If you were a PlayStation 2-era gamer, you likely remember how difficult it was to escape Katamari Damacy's gravitational pull. Publisher Namco Bandai's action-puzzle game tasked you with rebuilding a destroyed cosmos, and went on to become a sequel-spawning hit, thanks to its simple, addictive gameplay. Now, the delightful original game's been given the remaster treatment with Katamari Damacy Reroll, a game featuring updated graphics and keyboard support. In short, Katamari Damacy Reroll delivers the same whimsical enjoyment as the original did in 2004, but with the addition of a new coat of paint that makes this PC game one you should not miss.
The King Clutz of All Cosmos
Katamari Damacy Reroll's backstory remains wonderfully ridiculous and surprisingly dark, despite the game's merry visual style. You control The Prince, the son of The King of All Cosmos, who's chosen by his father to repair the cosmos. You see, the planet-size King of All Cosmos got drunk and destroyed all the celestial bodies in the sky. Instead of fixing matters himself, The King of All Cosmos gives his son of small stature a katamari—a sticky ball. With it, The Prince travels to various worlds and locations to roll up items in the environment into a large katamari that can be used to repopulate the stars. In most levels, you can roll up anything in the environment, but occasionally you're challenged to just roll up, say, crab. The story is bonkers, but highly original.
You control the constantly berated Prince in a variety of settings ranging from the mundane to the spectacular, with the goal of growing the katamari within a specific time frame. Depending on the zone you're exploring, The King of All Cosmos will ask you to create a small, medium, or large katamari. And the monarch mocks you if you don't complete you task quickly—even if you finish the job in the allotted time.
In the early stages, you collect the toys, thumbtacks, and other items strewn about a living space; late in the game, you roll up mountains and clouds. There's a grand sense of scale that accompanies your progression that's simply marvelous.
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The Big Ball
That said, there are challenges to overcome besides the race against the clock. For example, you must avoid some enemies, because if you make contact with them, a few items will fall off your katamari and shrink your junk ball. Those cats, crabs, mice, and other creatures are most definitely not your friends. Still, you can have your revenge. As your katamari grows ever bigger, you can roll up enemies, too.
Why You Should Game on a PC
Thankfully, expanding the katamari isn't particularly difficult if you play smart. A wise Prince first grabs small items, then mediums ones, and, finally large ones. If you try to roll up large items at the very start, you'll be unable to add them to your ball. Grabbing large items is important for two gameplay-related reasons: They dramatically increase your katamari's size, and sometimes they reveal new, previously unreachable pathways. As a result, learning to read levels is vital, as it's important to navigate surface areas.
The Reroll
Katamari Damacy Reroll's biggest change from its predecessors are its graphics. Developer Monkeycraft, the company that handled this remaster, brought the game into contemporary times by giving the graphics a full, high-definition overhaul. Katamari Damacy Reroll isn't a complete remake like Capcom's beautifully overhauled Resident Evil 2 ($39.99 at Humble Bundle) , but it's a fine remaster. The game now boasts keyboard support, but it also feels great when played using a gamepad.
As you'd expect from an update of a PlayStation 2 title, Katamari Damacy Reroll doesn't require a high-end gaming PC to play. The game's Steam page states that your machine needs an AMD Phenom II X4 965 or Intel Core i3-2125 processor, an AMD Radeon Vega 8 or Intel Iris Pro 580 graphics card, 4GB of RAM, and 4GB of disk space. Of course, a computer with more horsepower produces better visuals and smoother gameplay.
Take my gaming desktop, for example. Powered by an Intel Core i5 CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080ti CPU, and 8GB of RAM, the rig pushed Katamari Damacy Reroll's polygons at a rate of 60 frames per second. In my many hours with the game, Katamari Damacy Reroll performed exquisitely as I collected junk from across the cosmos.
Katamari Damacy Reroll comes with a handful of tweakable options, including resolution, v-sync, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and vignette. Unfortunately, you can't tinker with any of these settings until you complete the opening tutorial level, which is highly annoying. Katamari Damacy Reroll also supports Steam Trading Card and 21 Steam Achievements.
Amazing Tunes, Multiplayer Mode
We typically don't focus on music in our video game reviews, as many tunes simply duplicate film in their quests to be cinematic. To be frank, that's quite boring. Fortunately, Katamari Damacy's score is ridiculously good. There's a nice mix of J-Pop, jazz, and hip-hop-flavored songs and compositions that'll keep you humming and singing as you play. In fact, the soundtrack is one that I listen to on the regular, even outside the confines of playing games. The music is the perfect complement to the whimsical on-screen happenings.
Katamari Damacy Reroll has a head-to-head two-player mode in which you and a friend race to build the biggest wad. It's entertaining, but nothing I'd return to on a regular basis. Especially since it's split-screen only; you can't compete with other folks online.
Wad You Up
That, in a nutshell, is Katamari Damacy Reroll. If you dig the idea, you'll likely dig the game, as rolling random objects into a giant ball is all that's asked of you. If you don't like the concept, there's nothing else, gameplay wise, to fall back on. That's okay. Not every game needs interlocking systems like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain . Katamari Damacy Reroll is a leisurely ride in which its simplicity is the charm.
This remaster gives Katamari Damacy the high-definition graphics and keyboard support that you'd expect in a modern PC game, but that's all. Considering the game's excellence, that's just fine.
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