variety of different challenges combined with ever transforming stages where greater Katamari sizes open up new pathways and interactions, as well as a fantastic soundtrack about as iconic as the game itself, keep the game feeling ever fresh even after rolling dozens of Katamari.
Which is to say, just talking about Katamari Forever makes me want to go for a spin, or rather, for a roll, even though I've completed the game a couple of times on all of its modes. It's fantastic on so many levels, unique in all the things it does, from how it's visuals, to its sound, to how it tells its story, but it's the mesmerizing gameplay that really ties it all together. It seems simple enough at first, and its frantic pacing might make one think they can roll everything and win, but there's a lot of strategy into when and how to visit certain parts of the stage to get a good time.
And I do want to emphasize "mesmerizing": the game creates a bizarre spin on the idea of a power fantasy, turning the "I bet can kill that" thought that's so common in games into "I bet I can roll that". Every slightly larger item is taken as a challenge and made into a mental note, culminating into the amusement of seeing your ever-increasing ball of mayhem grow even larger by trapping household items, bikes, horrified screaming pedestrians, houses and so on. It's that Hotline Miami feeling of behaving like an absolute lunatic, and not even noticing it until the music stops.
It's such a thrill. Katamari Forever is one of my favorite games of all time, and even within its series it shines as one of the largest and most varied entries. I wish Bamco would port it everywhere instead of drip-feeding ports of older releases.