It would be easy to dismiss Katamari Forever as yet another cash-in on a worn-out franchise. After all, the game’s creator, Keita Takahashi, stopped contributing to the game after the first Katamari. But the series’ charm lies in its simple premise, unique art style, and original music. While it’s not terribly innovative, the newest game seems to retain what makes Katamari so addictive, and presents it all in an attractive high-def package for the PS3.
This time around, the King has slipped into a coma, and the Prince and his cousins design a RoboKing to replace him, but the cybernetic doppelganger goes haywire and destroys the galaxy. So, once again, the Prince is tasked with restoring the cosmos (and the king’s consciousness) by rolling everyday objects, people, and animals into massive balls of jumbled stuff. The king’s lost memory provides an excuse to reuse levels from past Katamari games, making this less of a brand new adventure, and more of a best-of compilation (after all, in Japan, the game is called Katamari Damacy Tribute). That extends to the soundtrack as well, as it includes some original tracks while also employing remixes and re-recordings of the previous game’s songs. As the Katamari series consists of my favorite soundtracks, I fully approve.
But the entire game is not just a redux. Restoring the king’s memories introduces one new play mechanic: color restoration. Levels start out in monochrome, and only gain color as the Prince rolls up new objects. Rolling up items makes every duplicate item in the stage explode into color. As another visual treat, the level select screen eschews the series standard “flying through space” theme in favor of a pop-up storybook design — flipping through the pages takes the place of planet-hopping.