There's an old saying that a rolling stone gathers no moss. If that stone were a katamari, however, it would gather up not only the moss, but the rocks, the soda bottles, the trash can, the park bench, and eventually the park.
Beautiful Katamari is the fourth game in the Katamari series. Once again the klutzy King of All Cosmos has accidentally destroyed the galaxy by creating a black hole that hoovered everything around it. Fortunately he was able to stop it before the Earth fell victim as well. To replace the missing celestial objects, the titanic King instructs his microscopic son the Prince to go to Earth and use katamaris to roll up items.
The basic premise in Beautiful Katamari is unchanged from its predecessors. As the Prince (or one of his unlockable cousins), you roll a colorful, very sticky ball called a katamari to collect items smaller than it. The bigger it gets, the bigger the items it can pick up. For example, you may start with coins and thumbtacks and end with bicycles and phone booths. Later stages have you rolling up countries and even planets. To unlock the next level, you must meet certain objectives set by the King -- mainly to create a specific-sized katamari in a given time. However, as an addition in Beautiful Katamari, the King also asks for specific items to make a celestial body; for example, to collect as many energy-related items as possible to create the Sun.
There are other features in Beautiful Katamari that set it apart from the previous games. One is that it supports high-definition television resolutions, which means that the game's searingly colorful characters and environment can be experienced in full HD glory. Another is that through Xbox LIVE, players can play with or against each other, and download extra levels.
Article comments
1 - Ken Edwards
Nicely written review Kaonashi. The $40 "budget" price on this one is nice, too. Until of course you consider that it costs something like $22.50 to purchase the seven DLC levels. So much for that budget price.