We Love Katamari

We Love Katamari is the most boastful sequel to a game I’ve ever seen. Just think about the title for a second: WE Love Katamari. Who is “we” in this context? Everyone is we. You love Katamari, your friends love Katamari, your family loves Katamari, even some toothless crackhead somewhere in a third-world country loves Katamari. After all, the main goal in the final mission of the first game was to roll up the entire world, so Katamari took the world by storm. This grand accomplishment of sweeping up the world also mirrors the real-life phenomenon of Katamari. After the release of the first game, everyone DID love Katamari. Given the title and the nature of Katamari Damacy’s sequel, it had every right to revel in its global success. However, I was not entirely convinced. The first Katamari Damacy is a fun, unique game with a wacky presentation that oozes charm. It’s no surprise to me that Katamari skyrocketed in popularity as it did, but I just wasn’t riding the same hype train. I still felt as if Katamari Damacy had plenty of room for improvement. I highly anticipated that the sequel, We Love Katamari, would improve on the previous game’s shortcomings. I was ready to love Katamari like everyone else, as the title insinuated.

We Love Katamari is a sequel that basks in the glory of its predecessor. It’s a game that understands that it’s a sequel and knows not to tread over the same ground. Rolling up the earth was enough of a herculean task for The Prince, so exceeding that achievement seems hard to top. Instead, We Love Katamari feels like winding down with a stable career after spending one’s youthful years as a stadium-filling rockstar. The careers that the King of the Cosmos and The Prince have taken up after figuratively (and literally) commandeering the world are like the call portion of a daytime talk show. The King of the Cosmos sits magnificently on his throne eagerly waiting to hear the wishes and concerns of the good people of the earth like a foppish, mustachioed Oprah Winfrey. Any requests or questions involving the potential or utility of the Katamari will be shown to by The Prince or any of his cousins, and these are the missions of the game. One of the requests earlier on in the game comes from a black dog: can a Katamari roll up the sun? If there is any task more enterprising than rolling up the earth, it’s rolling up the sun. Unfortunately, the Katamari cannot perform this task this early in the game, so the King gives the player a chance to come back later. To do this task, The Prince has to create a smattering of celestial bodies across the universe, rolling them up to create a Katamari big enough to conquer the mother of all daystars. Once the player does this, the game is considered complete.

Until The Prince fills the universe with enough bodies to rival the mass of the sun, he and his cousins must fulfill enough tasks for the common, insignificant beings of earth. If the main goal of Katamari Damacy was to showcase the potential of the size of a Katamari, these tasks in We Love Katamari are meant to showcase the range of utility of a Katamari. In the new hub world, earthlings raise their hands and call for attention when they have a request. These requests can range from cleaning some kid’s room, making a bouquet, and rolling up storm clouds to clear up the weather for a child’s school field trip. These requests either come from those who are enchanted by the might of the Katamari, or they come from skeptics who aren’t so convinced. Missions that are spurred by these skeptics are taken personally by The King of the Cosmos. They stab at his colossal ego that is as fragile as a stained-glass window, so The Prince or one of the other playable cousins (in this game, player one can play as any of the cousins at any time) have to make sure that those Katamari are especially impressive.

A giant criticism I had about Katamari Damacy was that the side missions weren’t great. Considering the grand progress of building up the Katamari in the first game, the side missions only served as distractions that didn’t add up to the first game’s glorious climax. Some of these side missions were even poorly designed and unfair to the player such as the mission where the player has to find the biggest bull or bear, only to stumble upon a milk carton or teddy bear ending the mission as a result. We Love Katamari is a game that is entirely composed of sub-missions similar to the ones in the first game. One would assume from this fact that I’d be apathetic about this game and what little it has to offer, but the developers have made a tremendous effort to make the sub-missions fun and engaging. They knew that they could never top the tremendous feat that was the finale of the first game, so they decided it would be better to switch directions. The initial improvement We Love Katamari makes in regards to the sub-missions is the variety. Too many of the sub-missions in Katamari Damacy were just collecting a series of items based on a theme. While there are still missions that revolve around this (even the goddamn size mission makes a return), they are merely a fraction of the total makeup of this game. Some missions like the ones that take place underwater and in the meadow of flowers drop the Katamari in unfamiliar territory. The settings here give off a sense of wonderment thanks to the art design and music. The snowman and racetrack missions frame the Katamari in clever new ways that involve rolling. I’m not particularly a fan of the firefly collecting mission, but I still appreciate its creativity. The best part about all of these missions is a simple improvement over the first game. One of my new favorites has The Prince roll up an aspiring sumo wrestler, collecting food as calories to gain enough weight to match his opponent. After each mission, the game gives the player an option to replay the mission over again before presenting their work to the King. It’s an incredible relief.

Unfortunately, there is a substantial downside to We Love Katamari’s direction. Because there isn’t a progression like there is in Katamari Damacy, the game kind of meanders about. The smattering of different missions with no real main goal makes this game feel like it’s flatlining compared to Katamari Damacy. The creative power fantasy of being able to conquer larger objects isn’t quite felt here. One could argue that rolling up the sun is one hell of a monumental final task, but it doesn’t feel that way. Every mission in the game is so contained with its gimmicks that rolling up the sun as the finale can easily be forgotten about once the player can accomplish it. There is also no conjunctive narrative revolving around the missions like in the first game. Instead, the player is treated to an origin story of The King of the Cosmos that’s told incrementally between missions. It’s an entertaining story, but I still ask why it needed to be included.

We Love Katamari is also a much more stressful experience than the last game. It’s slightly more challenging due to implementing stricter time constraints, but that’s not what I’m referring to. Once again, The King of the Cosmos will scold the player for delivering a lukewarm Katamari that only fulfills the bare minimum requirements. This cannot be helped in some cases, but we’re used to The King admonishing us like all of our hardass dads. An unwelcome addition to this is the complaints of the earthling that tasked us to this mission in the first place. On top of getting reamed out by the King, the earthling will echo his disappointment to the extent where it feels like being yelled at by a customer who gets your manager to help chastise you. It conjures up too many unpleasant memories of working in retail, uncovering my churlish side as a result. Oh, you weren’t satisfied with my Katamari, huh? Well, I know where you can stick it, and it ain’t up in the sky.

Sadly, We Love Katamari did not meet my expectations. I’m glad that it strives to be different from its predecessor, but the whole package doesn’t carry the same impact. The developers knew that the last game would be hard to top, and I don’t think they quite made the mark they wanted to here. I mentioned before in my review of the last game that it would be nice if there were thousands of levels keeping the player occupied, but I wholeheartedly retract that statement. That would have been more appropriate here because the level variety is so vast and the quality of most of these levels exceeds those from the first game. What Katamari lacks, We Love Katamari makes up for, but the same unfortunately can be said in reverse. So, do I love Katamari after this experience? *drumroll for effect* …No. I LIKE Katamari, but the title “I Like Katamari, But There Hasn’t Been a Perfect Game in the Series That Fits My Liking” isn’t a good title from a marketing standpoint. I guess I will always be a fair-weather fan of this franchise.

Basically an expansion pack to the original Katamari Damacy with more special missions such as making a snowman, rolling up expensive goods for a red panda fundraiser, or cleaning a child's room under a certain amount of time. Sometimes that's all the world just needs.

We Love Katmari is a very special and unique game, one that is pretty close to my heart. Its predecessor, Katamari Damacy, was a fantastic game that challenged expectations with extremely unique gameplay and an irreverent, comedic aesthetic that was very memorable. This game improves upon the formula that the first established, polishing the controls, level design, story and music. Everything that made Katamari Damacy a classic is here, and its better than it ever was or ever has been since. The variety in level design and level objectives is so much greater than in the first game, and the graphics have been improved somewhat significantly. The hub world is much nicer to look at, and there's a wider range of things to do and see than in the previous game. We Love Katamari is the perfect sequel to a game that already went so far above and beyond, making it for all intents and purposes, a complete and total masterpiece. The hilarious, abstract humor present in this game is irreplaceable and there may very well never be another game quite like this one again. It's a must-play on PS2, as far as I'm concerned.