Overview
I Love Katamari brings the oddly entertaining Katamari series to your iPhone. Players control the Prince, a servant of the King of All Cosmos. The Prince’s job is to roll objects into a great sticky ball that grows in size as you roll more objects up. The main mode of the game tasks players with rolling a large enough katamari to capture a specific item for the King. This series has been somewhat of a cult hit on other systems, and the charm and strangeness are intact here. Unfortunately, this game falls short in a couple crucial technical departments.
Unlike many other iPhone games that have 3D graphics but only two dimensions of motion, I Love Katamari lets players move in any direction they like. The graphics are nothing you’d find on a current-gen console, but they get the job done.
- Combination Touch/Tilt Controls
The setup is good here - players tilt to control their katamari’s motion, and have a number of options available to them through touch to further alter movement. Strafing, 180 degree turns, and a braking function are all possible through various touch gestures. The implementation of this setup is, lamentably, a little off.
While there are only five levels, players can tackle those in any of four game modes. Story mode asks you to roll a specific item for the King of All Cosmos. Eternal mode lets you just roll around at your leisure. Exact Size Challenge and Time Attack modes are exactly what they sound like.
Breakdown
The Good:
This was my first experience with the Katamari series. I have to say, the first thing I’m renting with my new GameFly subscription will be a Katamari game on a console. Even though there were problems with the game, I Love Katamari it was straight up charming. The gameplay was a blast at times and I can imagine with a console version that didn’t suffer from control and framerate issues, I’d be addicted.
The Bad:
The framerate on this game is tough to swallow. I read earlier that previous versions of this app were even worse, and I’m very glad they fixed it up before I went in for a download. The worst parts were when I reached a sort of critical mass and the camera zoomed out to accommodate my new size. The screen blurred (on purpose, I think), and the game slowed to a crawl. This needs to be fixed.
I found the controls to require too much wrestling and wrangling for my taste. I understand that I’m rolling around an object of ever-increasing size, so I expected to encounter inertia and resistance - I’m not turning on a dime with a 300 meter katamari. However, there were times where I felt like the game was taking longer than normal to respond to the moves I was making. The framerate could have contributed to that problem. Another big issue was that the neutral position for the accelerometer was not adjustable, which was awful since the default setting had me holding my phone facing away from my body to move forward at full speed.
Verdict
This game is cute, and this game is fun. Unfortunately, the developer still has some work to do on the usability of the controls and graphical optimization. Like many iPhone games, technical issues take a significant bite out of the enjoyment of an otherwise great game. At this point, I can’t say the game’s worth 8 dollars. Once the issues are fixed all the way, it definitely will be worth it - if the game were easier to handle and ran a little more smoothly, I would really Love Katamari.
