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GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Excellent
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 03/17/2006
- Released on: 03/21/2006
- Originally published on GameSpot: Me & My Katamari (PSP) Review
The King of All Cosmos, that epic personification of eccentric, intergalactic royalty, brings his uniquely articulate brand of white-hot crazy to the PSP with Me and My Katamari. As a portable interpolation of Katamari Damacy, Me and My pretty much makes good, even in spite of a few technical compromises. The biggest hindrance to Me and My Katamari is its modest number of levels, even when considering the game's relatively short play time.
The King of All Cosmos is omniscient, all-powerful, and stark-raving loco.
When he's not out getting drunk with the stars or embarking on an intergalactic ego trip, the quirky and charismatic King of All Cosmos likes to take it easy. At the beginning of Me and My Katamari, the King and the rest of the royal family go for beach-blanket fun, splashing about in the ocean. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of a chain of small islands nearby, the King gets a little too rambunctious, causing a tidal wave that wipes the islands off the map. Perhaps out of benevolence, but more likely because of his need to be liked by everyone, the King makes amends by sending his son, the Prince, out to collect matter out of which to create new islands. This is, as they say, where you come in. The opening cinematic sequence for Me and My establishes the delightfully irreverent and mildly insane tone that the series is best known for, though the game is pretty lean on cinematic sequences through the rest of the game, which is a little disappointing.
As the Prince, your job as matter collector is aided by a katamari, which looks something like a colorful, round, nubby chew toy. You collect various objects simply by rolling over them, though right off the bat your katamari will be too small to roll over most objects. In order to go on to bigger and better things, you'll first need to roll over the smaller stuff, which will slowly but surely increase the size of your katamari. Each level presents you with a time limit and a size requirement that you'll have to meet before said time limit runs out; additionally, you're given requests by the former inhabitants of the islands to roll up specific kinds of items. They'll want you to focus on picking up fast items, cold items, sweet items, beautiful items, and so on. How you fulfill these additional requests will affect your score at the end of a level, though it's not necessary to overanalyze the items you're rolling up, and more often than not you'll satisfy the island inhabitants without any extra effort.
In its PlayStation 2 incarnations, the Katamari series has used both analog sticks for control, letting you move the katamari kind of like a tank. Since there aren't two analog sticks on the PSP, Me and My makes do by letting you use the D pad as the left stick and the four face buttons as the right stick. It's not perfect, as it loses some of the finesse that you got from the true analog controls, but it works well enough, and after an initial reacclimation, the different controls are virtually transparent.
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