Beautiful Katamari

Overview

Beautiful Katamari is an Xbox 360 exclusive developed by Namco Bandai. This is a significant change of pace in the Katamari Damacy franchise, as the previous three games were released exclusively for Sony platforms.

The premise of the game is simple: You roll a magically sticky ball, called a katamari, around each level, the ball picks up objects as you go. The ball will only pick up any objects that are the same size as or are smaller than the current ball. However, the objects attached to the ball count towards its size, so the more stuff you pick up, the bigger you get, and the bigger you get, the larger items you can pick up. There is usually a time limit in which you are required to get the katamari to a certain diameter. In an effort to vary the gameplay, you might be required to pick up only hot objects in one level while avoiding the cold (as the cold will reduce your score), or having the goal set before you of collecting a bunch of rich casino objects. It is a very addictive, if repetitive, style of gameplay.

You might be wondering why you are required to roll a ball to pick things up. It's simple, really: you have to rebuild the universe from the ground up! You play as the Prince, son of the King of All Cosmos, the ruler of the universe, who accidentally ripped a hole in the fabric of reality while playing tennis. He has a mighty powerful serve, you know. Subsequently, a black hole was created that will eventually suck in everything in the galaxy unless it can be plugged up.

At least the developer isn't scared to be different, right? As you collect these giant masses of objects on your katamari, the King takes your wad of stuff at the end of each successfully completed level and turns it back into a star or a planet or a number of spacey things. This is what the entire game revolves around. No pun intended.

Though it has some kinks and bugs, the addictive quality of this quirky game cannot be denied.

Downloadable Content

Beautiful Katamari was the first game in the series to offer the option of downloading extra content via the Xbox Live Marketplace. Four levels are available for download for 80 Microsoft Points each. The stages are "Milky Way Constellations," "The Weaver Girl," "Shopping Spree," and "High-calorie Katamari".

Players also have the ability to pay for downloads of some of the secret items in the game, including cousins and presents, instead of having to find them during gameplay the honest way.

Controversy erupted around the downloads, however, when it was discovered that each of the levels only took up around 384 KB of space, revealing that the Marketplace content was simply unlocking data that was already on the disc. When added to the supposedly budget price the game was sold for, the price of the downloadable content essentially brought the price of the game to that of a regular full retail release, leading many gamers to feel cheated. In addition to all of this, three of the achievements in the game explicitly require the downloadable content to successfully unlock them.

The cousins only available in the New downloadable content are.

• Hans
• Kyun
• Pokkle
• Harvest
• Mickey
• Honey
• Colombo
• Can-Can
• Opeo
• Drooby
• Shy
• l'Amour
• The Princess

Xbox 360 Game Installation

Beautiful Katamari requires 3.4GB of space to install on an Xbox 360 HDD.

Xbox 360 Games on Demand

On February 16, 2010, Beautiful Katamari became available on the Xbox 360's Games on Demand service. It costs $19.99 or 1600 Microsoft Points.

Soundtrack