Once Upon A Katamari (PS5) Review
Summary: Long time fans of the off-the-wall action puzzler and newcomers alike are bound to have a ball.
4
Things Snowball
Once Upon A Katamari has been a long time coming. The first new entry in the bonkers ball-rolling series in more than 14 years, it’s a curious continuation of the classic PS2 titles that sidelines the series’ later entries (with good reason), presenting itself as a long-lost sequel to 2005’s We Love Katamari rather than 2009’s Katamari Forever.
Once again, the King of the Cosmos, the giant, bumbling god of the Katamari universe, has accidentally wiped out the whole of existence, this time while playing around with a magical scroll.
Thus, it’s up to the diminutive but plucky Prince (with the help of his cousins) to travel through time and roll everything he can find into a ball and have it shot into space by the king to repopulate the night sky with garbage.
It’s always been a goofy concept, but there’s something about creating a huge snowball made of dinosaurs and cavemen on the whims of a self-aggrandizing yet all-powerful monarch who is as incompetent as he is beloved by literally everyone that just tickles me.
Whenever the king opens his mouth, is comedy gold. Whenever the weird giant pontificates about his latest existential crisis while talking down to the prince, then asks the happy little chap to gather some tumbleweeds or other trivial objects to keep his subjects happy, is the kind of absurdism I absolutely adore.
Likewise, the King’s angry admonishments whenever the Prince fails to do so go a long way to mitigating any frustration that may have been building for just missing out on completing a mission.
This is further complicated by the fact that this time you’re not just trying to roll up everything you can see. No, the King has become more discerning in his old age, and sometimes you’ll be tasked with trying to grab everything you can that’s gold, or valuable, or alcoholic, or just trying to clean the place up a bit.
That is to say, your colossal taskmaster has found standards, a discerning taste that makes many of the missions far more tricky (and borderline tedious at times) than just trying to roll up a Katamari of a certain size before the clock runs out. (Though there are plenty of levels where that is still the goal.)
The bulk of the experience is the same chaotic mess it’s always been, and rolling the Katamari around with its unique twin-stick controls feels as satisfying as it ever did. However, this time around, some new power-ups make gathering up the detritus of the cosmos even easier, including a rocket-powered speed boost, a magnet that pulls items towards you, and a stopwatch that freezes time, allowing you to grab those pesky critters that refuse to become one with your Katamari.
That is, if you don’t find yourself fighting the camera. Something I found myself doing fairly often, especially during levels where you needed to collect specific items while trying to avoid others.
The other part of the experience that I found somewhat irritating is how you unlock more stages. Rather than just completing one level and moving on to the next, new stages and eras (including Edo, the wild west, and prehistoric) are unlocked by collecting a certain amount of crowns. Each level has three hiding somewhere in the clutter, and how easy they are to find, then get to, and finally pick up, varies wildly.
I know this is by design, but there’s something about hitting a roadblock because you haven’t found enough of a specific collectible when it’s hard enough to just make it through a stage that irks me a little.
On the plus side, though, you can customise the Prince or one of his many collectible cousins to push the Katamari (which also has a selection of skins). It’s a little twist, but it’s a welcome one, and the ability to unlock new costume parts and colours during your travels through space and time is a nice extra.
Overall, it’s still an enjoyable experience, thanks in part to its quirky presentation, which nails the early-2000s aesthetics of the original Katamari games perfectly. As I previously stated, it feels like a long-lost missing link between We Love Katamari and the later entries for the Xbox 360 and PS3. It rides that fine line between nostalgic throwback and clever art direction; ultimately, it’s a remaster of a PS2 game that never existed. The character models are blocky yet characterful, and every level is bright, colourful, and brimming with quirky charm.
The soundtrack is packed with even more infectious earworms from series composer and long-running sound director Yuu Miyake. If you have ever played a Katamari game, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s 36 tracks comprise an eclectic smorgasbord of off-the-wall sounds and genres, including everything from J-pop and Jazz Funk, to a choral title track from Katamari Damacy collaborator Asuka Sakai featuring the San Francisco Boys Choir.
If you have the King of All Sounds edition, you can also dive into any of the soundtracks in the series 21-year history using its handy music selector to create your own playlists of favourite tracks or just play the same one on a loop as you chase down more panicking cowboys for the King of the Cosmos.
Final Thoughts
Once Upon a Katamari is a curious beast, the first entry in over a decade of a cult classic series, that, rather than trying to bring everything bang up to date, revels in the series’ heyday in a manner that makes it feel like a lost third entry in a trilogy of PS2 games that was never completed. It’s familiar yet still evolves its unique formula in some meaningful ways.
Long-time fans and newcomers sucked in by the recent reroll editions of Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari are bound to have a ball.
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