Once Upon a Katamari

2026-01-10
It's 2025 and I pass by some mice making fondue under a table as I roll up trash--hair pins, coins, cups, watches--yet again in this Japanese living room. I am bobbing my head listening to the best music to come out this year in a game while casually navigating ramps onto tables, sharp turns around rushing crab claws, zipping down main street rolling up yet another man in a toga. We don't deserve a new Katamari but we got one. And maybe it's a bit of a facsimile in some ways but the core is all there: rolling, whimsy, and music, music, music.

I say facsimile because the core physics are just off enough to break the fun that flows like water in your OG Katamaris. The fun of Katamari is plotting your route to gain size as quickly as possible. It's about rolling, rolling, rolling, gaining size, gaining speed. It's not about difficult platforming or tough controls. And it's certainly not about stopping. And yet here I found myself time and time again getting tripped up and slowed down. Corners and edges in the geometry, invisible to the human eye, seem to jut from every other object. So bad in some places that I would get stuck for 5 or 10 seconds at a time. This isn't a thing that happens in older Katmari games. Older Katamari games felt precisely tuned to create boundaries closer to bumpers on bowling lanes: you can't go through the wall but we'll bounce you off and keep you on your way, keep you having fun. Here it just feels clumsy, like someone poking a stick through the spokes of your tire as you ride by. While that's my biggest gripe, there are other things that seem off from the pure-blooded, Takahashi Katamari-formula.

You're greeted almost immediately with a King of the Cosmos who won't shut the fuck up. You get a blurb of text from whichever rando on the world map who gives you your mission, then it cuts to the King of the Cosmos who feels the need to give his inane input, then the level loads and you are once again beset upon by the blathering King who basically reiterates what he said before the load screen. Why? The King was fun because he was an enigma. Erratic and unpredictable with some little tidbits of non sequiturs to make you chuckle or scratch your head. Here he's just annoying. After maybe the second time I just started skipping everything. There was a joy in being plopped in a level in the original Katamari and not really knowing what the fuck was going on. It seems they forgot that.

Everything else–and I do mean everything else–we love is here. It is a colorful cornucopia of whimsy spread across multiple eras as you travel with the King through time to various ages. Mummies, pirates, cowboys, dinosaurs, rolling a water ball to create an oasis in a desert, rolling a skinny boy over food to make him fat, Greeks. Every level is packed with little easter eggs and gags. A dinosaur underwater in a snorkel mask building a sandcastle. Two cows with cannons mounted on their backs sticking up a lion shaking with fear. Sure, they're not all hits. The Olympic coliseum level which is literally a series of linear dead ends, felt like playing the shittiest pinball game on earth. And that tumbleweed level can eat a dick out of a can of beans. But, shit, then I hit that first dinosaur level and I'm rolling up a Triceratops with some jazz playing in the background and, fuck me, if that ain't some Jurassically good shit.

And as I said in my original Katamari Damacy review above all else I'm stoked to have more music. And you bet your round, lumpy, Katamari-shaped ass it's great. Honestly my favorite part is this isn't a Katamari soundtrack chock full of remixes but actually stands on its own with a bunch of new music. Enough blabbering let's just end the review with some of my favorite songs:

• YangYang: On the poppier side they got some legit big names to do some tracks and this one from Daoko properly bangs. Also the music video is legitimately incredible from start to finish and you owe it to yourself to watch the King dance at the 1 minute mark.
• San Francisco Katamari Boys Chorus Song: Beautiful composition with the strings and piano and soaring vocals but especially because of the intermittent jazz interludes, especially the ultimate reward for the patient listener at the 4 minute mark.
• Goro Goro Blithely: If you're not grooving to this one you should see a doctor immediately.
• Katamariism: There's a reason it's the opener song. Absolutely sets the mood for the game and gets you hyped to play the game.