Game Review: Me & My Katamari

Game: Me & My Katamari
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Namco
Release Date: 21st March 2006

For the Katamari games, being a game series without any parallels has its advantages; there's no competition for market share of the "stuff rolling" genre, and being quirky means that there's no need for a deep plot as such. There are also disadvantages to being such a unique series; following in the footsteps of two incredibly well received instalments on a handheld is one of these. There are decisions to be made on what needs to be scaled down, if anything and how similar gameplay will be to previous instalments; too similar and there's no need to for it to exist, too different and it's hardly an entry in the series.

Me & My Katamari sees the Prince of the Cosmos taking a much needed holiday from rolling a katamari around, though before too long he must fulfil requests from many different animals for islands which fulfil certain criteria. These include requests for a soft island, a warm island, and a heavy island, each of which are judged on what has been rolled up during play. Players must also be sure to exceed certain size targets within the time limit to complete levels.

Every now and then animals will make a request which doesn't involve fulfilling a size requirement, such as treasure hunting in the desert for a maximum value, or launching a rocket, but these levels are few and far between. General gameplay is pretty standard for the Katamari series and tasks players will rolling up progressively bigger objects, but the controls are a little different to the home console versions owing to the buttons on the PSP. In place of the PS2's dual analog sticks, the face buttons and d-pad of the PSP are used. While this can take a little getting used to for fans of the series, it's basically the same idea.

Initially players will be asked to reach their katamari's target size in a single area, sometimes with an additional unlockable part once a certain size is reached. Later in the game though, players progress through several areas, continuing to increase the size of their katamari while still on the same "level" of the game. By the end of the game, there's 4 or 5 areas per level, which tend to be the same locations for each, with many similar objects to roll up from level to level. In a lot of ways this feels lazy as it's asking players to essentially replay stages to progress.

Another issue with the game is its overall difficulty; generally speaking, the smaller the items you're collecting, the harder it is to fulfil the size requirement. On the levels where players start at a 10m size, it's easy enough to roll up houses, trees and other large objects to increase size, but for levels which begin at 10cm, there's much less to roll up and easily gain mass. This presents an almost reversed difficulty curve as early areas are difficult to progress past, and later areas are pretty easy.

Alongside all of the rollable items in the game there are cousins, who can be collected to play as, and different accessories to wear whilst you roll. These collectibles keep the game a little more fresh, and it can be fun to discover all the different playable cousins. There's also a camera mode where players can take pictures of things they find, or their katamari if they wish to.

Graphically Me & My Katamari follows the style of preceding games in the series, and doesn't seem to have been scaled down much in this respect. When the Katamari's size levels up, it can be a little hard to see what's going on, but this could have been exacerbated by the PSP3000's interlacing issue. Musically the game features many songs from other Katamari games as well as a few new tunes, all of which are of a high quality and give the game an enjoyable and fun loving mood.

Overall this is an enjoyable game, especially for players who have never experienced the series. For those that have played We Love Katamari, this instalment may come across as a tad repetitive, with slightly backwards progression of difficulty thanks to the way areas follow on from eachother. Other than this though, the game hasn't been particularly been scaled down for play on a handheld, and it remains an interesting PSP title.

Rating: 75/100
Grade: B