Beautiful Katamari is out. And it’s… um… well…
Posted on Monday, October 22, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Short.
And not just short. Like, really, REALLY short. I literally went from creating a new savegame to the end credits in about two and a half hours. I’m honestly having a fairly hard time justifying the price tag, even though it was $20 cheaper than any other first-run Xbox 360 game. A typical game of Monopoly takes longer than this game, and I can pick that up at Walmart for $10.
This frustration about the price is not helped by the fact that on launch day they already had downloadable content available (4 new levels, or so I’ve read… I haven’t actually looked) for the low, low price of just 200 points (about $3.50, I think, if I did my math right). I mean, once Xbox Live introduced the whole “downloadable content” concept, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it was abused. But this is simply ridiculous. They could have waited a few weeks, to at least make it look like they weren’t planning on bilking you from the get-go. But no, it was available at launch. To me, it really just seems like the team finished the game, then removed stuff from the shipping game disc for the sole purpose of charging you extra for it.
Price and shortness aside, it’s still a Katamari game. Which, in and of itself, kind of makes up for the shortness. Because in the aforementioned 2.5 hours, I didn’t get very good scores on any of the levels, and I missed the vast majority of the presents and cousins. And each level has two separate modes (normal and timer mode), so I’ve got the second version of each mission still to master, as well. So it will be a good long while before I’ve finally gotten my scores high enough to give up and quit playing. That’s just one of those things, I guess, where you’ve got to be anal-retentive enough to make this game worth the price of admission. If you just play through stuff once and don’t particularly care how good you do, you’re really not going to be very happy with yourself a couple hours after you get home with the game disc.
The graphics are, as always, deliberately bad. This game isn’t about the super amazing 3d effects and HDR lighting and whatever else. This isn’t Gears of War. But what basic graphics there are, are at least very cute and, well, Katamari-ish. It wouldn’t feel right if stuff didn’t look like it was built with Legos.
The music and sound are wonderful. A couple of the sound effects in one of the background songs were nearly giving my cats (and my wife) a complex. But other than that, it’s the same mix of eclectic techno and J-pop weirdness. And of course, as you should already know if you’ve played any of the other ones in the series, once you hear the main theme song (na naaaaa, na na na na naaa naaa naaa…) you will be humming it for weeks.
I guess that’s really about it. The first one in the series was definitely the best, in my opinion. They’ve kind of been going downhill since the original Katamari Damacy. This one… meh… take it or leave it. $40 seems a bit much, especially given that I’m still probably going to end up paying the full $60 that most other games go for once I buy all the DLC they release on the Live Marketplace. $30 would have left me with slightly less of that “you just got hosed” feeling.
So I suppose my final verdict is pretty simple. If you liked the first two (and that bastard stepchild one they put out for PSP), go ahead and get it. You know you want to. It’s fun mindless entertainment. If you didn’t like the first two, or haven’t heard of this whole Katamari thing before, stay away (and get the original game for PS2 instead, it’s much better). Because the thing I keep coming back to is that, in the time it took you to read this blog post, you could have been halfway through the damn game.
1 Comment
My thoughts on traffic.
Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I live in a big city, and drive through traffic every working day. So I’ve got a few thoughts on how traffic affects my life and yours. Here are these thoughts. (Subtext: This is why I’m a dick on the road.)
1. Your desire to move into a lane further left is primarily based on convenience. That is, left lanes tend to move faster than right lanes, and you think that you deserve to be in a left lane so that you get from point A to point B in less time. However, my desire to continue driving in whatever lane I feel like, at whatever speed I feel like, is also based on convenience. I don’t, and won’t, slow down and make a hole just so you can get further left. Your convenience is not greater than my convenience, no matter how vastly important you think you are.
2. Your desire to move into a lane further right is primarily based on necessity. If you are left, you generally need to get right because of a pressing need to exit the highway. How pressing that need is, however, is your own decision. Were you to actually briefly consider moving right gradually, after starting the process a mile or two before you actually need to exit, I may be much more inclined to give you the space in which to do so. But if you wait until 100 feet before your exit to brazenly attempt to fly across four lanes of traffic in order to make your exit, I kindly invite you to blow me. It’s your own damn fault, and I’m not going to slow down so you can act like a retard.
3. My car is, in the vast majority of cases, worth less than yours. Because I live in Texas, the simple fact that I drive a car and not a truck means you probably paid more for your vehicle than I did. Because lord knows everyone down here has to drive a gigantic fucking truck or SUV. And those that don’t seem to prefer luxury vehicles. At any rate, should your aforementioned attempt to fly across four lanes of traffic fail (read: you’re at fault), you’re out WAY more than I am. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that simply replacing a quarter panel on your 750i or your Lincoln Navigator probably costs more than it would to replace my entire car. Short answer: fine, cause a wreck, what the hell do I care?
4. If you’re on a highway onramp, the simple fact that the lane you’re currently in is eminently ending does not negate your obligation to use your turn signal. It should not be up to me to magically decide that you need over into my lane just because you’re very quickly going to run out of road. I mean, like I said, pretty much everyone down here has a gigantic SUV. So you may be planning on simply driving in the grass, for all I know. I don’t know you need over, unless you signal that intention by way of that little stick on the side of your steering wheel that causes your taillight to blink. I’m not psychic.
5. Speaking of entering the highway, common courtesy says take turns. Especially during heavy traffic, there are just as many cars currently in the “real” lane as there are in the onramp. So why, then, would you assume that you getting onto the highway somehow supersedes me already being on the highway, when I’ve already let someone else (that is, the person who was in front of you) in? In heavy traffic, what part of “vehicle already there, vehicle entering, vehicle already there, vehicle entering” don’t you understand?
6. Last, and most definitely not least, if you’d stay in your fucking lane rather than bouncing back and forth depending on which lane is currently moving the fastest, I bet traffic would go a lot faster for everyone. Pick a lane and stay there, cock smoker.
Thank you, that is all. Or at least, all that I can think of at the moment. Mostly because it’s late at night, and I’m sitting at home on my couch. If this were about 5:45 and I was currently sitting in traffic, I’m sure I could think of at least a dozen more things I hate about people. Unfortunately, blogging from the road is probably dangerous, and almost certainly illegal. So you’re stuck with the 6 things listed above.
