AMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Beautiful Katamari marks the Xbox 360 debut of Namco's most unusual franchise. Continuing upon the formula of its predecessors, the game tasks you with reassembling the heavens. After an overzealous tennis serve, your father, the verbally abusive King of All the Cosmos inadvertently tears a hole in space. This hole in fact, turns out to be a black hole which consumes most of the galaxy. To set the galaxy back to normal, your condescending father wants you to help clean up his mess. He sends you back to earth to collect objects using your Katamari, which he can transform back into the missing celestial bodies. Your Katamari is a ball that you can pretty much stick anything to by rolling over it, provided the item is smaller than the size of your Katamari and the objects already stuck to it.

Depending on the size of the object to be recreated, you will need to collect items until your Katamari reaches a certain size. Each level will require rolling up a Katamari of increasing size within a time limit. Along the way, you can roll up presents and even some of your cosmic cousins. These represent unlockables that you can later access between levels. Every stage has a different theme depending on the type of object you will be recreating. Some stages will require that you roll up more of a certain type of object than others. Recreating a liquid planet will mean that you should probably roll up more drinks, or liquid themed objects than others. This is how the scoring system works. If you have a large enough Katamari once you reach your time limit, the King of All the Cosmos will rate you according to how large your Katamari is, and how many of the requested type of items you collected.

What's Hot
The game has not changed much since its inception. It retains its distinctively cubist art direction and decidedly Japanese style. The story is just inane enough to get you going, without weighing you down. Once you start, all that matters is seeing how large a Katamari you can create. The game world is rife with objects lying everywhere. Your sense of accomplishment comes as your Katamari gets larger and larger. After some creative rolling, objects that were obstacles and hazards moments ago become unsuspecting Katamari fodder as you continue your rolling.

What's Not
One of the main reasons the original Katamari Damacy became such a huge hit was due to the fact that it represented the most original puzzle game since Tetris. Being the fourth game in the series, this sequel starts to feel a bit thin. For anyone that's played a Katamari Damacy game before, you won't find anything new or exciting. There are a few stages that give you alternative objectives, but the gameplay remains mostly the same.

The control scheme never quite fits well with the Xbox 360's asymmetric analog sticks. This game was definitely intended to be played using a PlayStation controller and it shows. Even the tutorial displays the PS2 analog layout. After a bit of playing, you grow accustomed to the difference, however experienced players may find themselves initially disoriented.

The soundtrack for Beautiful Katamari is nice but doesn't carry the same appeal as others in the series. You still find yourself humming long here and there, but some songs are noticeably better than others.

Also, the game's trademark sense of humor seems to miss its mark. The game's writing can't seem to make up its mind whether they want your father to constantly give you backhanded compliments, or if he just wants to compliment you. Even with his naturally odd personality, The King of All the Cosmos still was never this schizophrenic before. His jokes and peculiar sayings seem to fall flat. Worst of all, the game repeats itself to the point of annoyance. When a joke is not funny the first time, it just gets worse when you hear it over and over again.



The Katamari games were intentionally made with a cubist style. This version, thankfully, doesn't dump those aesthetics, but the move to next-generation consoles doesn't seem to have been taken advantage of with the resources available. Despite the power of the Xbox360, there is still a great deal of framerate issues. When you jump to the opposite side of your Katamari, framerate stutter is definitely apparent. Being the fourth iteration of the series, Beautiful Katamari's camera still gets lost behind walls or when passing under tables. To make matters worse, even while playing the game at HD resolutions, the HUD effectively obscures 50% of your view. Why does the HUD need a double-sized animation of the prince?

The lack of online multiplayer really hurts this title, since it doesn't truly introduce anything new to the franchise and online multiplayer would have been the most obvious reason to pick up this game.

Final Word

With the debut of the original Katamari Damacy a few years ago, it sent a clear message that the puzzle genre definitely had of room to expand. Since then, even Katamari Damacy's then-unique approach is starting to grow thin. After four games, it's apparent that Namco is simply milking the franchise into the ground without adding any true substance to the mix. Beautiful Katamari is a wonderful game capable of capturing the adoration of players that have never played any of the games, but those that have already tried their hands at rolling up everything in sight will not find anything substantial here. Those that have never played a Katamari Damacy game before would probably do well to pick up a copy of the original to see the game at its best. If playing the original is not possible, Beautiful Katamari serves as the next best thing for those that like puzzle games with a twist.