Finished (but not finished with) Beautiful Katamari

I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed with Beautiful Katamari. I so wanted to have a game that my girlfriend and I could get into together, but its utter disdain for the casual player was infuriating.

While the 3d game shell was pleasing (I love the parade and dancing features) it was impenetrable to my girlfriend. While it was cool to have many cousins, it was unclear what game play impact they played. While the core game play was enjoyable, it was constantly interrupted by camera/control flaws and annoying (and insulting) popup dialogs.

And, after beating the game, why can't all "eternal mode" be unlocked for all the game levels so my girlfriend and I can play the content in peace?

I think I'll probably try and cheese out a couple of more achievements (and unlock at least one "eternal mode") and then return to the rest of my queue.

Achievements I still want:

• 80% Collection (I'm so close): 40 points
• Katamari Perfectionist: 100 points
• Online Roller: 5 points (may cheese out some more online ones if they're easy)
  
• Non-Stop Roller: 30 points
• Responsible Roller: 30 points
• Maybe I'll find some more cousins and prizes
  

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty -- Demo

What a fun little demo. I got stuck at a couple of points but still it was an enjoyable 10 minutes or so. I'm not sure it would have been accessible for a non-FPS gamer (there were no basic commands tutorial prompts) but the default difficulty was perfect for me. It's a great example of how throwing the player right into the action can work so well -- it was a white-knuckled ride to the finish line.

I also really like where games are going in terms of health status. No more health bars or health kits, just on screen visual cues when it's time for you to back off and take cover. In this game the world desaturates and starts to gray out as you take more damage. You know when you're full health because the world is full of vibrant color again.

Definitely adding it to my Gamefly Q. I've played too many WWII shooters to buy a new one.

A couple of quibbles:

• I was allowed to fall and die about 10 seconds into the demo. No, I'm not opposed to player death. But it's probably a good idea to let the player learn the controls in relative safety without having to fear the reload for at least a few minutes.
• There was a cool hand-to-hand minigame. However, the controls were hard to see (small d-pad labels in the bottom left of the screen). When you're in a life or death struggle with a Nazi soldier -- and he's staring you in the face -- you probably won't be able to pry your eyes away from the main action to see the d-pad indicators.
• There were a couple of level design issues where I wasn't quite sure where to go next. I almost gave up once as I needed to search and mash buttons for over 2 minutes to figure out where to go next. While a tutorial catch prompt would have also prevented failure, this most likely could have been solved with lighting and in-game signage.
  

Critical Failure... My girlfriend tries to play Beautiful Katamari

So, I left my girlfriend alone with Beautiful Katamari for 10 minutes. I came back 10 minutes later and she still hadn't figured out how to start a single player game.

Whoops.

Pretty severe failure. Now she's stuck in a really boring dialog sequence about viewing stars. Stars that she hasn't yet created because she can't play the game to create a star.

She's trying her best to navigate the 3d "main menu" UI and can't figure out where to go.

Ouch. Now she's stuck in an awful save/load menu experience -- where Yes/No are mapped to A and B and you need to do an awkward tap dance to exit the save menu.

Sad thing is, I'm not sure I can figure it out either.

Another 5 minutes of struggle. She begs me to just start the game for her. Then she trips and finds the area with the beginner levels. Finally she's in a game (but not before asking "how do I skip all the dialog").

Of course now that she's in the game she's getting all these warnings that don't make sense because she skipped the intro (I told her to press the "start" button to skip the dialog). She wasn't sure whether "look out" meant for her to get the specific things or avoid them.

Then she was dumped into a minigame (I think it was a minigame) that was a funky billiards simulation. It was hard to tell whether it was interactive or not. Then she got a chance to try the level again.

She quickly got off track in a section of the map where everything was too big for her -- very frustrating.

It's also very clear that she will not tilt or pan the camera... This means that she is often at a disadvantage when she gets too close to a wall or tall objects that obstruct her view.

She failed again. Dumped into a mini game that was mostly obstructed by text. Annoying text. And it wasn't clear for the first little while how to play the game. It's unclear to me why they would show narrative text segments while you play a pretty involved minigame (avoiding billiard balls on a pool table).

Looks like 3rd time will be the charm, though. She's on pace to clear it. It's going to be close. She keeps getting screwed by the camera (which she either doesn't know she can control -- or isn't interested in controlling). Finally she did it and grew her katamari to the required size.

And, to top it off, the game basically tells her that she sucks. Is that supposed to be motivational for the more casual gamer?

Now she's frustrated after failing the third mission several times. She's been playing for 30 minutes and she still can't tell how close/far she is from her goal and how much time is left in the round.

I'm going to take over soon (I did like the first version) but I'm sad that we don't have a game that we can play together.