E3 09: Hands On With Katamari Forever
It's time to start rolling stuff up again, this time on the PS3, and Namco Bandai was kind enough to let Fruit Brute and I borrow a Katamari to try it out. Katamari Forever once again sees the poor put-upon Prince forced to do the bidding of the King of All Cosmos and roll up various things to put the stars back in the sky. This time, they were destroyed by RoboKing, and when selecting levels, you can choose to take missions from the King or the RoboKing. Playing Katamari Forever on the PS3 is just like when you wiggled the dual analog sticks on the PS2 controller, although naturally, the new Sixaxis controls have been implemented to let you hop into the air. Different levels have different visual styles, and there are 34 stages compromising a kind of "best-of" from the previous Katamari titles, as well as six all-new ones. I played one in the new cell-shaded style, and Fruit Brute played a classic level that had been redone in the watercolor style. It started off black-and-white, but certain items began to colorize, seemingly indicating that you could now roll them up. There's also a style that looks like woodcuttings as well as the classic style. The level I played was one of the new unique ones, where I started in a little pool of water and had to roll around a desert level to sprinkle water and make grass and flowers grow. Occasionally, larger flowers would bloom to bounce me up to higher platforms and new areas of the level. Of course, there's a catch, in that you eventually run out of water, and have to return to the pool to refill in order to cover a certain amount of ground in the specified time limit. As with all the other Katamari sequels, they're not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but the new levels and visual styles should help keep things fresh. Still, it's Katamari, and if you already love it, you already know you're buying Katamari Forever when it comes out this fall!
Wootini
Posted to E3, Galleries, Hot Stuff, Video Games on 5 June 2009
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: e3 09, gallery, hands on, katamari forever, namco bandai, playstation 3, sony
How's the music? Any new tracks that you could tell, or are they all re-uses or remixes of previous tunes?
The music's always been one of the most distinctive parts of the Katamari games, and I'm hoping that there's a decent supply of new tracks. :)
Curiously, none of the press information mentions the music at all... I did notice that the opening cinema has a new tune to it, but I honestly don't remember what the songs were on the two levels we sampled. But whether or not they were new, they were still that enjoyably quirky Katamari tuneage!
The music question is a good one. I'm hoping for some great new tracks!