Katamari Forever

First published on 5 Oct 2009. Updated on 27 Jan 2010.

A game that takes elements from previous installments and slaps them together with the most feeble of premises would normally deserve serious condemnation. Not so with Katamari Forever, the latest in the Katamari Damacy series: yes, you're still the Prince, rolling up the world to put things right; but you're also restoring the memory of your amnesiac father, the King of the Cosmos. See, he was flying about, as you do, when he was bopped on the head by a black star. So you built a robotic king to do his work, but he accidentally destroyed the universe. So now you have to roll your spherical, adhesive katamari around to rebuild the cosmos and alleviate RoboKing's guilt, but you also have to roll around levels from the previous games to return the King's memory.

Sounds stupid? Oh, it is: but Katamari games are all about the gameplay, and this one doesn't fix what isn't broken. There are a few new developments (there's a jump feature, and pieces of "the King's broken heart" automatically attract every roll-up-able object for a limited time) but basically it's just like the original games: you roll a ball around that gets bigger and bigger within a certain timeframe. The artwork has also been spruced up a little: all of the models remain as in previous games, but now they're rendered as though drawn in chalk, and the music - in a particularly nice touch - is new versions of the old soundtrack, with the Japanindietastic likes of Buffalo Daughter trying their hand at the series' wonderful, kitchy songs.

Some levels are cakewalks, others are near impossible (damn you, Hot Things level!) but Katamari Forever is wonderfully like running into an old friend. And then rolling them up with a giant, sticky ball.