Me and My Katamari (2005)

The third Katamari game I have played through, and the third game in basically 1 month. Katamari is pure simple joy, from the basic mechanics and premise, to its overly joyus soundtrack. Everything is a very simple and very fun pocket sided adventure in bite sized enjoyment.

The PSP game did suffer in a couple different aspects. The controls were the biggest issue with me, where it made me fail a couple levels, out of lack of feeling like I had actual control. Since the PSP suffered from a lack of a second joystick, you have to manipulate the face buttons like an analog stick as a stand in. This resulted in a ton of times where turning was nigh impossible. I always felt like I was fighting the controls, instead of feeling like the Katamari was going right where I wanted it to go.

There also was not enough levels and variation, I understand why, its a PSP game, you can’t really fit ALL that much data on a UMD, but the fact the game basically has 3-4 levels and its the same every time, with variations on where the items are placed, you just don’t have that much variety, when each level is 3-4 minutes each you repeat the same areas multiple times in the span of half an hour.

The music was great, with the Que Sera Sera track being my favorite, hearing the Engrish lyrics of a japanese man telling me how “I’m so in rove with you” and “I want to row you up into my rife” … It brought a smile to my face, I was so entranced and loved every song in the game, there was one or two where it seemed like more noise than music, but allowing you to pick which song was being played at the start of every level meant that you can choose which ones to never listen to again if so desired. Also, the given option of levels that have multiple parts to them, giving you the choice to change the song to something else was a pleasant surprise as well. I usually opted to play the default songs suggested, until I saw several repeats or the more noisy songs.

The dialogue has wore on me though, as much as I love the goofy insane japanese tropes and the King of All Cosmos is still a fantastic character, there isn’t much to him, it feels like after the first game, they noticed how much attention it got, and really leaned into the goofier aspects of the writing and went out of their way to write as much insane dialogue as possible. Sometimes its ok, sometimes it just seems like way too much, when all you want to do is get rolling.

There really isn’t much to say about the PSP Katamari game, other than, yes, it is more of the same game, maybe with a couple less levels than you are used to, or a bit downgrade in overall graphics (lower than low polygon count), but it still is a Katamari game at the heart of it all. It’s fun, goofy and a good palate cleanser of a game. I will probably continue on my journey of going through these games this year as you can devote as much or little time to these games and still have an absolute blast.