Here’s where we take a look at Katamari Damacy Reroll with a critical eye and lay out the three things we hated about the game. Two of our critiques focus on issues we even had with the original release that maybe could have been altered for the re-release, the third critique focuses specifically on this release.
1) The Family Subplot
So, the primary plot of Katamari Damacy is that the sky has lost all its objects; stars, constellations, and the moon. As the Prince, you’re tasked with rolling a ball (the Katamari) around an open area until it accumulates enough mass to replace one of the celestial bodies. It’s not unlike building a snowman where you start with a small ball of snow and roll it until it’s large enough to form the base and so on. However, after each level, there is a brief cutscene featuring a mom and two children who embark on a journey to see their dad. They provide a little human perspective on the whole situation, but they’re just so lame that they completely take away from all the fun we’re having. And worst of all, the final cutscene provides no real payoff – so you’re left just wondering why even include them at all? I just think they could have come up with a more clever way to show the human perspective during this crazy game.
2) The Controls
The various controls in Katamari Damacy Reroll are just as wacky as the game itself – but in this case, it’s not a good thing. To move the Katamari, you’ll need to move both control sticks in various directions – for example, if you want to move forward, you push both sticks forward. Given time, most of the basic movements will be relatively straight forward – and it does create the illusion that you’re pushing something with some weight to it. The problem is that this prohibits any sort of control over the camera, so you’ll often find yourself trying to move around so the camera adjusts correctly. Another issue I found was with the Dash move. The Dash move is performed by pushing both sticks back and forth numerous times to charge up, and then releasing them is supposed to give you a nice boost of speed – however, in practice, this rarely worked at all.
3) No New Content
Katamari Damacy Reroll is a damn near carbon copy of the original game, albeit much prettier. This is great for the sake of nostalgia, but why after all this time they couldn’t have included some new content is a bit disappointing. The first thing I would have liked to see is new objects to roll into the Katamari, especially some of their own Bandai Namco franchises, such as Dig Dug arcade units or replacing some of the human characters with Tekken and Soulcalibur characters. The second thing I would have liked to see is some fresh levels, like a Pac-Man level where you roll up Power Pellets, Ghosts and even Pac-Man until you achieve a big enough Katamari to win. I assume the hope now is that Katamari Damacy Reroll generates enough sales to justify a new Katamari game, and maybe that will give us some fresh new content us fans have been waiting for.
And that concludes our look at the 3 things we loved and the 3 things we disliked about Katamari Damacy Reroll. If you’ve never played Katamari Damacy before, you really should – and with this brand new release, there hasn’t been a better time to play this wacky game. Sure, it’s not perfect. The controls are hard to adjust to, some of the game’s presentation is a bit lame, and the lack of new content leaves us fans wanting more. However, everything else about the game, from the stellar soundtrack to the addictive gameplay all blends together into a must-play game.