A typically whacked-out Katamari intro (flashing stars, geese, dancing ultramen) sets up the story for this HD’d up half-remake, half-sequel. The king has lost his memory, and a giant robo-king has been made to take his place. Only the robo-king has gone crackers and destroyed all the stars in the galaxy. As the prince you can fix both problems by rolling stuff up into giant sticky balls – clearing out the king’s brain in one thread, scooting around levels familiar from previous Katamaris, and creating new stars in the other, made from the assorted junk found in the robo-king’s levels.

The gameplay has barely changed since the PS2 days (bar the introduction of the prince’s hop, activated sketchily by motion control or by simply pressing a button), which means it’s both really addictive, and way harder than the cutesy visuals would suggest. Planning a route through the mess is a must to hit the size targets on all but the first few levels, and despite appearances, this is a mean puzzler. For a full-priced title, there’s a lot of reused material here, but the bottom line is that this is the definitive Katamari on PlayStation.

Sep 22, 2009