Pixelnauts.net

Almost five years to the day since the original Katamari Damacy rolled onto the Playstation 2 and into our hearts, Katamari Forever, the latest iteration in the bizarre puzzle/action series has now spread its crazy, distinctly Japanese stylings to the Playstation 3.

As the sixth game in the now bona fide franchise, Katamari Forever's title seems somewhat appropriate. The Prince has been rolling up Katamari balls now across five different platforms and is showing no signs of slowing down.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Katamari series, the premise is simple enough. You play a diminutive Prince -- no larger than a paper clip -- and you're tasked with pushing an impossibly adhesive ball that collects increasingly larger objects it comes into contact with. So while you may begin a level rolling up objects including pencils, marbles, and thumbtacks, you may end the level absorbing things like people, buildings, and even mountains.

There's something almost cathartic in rolling up an entire town into a nice Katamari ball for you to admire. Maybe it appeals to the collectophile in me. Or maybe it harkens back to some primal compulsion to gather and store goods. I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it was fun back in 2004 and it's still fun today.

The Katamari series' off-beat sensibilities has always been punctuated by its signature Lego/Duplo art style and its unbelievably catcthy J-pop soundtrack, and both are acocunted for in Katamari Forever. Long after you're done playing, the main theme is guaranteed to remain with you -- whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on your tolerance for pop music.

In short, all the quirky things that made the Katamari series work in the first place are here -- and that's generally a good thing. Of course, the game is far from perfect and if its idiosyncrasies have come to typify what the series is all about, then so too has its almost stubborn inability to evolve.

This game is the exact, and I mean exact same game that was released five years ago -- blemishes and all. For starters, the camera can be exceedingly problematic. The Prince (thus the Katamari ball) will frequently be obscured by objects in the environment. It's an issue that frustrated in the first game and one which the developers apparently have no interest in remedying. Getting your Katamari ball to climb to higher points in an environment also still presents difficulties. The action is performed by simply pressing and holding forward on the left and right analog sticks, but it rarely works the way you're hoping and expecting and can really be annoying when racing the clock or trying to get to a hard to reach location.