Beautiful Katamari for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I'm rather new to the Katamari series myself, but several friends have played it, so it came highly recommended. However, within about an hour I found myself straining to keep playing.

The first thing I would have liked to see was a difficulty setting. Experienced players should be able to accomplish the challenges, but as a newbie, I found myself in a constant pattern of failing each level (even the first non-tutorial level) several times before passing.

The types of items can be confusing at times too. For example, when rolling the planet Venus, you're told to gather expensive things. When my Katamari was complete, I was berated for gathering Rich things (which the King described as Luxury items) instead of Expensive things. How am I supposed to know the difference? Of course, this assumes that I can even see around my Katamari to make those decisions, or that I have the time to seek out specific types of items, rather than frantically gathering anything and everything so I can slide in under the time limit.

Also, I realize that Japanese games don't encourage and hold hands as much as their American counterparts (see also: Dance Dance Revolution), but the King is just irritating. Even an above-average Katamari merits a response of "Okay, I guess this'll do." Anything less (and again, the scoring system appears quite arbitrary) earns derision and ridicule. Yeah, that makes me want to play again.

Finally, there are the Xbox Live downloads. It seems pretty sleazy of the developers to require about $20 of paid downloads in order to complete all the Achievements; those items should either be free or voluntary, especially considering how little content there game contains as shipped.

Overall, this was a pretty disappointing game, especially for something so highly praised by my friends and fellow gamers. I'm willing to give the earlier installations a try, because I love the idea of Katamari, but this version isn't worth anything close to full retail.