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New Katamari Forever trailer, playable at Comic-Con

Sony has released an extremely cute trailer for Bandai Namco’s Katamari Forever today, complete with monkey and turkey puppets. Featured in the trailer are some new game play footage. Sony has also announced, via their blog, that a demo for the game will be playable at this year’s Comic-Con.

The game is coming out in Japan in two days, but will be seeing a September 22nd release in the States. No exact date has been announced for Europe, however the game is expected to be out this year.

Read (PlayStation.Blog)

The Munchables Game Review–OM NOM NOM NOM…

If you ever wondered what a hybrid of Pac-Man and Katamari Damacy might look like, then you need look no farther than Bandai-Namco’s newest bizarre action title for the WIi, The Munchables.

In The Munchables, you’re part of a race of fuzzy little critters that inhabits the planet Star Ving, in which said critters do nothing but eat on a series of peaceful islands interconnected by rainbows.  You may wonder how critters that do nothing but eat can actually survive in their ecosystem–that’s thanks to the Legendary Orbs, gigantic stone structures that vaguely resemble…pudding?  I think that’s pudding.  But I’m terrified that it might be something much, much more disgusting.  Anyway, the Legendary Orbs generate a nonstop supply of food for the critters on the islands, and all is high-calorie heaven until a race of aliens shows up and steals the Legendary Orbs so that they too can become superpowerful monstrousities. All would be lost until one of the critters notices that, hey…these aliens, these “space pirates” as they’re called…look an awful lot like food.  And so, in what may be the single lowest point in interstellar diplomacy since Douglas Adams’ microscopic space fleet was inadvertently swallowed by a small dog, the Star Vingians proceed to eat their invaders.

And that is where you come in.  You’ll steer one of two Star Vingians around, eating anything that even vaguely looks edible and occasionally jumping.  If you find a food monster that is bigger than your mouth (you can tell by noting the “level” of both your character and the character you’re about to chow down on) you’ll have to attack it first to break it into smallish, bite-sized pieces.  Attacking boss characters is slightly more complex than this, however, and requires attacking weak points that will be clearly labelled for you.

As you grow in level, you’ll also PHYSICALLY grow–picture Katamari Damacy in which you don’t push the Katamari, but rather, you ARE the Katamari.  The control scheme is very simple, requiring the nunchuk to move your character around and a couple buttons on the Wiimote to perform the rest of your functions.  It’s also a fairly fun title.  Chowing down on the various enemies and swelling in size is an admittedly visceral thrill, but sometimes, the fun gets a little…strange.  See, at the end of every round, all that food you’ve eaten has to go somewhere…and where it goes…well, this is actually really creepy.  Your character will execute a one hundred eighty degree turn, visibly strain, and…spew a pile of sparkly multicolored orbs from its lower rear quadrant DIRECTLY onto an elderly onion.  Who will in turn seem very happy about this development, and assign you a letter grade based on how deep a pile of sparkly orbs you’ve landed him in.

I thought it was some kind of weird caffeine hallucination the first time I saw it, but then sure enough, the next round I’m burying an elderly onion in a pile of spherical dookie all over again.  And he’s happy about it.

This aside, The Munchables is a surprisingly fun title with some decent humor, graphics and gameplay.  it may not be a great long-term value but in the short term it almost certainly won’t disappoint.  A terrific rental, and possibly even a good buy, The Munchables is plenty tasty.

PowerUp Forever Game Review–An Interesting Hybrid

Sometimes, just sometimes, mind you, games don’t need a point.  All they need is some fun gameplay and an interesting hook, and this is the idea behind PowerUp Forever, a new shooter game on Xbox Live Arcade that’s an amazing hybrid of Warning Forever, Geometry Wars and Katamari Damacy.

I know, not exactly the most likely pedigree, but in a game where you fly around, blast stuff, and grow larger and more powerful with every successive level, you can definitely see the connections.  As you grow, you get new weapons, and you’ll need them to take on the new, larger enemies you find that were formerly part of the background.  The difficulty is surprisingly rich, with enemies moving in hard and fast to intercept as early as the fourth level.  Controls have some issues in this game, sadly, as switching between weapons isn’t terribly easy, and the more advanced weapons have an unfortunate tendency to run out of juice quickly, forcing you to switch back to your main gun so rapidly you might well start to wonder why you even bothered switching to the other guns to begin with.

Yes, it’s similar to a whole lot of other games you’ve played, but a couple new twists make this one worth trying.

Katamari Damacy Returning To Playstation

The PS3 has suffered from some serious setbacks including a loss of exclusives. Katamari Damacy was for years a Playstation exclusive but the most recent title switched camps and made its way to the Xbox 360. Sony must be jumping for joy with this announcement.

Not only is there a new game in the works but it’s going to be a Playstation 3 exclusive. It’s called Katamari Damacy Tribute and it’s essentially the same but different. The gameplay remains the same with the Prince of All Comsos rolling a magical ball called a katamari around in an effort to build up spheres big enough to replace stars.

The ‘different’ part comes in several forms. Firstly the game will take advantage of the PS3’s incredible graphics power and output at the full 1920×1080 resolution. The cartoony visual style will still be included but gamers will have the option of choosing a different style including ‘comic touch’, ‘new touch’ and ‘wood touch’. The game is only 40% complete so there’s nothing in the way of images yet, but the announcement says that these style choices will actually change how the rendering engine processes the visuals. Along with a ‘monochrome’ mode where everything but your katamari is in black and white there’s a brand new gameplay mode they’re keeping under wraps for now.