Wattam Review-Via and Via • Takahashi United • iGamesNews.com

Keita Takahashi still doesn't care about concepts like target audience and player retention. When asked what his game goal was, the answer was simple, "fun." Subsequent issues may shrug. For this reason, the story of Takahashi's best-selling "Katamari Damacy" is surprising, precisely because he embodies the spirit of an independent creator who is not subject to commercial restrictions. Takahashi has designed some small experiments. The colorful toys are fun, although they have limited functionality. Easy to pick up and put away. He shares this mentality with Funomena, who has collaborated with him on Wattam, and has produced games like Luna and Wooorld, with equally colorful and inclusive charm.

Wattam review

Developer: Funomena
announcer: Annapurna Interaction
platform: PS4
Usability Launches on PS4 and PC on December 17

Wattam felt like a collection of interesting things from Takahashi at the time, with several simple elements loosely linked by a theme. First control the mayor, a green cube with a bowler hat. The mayor was alone on a floating island until he suddenly applauded a new friend-a stone! "Welcome back, Stone!" It said, and just continued. Your task is basically to repopulate many islands with some weird things usually related to everyone, each island representing a different season.

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"Refilling" may be a broad word because it means that you know what you are doing. In fact, you did follow what Wattam told you, following its special brand Keita Takahashi logic. Here, every normally inanimate object has its own life, and you play with them. Everyone has their own music, which is a good idea on paper, but is actually relatively confusing between switching roles. Some are useful, some are not. For example, the mouth spends time catching up with its gourmet friends, just swallowing them, and then throwing them out of an unexplainable orifice. Congratulations, you just reintroduced a poop! (There are a few.) Then you can control the toilet and the toilet will flush the stool happily, making it shiny and golden. If you control a tree, it will absorb another Kirby-style character and bring it back to fruit. Or maybe you want to go to “kaboom” and the mayor raises his hat to reveal the bomb below, which will explode into bright smoke, pushing him and everyone nearby into the air. why? Just because it can.

Each seasonal island has a rough game theme. Upon arrival, a tree will be planted and some tasks will be completed. Each task, whether it be reuniting sushi with her caviar child, or saving a book that has been robbed of worshipping a fixed thing, requires only a small part of the action to be done: see things, watch what happens, A character interacts, climbs something, and holds someone's hand. Wattam rarely uses words, mainly to show you where you are going, not to tell you. Since gameplay involves only buttons at specific locations, everything is easy to follow, which usually makes it a great game for young children.

I say this because the current physics engine and camera controls compete with you at every step. Wattam uses the shoulder button camera controls for camera rotation and zooming on the PS4, a camera control dinosaur since the PS2 era. Sometimes the camera may move without you doing anything, which makes the situation worse. On each platform, all sensational beach balls and bottle caps flutter everywhere, the frame rate may drop, many things will block your view, and sometimes the character you choose to control is inaccurate and downright.

Climbing may or may not work, not only because the camera can randomly deviate from what you are doing, but also because although the character is already attached to the surface, it may not find a character to hold or refuse to move at all. On the other hand, you may accidentally climb everything, whether you want to or not. The character lay on the ground more than once, helplessly beating a happy smile on his face, until I restarted the game, or flew myself into the air or fell into the ground, and never returned, which is particularly annoying to seek By. Most importantly, Wattam crashed several times and even crashed my entire console.

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Calling it the spiritual successor of Katamari is not out of reach, as it is a game dealing with household items and the micro-world they represent. Shells are not only shells, but also something that kids bring back a day on the beach. The bowling pin may be reminiscent of an afternoon spent with a family in a bowling alley, while the nose can enjoy a different flavor of the season. Takahashi said in his own voice that he has been working hard to create a game that can show ordinary life. Wattam appreciates the little things we take for granted and lets you put them together. It imagines a balloon that might panic when Toy Story is released gently into the air like a fear of abandoned toys, and all you really have to do is help others and do some fun things, such as dancing in circles. There is a story explaining why everyone was separated in the first place, but what is really important is to restore the general feeling of kindness and appreciation of the universe again. It is sometimes warm and completely soft, and it is definitely a daily routine.

Wattam combines light gameplay with the "love immortality" humor that I combined with Keita Takahashi, but it's more similar to Noby Noby Boy 2.0. This game is so simple and ridiculous that it sometimes makes you want Know what the point is. If his previous game is not for you, then this may be a humorous experiment, more important than anything, and certainty will not change your mind. Although this and technical issues prevented them from loving it unreservedly, I still like Wattam just because it is possible to communicate emotionally on a technical level.