The Katamari Damacy series’ entertaining and ludicrous gameplay is in my perfect for portable gaming and the fact that my biggest complaint with Touch My Katamari is that it’s simply too short and offers too little content should be reason enough for fans of the series to rush (or roll) out and grab the game for the PS Vita.
For those unfamiliar with the franchise the basic premise of it all is simple. You play as the Prince who has been tasked by his father the King Of All Cosmos with rolling up items with his magic sticky ball. It’s the simple and straightforward gameplay that has been with the series since the 2004 original but the hilarity and chaos that occurs as you chase down fleeing sumo wrestlers or pickup dumbfounded cattle will cause you to giggle and snigger all the same.
New this time around though is the ability for you to either stretch or compress your Katamari (the magic sticky ball) using the touch interface of the PlayStation Vita. While a flat, stretched Katamari allows more smaller items to be collected more easily, a tall, compressed one grants access to otherwise restricted areas. If you want any chance of obtaining a 5 star rating for your giant ball of junk however, careful use must be made of both as you plan out your rolling strategy for a particular stage. Also while on the subject of the stretchy-squashy system as I will now term it, I commend the developers for the ease at which it is to switch between the different forms. Dare I say it but I found the system to be near flawless, responding to my inputs to stretch, squash or return to the original form every time.
Which brings us onto my single biggest gripe with Touch My Katamari; there just isn’t enough of it. A single playthrough of all of the stages can easily be accomplish in an afternoon (and not even a particularly lazy one) and while the game does encourage you to replay stages to earn candy (the in-game currency) so that you can purchase items from the various in-game shops, it just lacks too much content for an extended play session. Granted in 30 minute bursts it works perfectly as you can bash through several stages without playing the same stage twice but over extended play sessions you can only replay the same stages so many times before they become somewhat predictable and in a game such as this, that is a very bad thing.
Restricted to 30 minute bursts though, Touch My Katamari is pick up and play gaming at it’s best and on a handheld system perhaps that‘s all you really need. Any time longer however and you’ll likely start to notice the general lack of content that’s present which is a downright shame. Bearing all that in mind, I would still definitely recommend you add Touch My Katamari to your PlayStation Vita library. It may not be the most jam packed game on the market but as tea break cheer up at a hard day at work, it’s the perfect game to bring a smile to your face.