I was thinking a bit more about the "stunts" post I'd put up the other day, and got to thinking about a general list I'd love to see in the eventual sequel. I'm guessing those of you that've played the series longer than I have must have some pretty crazy ideas of your own...do tell :]


My WL:

1] Sound. The joy of the original was arguably all the hilarious sounds that got made during gameplay. Whenever I'm trying to turn someone on to the game, I'll play the make-the-moon level and watch them crack up at the screams and "hey! what's-happening?!?" protests. BGM and pickup sounds were punched up far more than this in later versions, and I think it's lost a bit of catharsis and soul as a result. I think this is what brought about gameinformer's "dull and lifeless" comment in regards to BK. I wouldn't go that far, but maybe it's something to consider next version, or wow, a DLC soundpack would be amazing if possible. Just once I'd like to see two DLC expansions for a game I like.


2] Player control. Previously mentioned in the forum by myself and others: the camera swings around the katamari in a much slower fashion in the BK version, which prevents quick turning and makes the route planning more strafe-based. I'm not sure if this is a framerate / streaming thing, or it was something that just never came about in playtesting. The katamari in the original also feels faster. The strength of the series is that in essence, it's a strategy racer. I often feel like I'm waiting for the camera, which hinders the fun of the racer aspect.


3] Option to Disable the king speaking in-game. Enough said.


4] New themes. Earth is by far the most cathartic location for katamari rolling, but I'd love a new version to include some other planets.

My favorite level idea though would have to be that of a tubular space station a-la some of the areas in Metroid Prime, with the ability to roll on the floor, walls or ceiling. One of the delightful gameplay quirks Nintendo has been adding repeatedly to great success is quirky faux-gravity effects. Sometimes just doing the same thing upside-down lends to a whole new feeling of fun.


5] Stunts and new controls. Expanding the thought from my previous thread, what I'm now envisioning is something along the lines of shoulder buttons and triggers having control of various rotational axis of the katamari: L and R triggers rotate the katamari along the depth axis, L and R buttons along the vertical axis.

On the ground, the triggers double as a quick strafing option. The shoulder buttons, when held down for a second, activate a special "katamari vortex" move: hold both shoulder buttons down for a few seconds and the katamari spins fast enough to create a gravitational pull, sucking in any aquireable objects objects nearby. Hold just one down, and the vortex attracts objects but whips them out in front, similar to the shooter style katamari in the classic arcade game at the end of BK. Shooting aggressive humans or animals would freeze them as if you'd struck them with your katamari, allowing you to pass by narrow areas where they'd otherwise get in the way.

While I realize part of the joy of katamari is the insanely simple, buttonless player control, a lot of these buttons are now being used, and I don't think these additions compromise the simplicity: newbies can continue to enjoy the basic game mechanics as they always have.

In the air, you can use these spins along with quickflip and speedrun to form stunt combos for extra style points, similar to the style point moves in Paper Mario 2; The Thousand Year Door. Maybe style points fill up a meter, and you have to rack them up to execute the powerful vortex move.


6] Level editor. I really have no idea why more games don't include this, considering there's probably already some in-house level editor of some sort that could be given a more friendly GUI and kapow: massive feature players love. The Tony Hawk Pro Skater series had something really great with that, but I found they devoted less and less energy to it over the years. My favorite thing in the world is making levels and inviting friends over to test 'em out with me. The genres of the two games are actually rather similar: THPS is largely about hunting down certain objectives as quickly as possible, Katamari is about finding the biggest grabbable objects for your current size as quickly as possible.

Here's the setup: similar to multiplayer, I pick a map and get a smaller version of an in-game level, etc. I get a poly budget and a shopping basket of pre-rendered items I can populate the world with, with the ability to rotate said objects as I see fit. The ability to stack objects is a huge bonus but understandably that gets tricky.

Levels are available in non-ranked multiplayer: I can invite my friends in and we compete for biggest katamari, or maybe just build something insanely silly to laugh at.

Some interesting points.

I think by expanding the controls to include special moves like you describe, it may needlessly complicate levels to the point where you're expected to use certain moves at certain times and then you just end up with lots of people failing certain levels and then comes the strategy guides. If there's one thing that should never be essential for this game, it's a strategy guide. We develop strategies here for certain levels, but that's to set scores that are the best in the world. I think your idea might work best in a specialized course, or maybe something like Instituto Exactimundo, where you would have a couple courses with specialized controls just for that level.

Some things I'd like to see:

Expanded multiplayer and co-op. Expanded level selection. More options than just item battle on multi. Tone down co-op difficulty to increase accessibility. I was shocked when I saw how difficult the co-op missions were when I first tried it out in BK. In WLK, quite a few of my best scores were the co-op ones, although admittedly I'm a much better roller now.

Improve leaderboards so they're not constantly freezing the game. Also, a way to automate score uploading. And let Silver members on it too!

AUTOSAVE OPTION! Or at least a prompt! C'mon!

I'd also like an expansion of the present selection to include more items that aren't totally lame (I'm looking at you, long nose), and hopefully more that are unique to the cousin, like the Hat, Mask, and Royal Outfit. Those are the most fun.

I'm absolutely against all create-a-ideas. No level editors or cousin makers for me.

I don't mind the king talking cause that's the charm of the game. Granted, some levels he talked waaaaay too much but at the same time the classic quirkiness from KD(ba-na-na) has seemingly left the series.

Autosave would be nice, not sure why it hasn't been implemented yet.

1. Improved online play. Size battles, level exchanges, and co-op would do.

2. Co-op on the one-player levels again.

3. Roll on more planets. Heck, why not your own?

That's what I can think of.

giraffehead, jpop, and welcome mats and i am happy. :)
i say that everytime though.

1. More unique levels

2. No DLC for people who don't have XBL

3. More presents

well, i don't know how i feel about full customization, but on the other hand, to have a few options for colors or designs on the presents could be kinda neat. i would also love auto-save, i have turned off my game without saving at least once, and that was enough for me. the main thing that needs improvement in my opinion is the online. it's pretty lame. co-op levels would be hard, but could be fun. plus it would be neat to set your own challenges or something like that... err, i've got no details, but that's the gist of it.

:lol they already have lots of NO DLC for people that dont have Live... and that stinks!

autosave is good. or pause and save is good too.
looking at burnout paradise, that thing saves automatically all the time! LOVE that.

i lost my biggest fire, and two other records in WLK from a nonsave once.

oh I'm definitely dead against overcomplicating it. I was thinking of the style points and the vortex move as more of a speedrun type feature...you can still completely enjoy the game and beat it without using speedrun, but it's there for replay value if you decide you want to become some kind of ace katamari roller.

Vix, I'm deeply curious about the aversion to make-a-____ stuff. Is it MMO syndrome where you don't want people suddenly showing up with completely mismatched crap that breaks the style of the game? I'm adversed for this reason on the make-a-cousin thing, but having played enough THPS, they're usually pretty good about keeping people within the parameters of the game's look-and-feel...or is it something else entirely?

Have you played the recent tony hawk games? Well, tony hawk create-a-character sims, there's no game anymore. They spent so much time making the create a character/board/trick/park/tattoo/etc that they forgot to put in a game.

Yes, the create-a-system works in some games. But katamari is not one of them. My reasoning is that this game is creative, it's not a run of the mill generic game. The developers put thought into the levels, the characters, the interactions, presents, etc. But what happens when you start seeing the create-a-stuff show up...

You start seeing less characters, boring levels and so on and so forth. Because most of creative process was spent on what color you want your cousin's antenna.

I honestly would rather have no new katamari than a watered down, uncreative, create-your-own-game-cause-the-dev's-didn't-feel-like-it katamari.

Games like rock band, tiger woods...they use the create a character awesomely but then I've seen games where it's utter crap and the game experience is totally ruined.

oh, yeah I have zero interest in the customizing-character stuff and completely agree, I just like the part where you can set up your own ramps and such. I'm a bit of a sandbox nerd I guess.

i always appreciate character designing! in any game pretty much.
even the basics in katamari. i am SO happy to unlock my giraffe head and put it on.
as long as it didnt affect gameplay though like she said.

i'm all for sandboxing if it's the right kind of game. i don't think it would work in katamari