This is where I Love Katamari came in. Bandai Namco has completely revamped the series, again without the aid of creator Keita Takahashi. I dropped a cool $7.99 on the title, loaded it on my phone and frankly, I'm a little bit happy that the title was ported to the little phone.

I had a hard time talking myself out of giving this game negative scores a couple of times. The game itself is very much a Katamari Damacy game. The models are all blocky and low detail, The Prince and King of all Cosmos are still there, locked in a perpetual struggle of rolling trash and trying to be underwhelmed with it's size and content. The game even includes tracks from the original soundtrack. All the elements of a good translation are there. The problem is that the system isn't quite strong enough to pull off a completely faithful experience.

I kept thinking "Wow, the label on that can is really blurry, that's lame" and "I wish they would have invested more time on that model". Then I had to shake my head and realize I'm playing this game on my phone. Not a PS2, not a 360, not even a PSP. On a phone. It's really hard not to judge a game poorly for having a slightly slow framerate, the occasional chopping when the screen zooms out, and a very disappointingly jerky royal rainbow animation when you are playing a game on a device that is in all respect intended for making phone calls.

Now, you must also be wondering how the controls handle. Imagine Super Monkey Ball, with some extra touch controls to strafe and perform a 180 turn and you have a pretty good idea of how the title works. Simply tilt the phone and the ball rolls in that direction. Okay, so it doesn't have the precision of the original game, but it's a phone and that's really the best scheme they could have for the device. I would admit that while the control scheme makes sense, it can handle a bit poorly. Levels start out zippy and responsive as you would expect, but as the levels progress the ball becomes sluggish, prompting you to roll around like a cat with a ball of string trying to get your would be celestial body to move. Not exactly the kind of image you want to project in an airport or other public place.

Bandai Namco has already said they plan to address some, if not all the issues expressed by the players of the game. Hopefully the mushy controls and occasionally poor frame rates can be fixed to improve the game's performance on a whole. In the mean time, the game is perfectly playable, but it is definitely not a replacement for the originals.

Score: 7 of 10