Well, That Was Short-Lived

I would like to start off by saying that I'm sorry.  Kind of.  I'm sorry if, after my faint praise of the game and its low, low sale price were enticing enough for you to have bought the game, then I apologize.  Not because Touch My Katamari eventually turns into a game that lives and breathes on punching you in the dick and laughing at your torment or anything, no.  In fact, it's very fair and when you unlock the Eternal Modes for the levels, it's quite enjoyable indeed.  Fundamentally, there's not a whole lot wrong with the game part of the game if you don't count the fact that it's kind of short.  There is something, however, that is one of those naturally terrible things that just grate on me because it screams of design that you should never ever ever incorporate into a game.  Ever.

The currency of the game world in Touch My Katamari is Candy.  You get candies for finishing requests (based on your performance), for buying things for the King (never as many as you spent) and for playing every day.  That last one is the key - playing a few days in a row will only get you a couple to a handful of candies, whereas a full ten days in a row and thereafter will get you 256 candies simply for loading up the game.  That seems like a lot, right?  It does.  Until you learn that everything costs thousands of candies.  Some of it is the low thousands so it's not -bad-, since you're earning a couple hundred easy from requests anyway (so long as you're not getting really low scores, which you -won't- in Eternal because you'll be rolling all of the things), but it's still a bit of a slog to buy everything.  Even utilizing Candy Tickets, which multiply your candies earned in a request by 2, then 4, then 8 (if you use three at a time) won't get you a -lot-, but it'll get you a good amount towards buying things.

And if you want all the dozen trophies that Touch My Katamari has to offer, then you're going to have to buy all the things.  Specifically all of the music (you'll want to anyway, the music is more or less pretty good) and all the King's clothes, which is where the issue is.  You see, the upper echelon of outfits for the King's wardrobe will cost in the high thousands per piece meaning you're kind of stuck playing the levels over and over and over and over again...which is fine in theory.  Either that or, if you're going for the mega secret ultimate hidden item, which is literally a golden poop soft-serve that costs a grand 76,500 Candies which is...far more than the rest of the items in the game combined.  By quite a wide margin.  Given that your biggest get for a single level using three candy tickets if you finish off all the bonus things in the same level (which are one-time-only affairs) is probably somewhere around 1,000-1,400 candies.  Maybe.  For about 15-20 minutes playtime.  You....can see how this will end up being a sort of a problem.

This is where that bit about the 256 candies per day comes into play.  See, the silly thing about Touch My Katamari is that, even though there's something that clearly checks an external source for the date and time (the rank/title vendor, basically - you title will upgrade as you continue to play the game which eventually gives you candy multiplier bonuses that do not stack with tickets) you can go into a menu (guides suggest the curio menu) switch to settings, advance the day by one, go back into the game, exit the menu and get handed 256 candies.  You can repeat this process over and over and over again and it will take you a long time, but it will be far, far faster than getting the candies legitimately.  And by far, far faster, I mean it will take hours of your life and cause you to advance the clock manually, day-by-day, to June 22nd, 2014 if you started today with a no-streak (meaning the first ten days were building up to the 256).  Like I did.  Today.  Right before I bought the golden poop soft-serve and got the trophy for getting the golden poop soft-serve, uploaded my save data to online storage and deleted that shit.

That is really my main issue with the game other than it being short, but it's a pretty damn serious issue if you have terrible not-actually-OCD-but-let's-call-it-that-anyway like I do, and as a design philosophy, it's abhorrent.  You might think, with Namco and the way they treat Katamari games, that it was a trick to get you to -buy- candy with real money, but no, that's not even an option.  You can by Fan Damacies (that are otherwise completely random spawns) which you trade for Candy Tickets (and also unlock the free DLC missions with) and that's basically the gist of the whole....real-money aspect to it.  Aside from maybe buying more music or something, I didn't really look into it.  And it's not that I was going to buy candy, it's just that I was assured that that's what Namco wanted me to do.  But no....no it was not.  Which makes the decision even more baffling.  Still, for $3.75 and Eternal Modes, it was a rather fun, enjoyable game that would've been easily "alright" if it wasn't for that whole glaring issue.  As it stands, I just can't continue to recommend it unless you just...don't care about trophies at all.  Which is probably the healthy move.

it burns usssss, needs the trophies precious

Touch My Katamari is Pretty Good

Tonight was not my first exposure to Katamari since that honor was given to the demo for Touch My Katamari around when the Vita launched.  It was a really fun demo because the core mechanics of the game are pretty solid and the demo level had some really interesting layout and music that made it rather memorable.  It was because of the demo that I went "Yeah, I'm going to buy this game at -some- point", yet that point never came until today.  Thanks to the fantastic Japanese Game Sale going on, I grabbed the game for $3.75 and I do not regret it even a little bit.  (I also bought Atelier Totori Plus as I said I would, but I don't have 3 Gigs free and I need space for the Killzone Mercenary Beta anyway)  I thought about it and realized that even though I played the demo like fifty times, I didn't really say a -lot- about it.  Yeah, I mean, I said two paragraphs about it all that time ago, but now I have the game proper and it's fresh and new (to me) so I should go a little deeper.

If you're not quite sure what a Katamari is, I have to assume that you're not really up on the niche stuff which is sort of an assumption one can make because of the whole definition of that and whatnot.  Regardless, it was a series that I knew of for a while even if I didn't play a single iteration of it until this one on the Vita.  Basically what the game is about is rolling a ball that captures things on it to make it bigger so you can roll up bigger things.  Like a snowball effect, except you're eventually rolling up cars and people and being a general menace to society by making a gigantic ball of chaos.  Some missions there's a time limit to make as big of a ball as you can, some missions there's an amount of things that you have to collect, and some missions, it's just about getting to a particular size.  Eventually, I think there's a mode where you can just roll up everything and that will be amazing if it's true and I want it, but I'm good with what I've got for now.

It is very....quirky.  Quirky isn't the right word, of course, but it's the only one I can think of without saying "Japanese" and getting all sorts of negative connotations leveled at me.  Even though you all know what I mean, you bastards.  You're the Prince under the King of All Cosmos who is in a guy in too tight tights asking you to make giant balls of things that he can eat and turn into stars.  Please, go into your own minds and think of an appropriate word for that scenario as it lays out.  Try to blame me, I dare you.  Aside from that, there's all sorts of weird animated cutscenes that go on betwixt the missions, which are presented to you by talking to people who are standing on the hat of the King of All Cosmos while also ignoring gravity.  All the missions seem to involve bettering the King in some fashion, either by making a Katamari that has a lot of sports equipment to make him get out more, or a lot of rich things to make him look better off than he is, but really, it's all about rolling a ball around and making it bigger and bigger and bigger.

That works.  It's simple and it's far more enjoyable and engrossing than you might think.  All you're doing is rolling around the Katamari and picking up things so you can pick up bigger things as stated, but there's just something -to- it.  You roll by a King Chess Piece and say "No, too big for now", yet keep it in mind as you roll up about twenty toothpicks, six coins and some batteries that have been progressively larger.  By the time you see the Chess Piece again, you barrel right on through to pick it up because you're big enough now, and thanks to that, you're big enough for something else and so on and so on.  It's that sort of driving force that doesn't make it quite strategic, but distinctly gives the game structure that allows you to play around within those admittedly expansive confines.  Structure that you will eventually roll over to bring into your latest Katamari that will be as large as the day is long, and make a rather impressive star that burns twice as bright.

As stated, there's a demo of the game on the Playstation Store and while the game is $3.75 (only until the store updates on Tuesday) you should give it a shot.  Worst that will happen is the charm, the music (which is fantastic) and the game itself will fail to grab you and you won't spent less than four bucks on something.  Or, depending on your outlook, you'll love it and have to spend less than four bucks on it which is not that big of an issue either.  Basically I'm just saying that there's very little to be lost and potentially a lot to be gained here.  It's not a particularly big game, but it offers a lot of replayability once new modes open up and give you new incentive to try out the previous stages again.  And again, it's less than four bucks for a few more days.  I feel I have to stress that, while also reminding you that there are other games in the Japanese Game Sale that you should also buy like Soul Sacrifice which you should buy because I'm telling you to buy Soul Sacrifice.  Subtly.  Subliminal messaging.

roll up allll of the things!

PSA: There is an Amazing Vita Sale Going On

Completely out of the blue, the Playstation Blog announced a sale this previous Monday that would go live this past Tuesday and carry over into next week's store update on Tuesday where different titles are switched in.  As someone who loves his Vita so much who wants other people to similarly love their Vitas, I would be remiss if I didn't bring it up at least once, so that is what I'm doing here.  The sale is the Japanese Games Sale which is appropriate because a lot of the games that are really good on the Vita are Japanese (though there are notable exceptions, of course) and quite a few of them are included in the sale in one vein or the other.  Of course, it would just be easiest to sort of...show what the sale is and -then- talk about it first.

August 13th – 19th

Game	Regular Price	Sale Price	Plus Price
Soul Sacrifice	$35.99	$24.99	$17.49
Gravity Rush	$35.99	$24.99	Free
Sumioni: Demon Arts	$14.99	$10.49	$7.34
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus	$39.99	$27.99	$19.59
Guilty Gear Accent XX Core + R	$14.99	$10.49	$7.34
Atelier Totori Plus	$39.99	$27.99	$19.59
Silent Hill Book of Memories	$29.99	$14.99	$7.50
Touch My Katamari	$14.99	$7.49	$3.75
Ridge Racer	$24.99	$12.49	$6.25

August 20th – 26th

Game	Regular Price	Sale Price	PS Plus Price
Street Fighter X Tekken	$39.99	$27.99	$19.59
Muramasa Rebirth	$34.99	$27.99	$20.99
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection	$29.99	$20.99	$14.69
New Little King’s Story	$19.99	$13.99	$9.79
Dead or Alive 5 Plus	$39.99	$19.99	$10.00
Ragnarok Odyssey	$29.99	$20.99	$14.69
Dynasty Warriors Next	$34.99	$17.49	$8.75
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3	$39.99	$19.99	$10.00
Super Monkey Ball	$29.99	$20.99	$14.69

As stated, the first batch of titles will be only be on sale until next Tuesday, where another batch of fantastic games will take over and threaten your wallet with all the fury of a thousand purchases.  Or something along those lines. 

One thing that I do want to emphasize so much that I started a new paragraph for it is that I want you to buy Soul Sacrifice.  As you know, I really enjoyed it and I want a sequel which is only going to happen if more people buy it.  So buy it.  At $17.49, it's practically a steal (even if some of the other games in the sale are literally a steal) and it has hours upon hours upon hours of content to keep you coming back for more, not counting the batches of free DLC that have come out for it.  Which I don't even think are -done- by the way.  So the game is there and then some and I cannot say enough that I want you to buy it because I love it and I know that I'm not going to be alone in this.  It's one of those games that I will eventually Platinum because I just want to really badly, even if it's going to take a ridiculous amount of effort.

Other things I'm going to pick up personally include Atelier Totori Plus, which Chance assures me is very cute and well worth the sub-$20 pricetag on it and Touch My Katamari because that name, the demo is amazing and I have just wanted it for a while, so $3.75 is absurdly reasonable.  I briefly considered Guilty Gear, but I don't like Fighting Games as a rule, and I already have BlazBlue attached to my account and I really want to play that...when I have 3 gigs free which isn't going to be anytime soon, I can assure you of that, unfortunately.  If I liked Diablo-like games, I would certainly pick up Silent Hill:  Book of Memories since I enjoyed the demo for it and....even as it stands, I still might.  It's a weird, neat little game and it's something that I want to like, and am assured by some sources that it's something that is indeed likable, but I just haven't reconciled that with my brain just yet.

The following week is when it gets a bit ridiculous.  Muramasa: Rebirth just came out not too long ago and for $21, you're getting a crazy good deal.  Similarly the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for Vita, while it lacks Peace Walker, is still twice the price it'll be on sale for and even if you're just looking for one or the other, it's simply easier to buy both because they're both fantastic games.  Just pretend you're getting one for free if you need any more convincing than that.  While I have my complaints and whinges about Dynasty Warriors Next, sub-$9 is a good price for just about anything, and it -is- based on Dynasty Warriors 7 which was the best Dynasty Warriors game before 8 came out (which I have yet to play even though I bought it on release day auuuugh).  So if that's something you're interested in at all, it might not be a bad idea so long as you're not a Trophy addict.  Honestly, there's not a bad game in the second week of sales aside from perhaps Super Monkey Ball (which I don't think I've heard a single positive thing about) and New Little King's Story which is purely dependent on your tastes, I believe.  (Have heard mixed things about it, myself)

Regardless, the prices are amazing, the games are great and it's a sale that is geared specifically towards getting you to enjoy your Vita more than you already do.  Unless you already own like -all- of the games in the sale in which case you are probably enjoying your Vita just fine enough.  Because you also likely have Persona 4 Golden which means you're not even reading this because you're still playing it because it's so good.  So please, if you're one of those folks complaining there aren't enough things for the Vita (or know someone who is saying that) direct your attention to the storefront for the next two weeks and gorge yourself on something great for a price that won't hurt.

but no seriously, at least buy Soul Sacrifice