The Wonderful End of the World: Perhaps This?

"You can't save the whole world. It's going to be eaten by a mythological demon with the head of a fish. But as a puppet that absorbs all it touches, you can try to rescue as much of Earth's greatness as you can before the end arrives. In the beginning, you roam the Earth, capable of absorbing only the tiniest of objects."

I'm sold. Where do I sign up?

TWEotW is a Katamari inspired game with the above premise. You gotta suck up everything beautiful and right in the world for preservation. It's an amazing idea, and I'm in love with it.

But, Katamari also had unique audio, and a unique and quirky visual style. I wasn't too certain those were things  TWEotW could mimic. Well, I was wrong to a decent extent. The visuals in this game look damn fine.

They're nothing absolutely stunning, but they get the job done, and look good.

 It may be hard to tell from the promotional screenshots, but in the game, you control a giant marionette. The marionette has similar properties to a Katamari. Still sound great? It should. Let's look at a first impression of the audio.

This right here is pretty damn cool.

It's the kind of focused audio direction the game needs to give itself a specific style and feeling. Everything so far sound great? Good.

I'm sorry to say it just doesn't all add up right in the final product.

To be perfectly clear:  TWEotW is by no means a bad game. In fact, I recommend you go and download the demo right now, as it's worth seeing the game yourself. That being said, it's still not nearly what it could be.

TWEotW has some pretty big flaws in some very key areas that serve to bring down the production by quite a large notch. The audio only lasts as long as the title screen before falling apart, and what at first I thought to be vocal (or at least reasonably emotional) tracks turned out to be some of the oddest, out of place audio I could find anywhere.

This music is pretty much entirely pointless, for example. It doesn't serve to make the player feel anything about the stage, or about the game in general. It's just there.

That's not the main issue, though, as the gameplay itself falls short of expectations, too. The game tries really hard to emulate Katamari Damacy, but put simply, the levels and overall atmosphere of the game feel hollow in comparison. It doesn't help that, instead of trying to do something new or different with Katamari's absorption mechanic, the game attempts to copy it almost completely.

That's enough about the bad, though. I don't like making a habit of talking smack about games, and truthfully, as rough as this game can be at times, it isn't horrible by any stretch of imagination.

What I'm here to do is try and show you what  TWEotW could've been. I think the easiest place to start would be the core gameplay. Now, as I've said many times, TWEotW  tries to emulate Katamari. No secret there, and the developer will openly admit to it if you ask, I'm sure. The problem was that it was uninteresting and empty by comparison to its inspiration. How do we fix this?

Simple. Do something different.

 Katamari is known for being a happy, quirky, and relatively easy-going game. You remember when I said TWEotW's star was a human shaped marionette?


Take a look at this.

Now, apply that range of movement to the marionette in TWEotW, and we've already got something to talk about. Add that range of movement to the premise, and we have a game where I could be dashing around Paris, careening through an outdoor eatery, sucking up customers and tables, before jumping into an art fair to collect and preserve priceless paintings.

A game where the stages take place in some of the most notable cities in the world, as you dash around on rooftops and through crowded streets, slurping up everything in your path? That already has a lot more going for it.

To further separate TWEotW from Katamari and give the game its own feel, quick-paced, objective based gameplay could be implemented. Not so quick as to make the player feel rushed, but quick enough to remind them that the world is going to be eaten by a mythological demon with the head of a fish.

You could even add in a stylish announcer, like Viewtiful Joe, or a feelgood bonus area that just has a whole ton of small, sparkly objects to run around and collect. If you're imagining the same thing I'm trying to make you imagine, it should be reasonably awesome as hell, and I think it would do this game's premise, and the idea of other game's with Katamari mechanics, a lot more justice.