katamari returns, makes rolling more interesting

Katamari Damacy is one of those game franchises that just seems pretty much perfect. It’s highly addictive and incredibly fun, particularly considering the games are based on a simple gimmick of rolling a stick ball around and collecting things (like cows, cars, and maybe even cabbages). But just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the next iteration is on its way, and rolling is going to be a whole new experience.

In the forthcoming PS3-exclusive Katamari Forever, the stars have all been destroyed and need to be remade (again, sigh), but this time, things are a little different–in several key ways. Katamari Forever is a mix of old and new levels, and the old levels take place in the King of All Cosmos’s faulty memory, and they are devoid of color. As you roll your katamari, color leaches back into the stage.

In some of the new stages, your katamari has the power to alter the world; in one desert stage, you terraform the landscape with a water-soaked katamari, absorbing the sand and producing verdant forest. Katamari Forever will also have neat effects like graphics filters you can purchase with points earned, so you can see your rollable world in wood grain, for instance, and a comic effect mode. But with all this gain comes sacrifice: the only multi-player feature we saw with Beautiful Katamari will be absent. Not a huge price to pay, however.

[via Siliconera]