Game review - Me and my katamari (PSP)

Alright, first post of this month shall be a game review~!

Me & My Katamari

-Basic Info-
Name: Me and my katamari (English)
僕の私の塊魂, Boku no Watashi no Katamari Damashii (Japanese)
My and My Clump Spirit (English translated)
Release date: December 22, 2005 (Japan)
March 21, 2006 (USA)
Developer/Publisher: Namco
Platform: Playstation Portable
Genres: Third party puzzle action
Ratings: ESRB: E
CERO: A
OFLC: G
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_and_my_katamari)

Game scores: Metacritic: 75
IGN: 76
GameSpy: 70
Yahoo! Games: 70
(Taken from http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/psp/meandmykatamari)

-About the game-

Background:
Ever fantasied about town rampages? Ever felt like rolling a giant ball and crushing buildings on the way, just like what happened in James and the Giant Peach? Well, this is what you will get from the game "Me and My Katamari" which I will feature for my first game review here. You start off as a little guy (I don't really know what he actually is, but they call him prince), and a katamari. Well, from what I understand, katamari, or 塊魂, is a ball which sucks anything and everything which crosses it's path as long as it is of the right size. Your mission is to roll up land masses of various sized, which later will be used to create islands for animals on the sunflower continent, in event of which that will be their home. While rolling up island making materials, you can look for various presents (which contains clothing) and your cousins, which are playable characters.

Controls:
The controls for the game is pretty easy to operate. Both the D-pad and the four face buttons are the main control, where L and R are for direction changing. This provides a problem though. After quite some time of game play (for like 15 or 20 minutes), your thumbs will start to go sore, or worse still, you might fell the pain in both your thumbs due to the constant pressing of the same few buttons. Oh well, you get this from most of the handheld racing games so there's noting much to complain about, but this game is just a bit worse than the normal D-pad pain (or "nintendo thumb"). Even though they've allowed the usage of thumb-nub for the USA release, still, it feels quite weird and your right thumb still hurts after a long period of game play. Another thing is that turning can provide a problem at times, but I think if you practice more on some racing games it will be fine.

Game play:
The game play, or methodology of the game, is a simple one. You roll. The scale varies and you usually start off with rolling a 5 cm katamari, which you will change places when your katamari gradually increases in size. Small objects such as stationary, toys and all the junk which you will normally find on under your bed will be among the first victims of your katamari. As you roll, your katamari's size gradually increase (but you yourself is still that 15 cm guy for some reasons). You will gradually move on to bigger stuff such as fruits, small animals (and later big ones) and eventually humans, which I think its the part of which is most fun. Imagine chasing them and hearing them scream while rolling them up, or watching them scram helplessly. At least, this is something that you don't see in your everyday life (something is very wrong if you do). The size of your katamari will not stop growing there though. It will eventually reach the size where house will be sucked by it, and later the whole of an island or even continent. Well, my largest katamari I believe is 4000+ m in eternal mode (3.9km in normal mode). Though all these sounds perfect, it isn't. One flaw of this game is the concentration of items during various levels. The level for katamari size 20 cm - 75 cm and 75cm - 1.5m is especially hard, which is mainly caused by the uneven and un-densed distribution of objects. You need very high rolling precision if you wish to pass this stage (and even higher precision if you want the presents). Another thing is that there are some tight spots, and quite some dead ends in the game, such as the little cliff in the 10m-30m level, for which its close impossible to roll up the cliff with a 25+m katamari. But other than these two factor, the game play is fairly well-liked, at least by me. One thing I like about the game though, is that there is an 8-bit version of the game provided when you've beaten the whole game, and that's where the credits rolls. Oh well, quite innovatice, i suppose?

Graphics:
The theme of the graphics, I believe, is 3D cartoon style (without the black outlines). It is clear that the colour scheme are not meant for the game to look too real, if at all. But on the other hand, the colour rendering and the model skins are well made. They are quite detailed, so much so that you it brings you to a world of 3D cartoon where each skin is pretty well made, maybe except for those of humans. The details of a human skin is kind of lacking, which cause them to look square. But the thing is, you can't be that too detailed or else your PSP will have a screen freeze when your katamari grows to a somewhat 7 or 8 m and a few dozens of humans are running around. Still, I seriously think that the graphics of this game brings out the potential of PSP.

Audio:
The game comes with a set of nice sounding tracks, of which most of the titles could be found from 'Katamari' sound-track albums.

Katamari Fortissimo Damacy
Katamari wa Damacy
Complete Sounds of Katamari
Katamari Suteki Damacy
(taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_Sounds_of_Katamari)

Well, together with the great screaming from rolled up school girls, all these do make a great combination, right?

This is a song featured in ME and My Katamari, called Everlasting love. One of my favourite from the game.

Well, all that basically sums up my first little (quite long btw) review here. Oh and before I forget, the scores.
Controls: 6
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Audio: 9
Total: 7.75
Can't afford to give it a low score, cause this game is the main reason why I've got my PSP when I already have a NDS. I'll end it here, and here's some pictures which I've taken from the net, just incase if you want to know more about the game.