Me and My Katamari

by Namco

Product Features

• Wireless play for up to four people on the PSP system
• A cast of playable characters that includes the Prince and his cousins, a mix of familiar faces and new additions
• A host of customization options for player characters, including new masks and headgear, as well as the ability to wear them on the head, face and body
• A new island interface that highlights player options and the different stages represented by animals in need of new homes

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000BLFE9K
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: August 8, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,155 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #55 in Video Games > Sony PSP > Adventure
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Features include:

•Wireless play for up to four people on the PSP system
•A cast of playable characters that includes the Prince and his cousins, a mix of familiar faces and new additions
•A host of customization options for player characters, including new masks and headgear, as well as the ability to wear them on the head, face and body
•A new island interface that highlights player options and the different stages represented by animal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a Hoot!, April 18, 2006

By 

Markus Egger "www.MarkusEgger.com/blog" (Spring, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Me and My Katamari (Video Game)

This is a very entertaining game. The idea is still fresh, and there is a great sense of accomplishment when you finally get to a point where you roll up entire buildings, ships, and even islands. Especially rolling up things that used to be too large just a few minutes ago is very satisfying.

I would easily give this a 5-star rating if it wasn't for the controls. After a while, you figure them out and it kinda makes sense (think of your katamari as a tank or bob-cat with independently operated wheels on each side, rather than a ball), but it is just silly. Why not make the steering more intuitive?!? Even once you figure it out, you still keep wondering what they were thinking...

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get rolling!, April 2, 2006

By 

Arion Acurantes (Manila, Philippines) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Me and My Katamari (Video Game)

Once in a while a game comes along that you can't help but smile for, and this season's game is Me & My Katamari.

Me & My Katamari (I'll be referring to it through the review as MMK) is the little brother of Namco's PS2 Katamari series, beginning with the original Katamari Damacy. I've never seen nor played any of the PS2 versions, so all I had to go on was my own experience with the PSP version.

The King of All Cosmos, the Beautiful Queen of All Cosmos, and the Dashing Prince (collectively known as the Wonderful Royal Family) decide to head on to Earth for a tropical summer vacation. The King, however, gets a little carried away with swim practice, and it's up to the 5-centimeter tall Prince (and his unlockable assortment of cousins) to roll up stuff to make new islands for all the homeless animals.

I'm guessing there isn't much difference between Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari, and as I understand it both titles employ the PS2's twin analog sticks to control the ball (or, officially, your katamari) to roll through increasingly bigger stages as you roll over stuff to stick to the katamari.

That gameplay concept remains intact in MMK with one notable exception. Given the lack of a right analog stick on the PSP, Namco had employ the face buttons to fill in for the aforementioned missing stick. When you play the game for the first time you go through a mandatory tutorial mission where you learn the new control scheme. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do it feels natural. (Strangely enough it felt like I had to believe I was using analog sticks and I never had to look up the controls again.) You can still use the PSP's lone analog stick in place of the d-pad and still get good results.

The only boss you'll face is size, and your only enemy is time. You'll be required to get anywhere from a 15 cm katamari in 10 minutes to a 500 m one in 3 minutes, and along the way you'll roll over everything from thumb tacks to volcanic islands. (Stick it out until the endgame and you'll have the chance to roll over even more unbelievable objects.)

Aside from Prince Island, where you spend the bulk of your time between missions managing the game, there's the nearby Volcanic Island with additional objectives that expand the MMK challenge in amusing ways, and Beanstalk Island where you keep all the cousins you roll over and switch characters with. It really doesn't matter which character you use as they bring no special abilities to the gameplay, but the presents you unlock look different on each cousin.

There's a lot of music and images to enjoy in the game. Some reviews have made note of the fact that some tracks have been carried over from previous Katamari games, but to me that really doesn't matter because a) I've never played the older ones and b) they all work well within the game. Upon beating the game, you're granted the opportunity to take pictures wherever you like and store them in an in-game photo album (which is also viewable in the PSP's Photo function when you're not playing the game).

You'll come back to MMK for its Eternal Mode, achievable upon creating the last island. There is no time limit in this mode and you can spend all the time you want hunting down whichever items, presents or cousins you may have missed. Attaining a preset size limit takes you to a larger stage, and so on.

The only thing holding me back from a 5-star rating is the number of stages in the game. These are mostly retooled for different missions; for example, you roll through a town in summertime, then play another mission in the same town in a different season with a new assortment of objects. The whole game works this way, and while it really isn't bad I sometimes found myself wishing there was a larger assortment of places to roll through.

(Incidentally I read on another website that this is going to be the last Katamari game. That's a saddening thought after giving this game enough time, and I hope Namco takes a page out of the Wipeout Pure playbook and gives us downloadable content and new stages. Or even a follow-up Katamari game.)

Overall there's plenty of quirky, surreal, and enchanting charm and wit in Me & My Katamari to keep you interested for many satisfying hours. Go ahead and give it a roll.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This katamari rolls over the same stuff, April 24, 2006

By 

C. Bakehorn (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Me and My Katamari (Video Game)

The 2004 PlayStation 2 sleeper Katamari Damacy and its 2005 sequel, We Love Katamari, spurred an interesting reaction from American gamers. "What's this? A trippy game where you roll around a sticky ball and pick stuff up?" Admit it, you've done it before with a Post-It note or a piece of tape; picking up little pieces of dust or dirt around the office. The strange Japanese concept has been put to use for two games already...does this not-so-novel, not-so-creative-anymore idea hold up well for the PSP edition, Me & My Katamari?

The answer is yes and no. I had actually never played a Katamari game before this, at least beyond an extent of five or ten minutes, and it's safe to say that the concept would have grown very old to me if I had been a fan since the first game. Katamari is, in all honesty, a very stupid and repetitive but strangely addictive game with the same concept every playing session. But for the series fans, Me & My Katamari is more of the same in a portable fashion. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that...if you're into the idea. You're still the Prince, the son of the King of all Cosmos. The inhabitants of your Katamari world; cute little animals, ask you to find items for them scattered through a few different levels. These items would be used by the King to create islands where the animals can live in peace and happiness.

Of course, you get these items by rolling around and picking them up. This is where the difficulty and the charm of Me & My Katamari comes into play...where the Playstation 2 version asked you to roll over everything, some of the PSP's challenges ask you to pick up specific items. These items are fitted into different categories, like "cool" and "soft" and "hard". Depending on the sort of island an animal asks you to create, you're supposed to try and decide which items to roll into your katamari ball. Though it's not necessary to pick up these specific items, doing so will ensure a happy animal and a "better" island for the animal to live on and a higher score for your records.

Unfortunately, the PSP version of Katamari isn't nearly as easy to control as the PS2 games. I actually had to struggle with the control scheme. The directional pad (or analog nub) controls your ball's direction of movement, while the L and R triggers control the camera's turning. The circle and square buttons cause your ball to strafe, and pressing some of these buttons in a combination will send you flying forward with boost ability. Though the controls sound easy on paper, actually controlling the katamari on sloped geometry and in tight corridors is extremely frustrating, especially when the camera gets caught on things or even behind walls.

The visuals, though crisp and clean on the PSP's 4.3 inches of pretty high-definition, are hampered by an awful frame rate that drops when your katamari starts getting larger and larger. Rolling over huge amounts of items causes the game's frame rate to drop considerably, even to the point that controlling the katamari is impossible. Of course, the art style is still as crazy as ever, and the items you pick up are admittedly cute-c'mon, how can you not giggle at the thought of picking up a blocky little kitten? The music is also pretty repetitive but also as catchy and trippy as it has ever been.

Me & My Katamari is a great handheld Katamari fix for fans of the series, but newcomers might want to check out the PS2 versions instead. Katamari PSP features ad hoc multiplayer, but the console versions offer it in a more traditional split-screen form. Also, the difficult controls and smaller scope make it hard for me to recommend it, being $40, over the $30 We Love Katamari or even the budget-priced original. Still, and I've said it a few times now: fans will find and appreciate more stuff to do and the same great concept they've loved all along.