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Katamari Damacy REROLL

Katamari Damacy REROLL is a perfect remaster of the original PS2 game that is just as weird and charming as the original.

What is a Katamari? Well, it’s a small ball that sticks onto random objects that allows it to become a bigger ball, so it can roll up bigger objects, and then that ball gets turned into a star. That is essentially what you do in Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy REROLL is a remaster of the original PS2 game. Comparing with the original game, the Reroll version is much more colorful and has cleaner visuals. Even the prince has an update to his model, looking a lot less blocky, and a lot more round and expressive.

(PS2 Version) 

(ReRoll Version)

The game’s story is pretty simple: The King of the Cosmos goofs up and wipes out all of the stars in space, and now its the Prince’s job to fix it. How do you fix it? Roll up everything around the world. You start off small, just rolling up small things like candy and batteries, to household objects, to people, then cars, then buildings, then entire continents. Every level requires you to get the Katamari to a certain size within a time limit. Time limits are usually pretty generous, the greater the size requirement, the more time you have to reach that goal. Sometimes you have less time, but its usually enough to complete the mission, and even go above the goal.  Then there are missions to remake the constellations.

Making the constellations are different than the main missions where it involves getting the Katamari to a certain size. Most of the constellation missions involve getting many objects that follow a theme. Like rolling up twins to remake Gemini, or crabs to recreate Cancer. The Ursa and Taurus missions are a bit trickier since it requires a single object from their theme. In the case of Taurus, you need a cow, any cow, the bigger the better. If you roll up a single cow the mission is done, even if its a traffic cone with a cow pattern, anything with “Cow” in the name is a condition for winning. You would have to avoid many of the cows so you can roll up normal objects so you can roll up the largest cow.

Oh right, the music is very good too. The soundtrack (which is carried over from the original) features a lot of catchy, poppy, songs that are indeed very Japanese. To name some of my favorites, Lonely Rolling Star, Que Sera Sera, The Moon & The Prince, and of course Katamari on the Rocks.

I haven’t had any issues with Katamari’s port. The only nitpick I can think of is that once you first start the game, it starts out windowed and you can’t change its size until you complete the tutorial so you can change the screen resolution. The game does allow you to play with a keyboard, but to me, it is best played with a controller (I honestly don’t know how it does on Keyboard, I just prefer playing Katamari with a controller).

Overall Katamari Damacy ReRoll is a solid remake and a great port, that I highly recommend.