Beautiful Katamari (Xbox 360)

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Love it or hate it, when it comes to the world's weirdest action puzzle franchise, there's one thing joystick-jabbers of all stripes can agree on -- it's still your best bet for playing stoned.

That's right. Three years, as many games, and countless head trips after the finger-blistering brainteaser first blew our minds, there's no slowing the psychedelic juggernaut's roll, as Beautiful Katamari definitively proves.

Again challenging players to amass giant balls of crap -- figuratively, that is, with crayons, records, batteries, tires, toy knives and more of all things collectible (human excrement's about the only thing you can't cram together to form ever-more-giant spheres) -- though not much more, we do have to admit the series' kitsch value's beginning to wear a little thin.

Harkening back from a fundamental gameplay standpoint to virtually all of its predecessors, longtime franchise fans won't have trouble getting in the groove. But for those of you unfamiliar with prior outings, here's the scoop in a nutshell. Once again, you're the Prince of All Cosmos, a green, cylindrically-headed sprite tasked with cleaning up after your father, the mega-powerful, but oh-so-vain and air-headed King of All Cosmos. This time though, the old bean's gone and knocked a black hole in the sky during an especially heated game of tennis.

Your goal: Traipsing about Earth, using a sticky ball that attracts more objects as it hurtles over them, replace the stars, moons and satellites that were sucked down through the black hole, thereby repopulating the heavens. Wholly ludicrous and illogical, thankfully the background tale (which you can forget shortly after learning it) is also right on par with the candy-colored presentation and whimsical, if admittedly pointless, hands-on action. Basically, it's just an excuse for you to man both of the Xbox 360 controller's analog sticks and -- now in pastel-hued, but hardly attention-getting high-definition splendor -- roll your collection of bric-a-brac through candy shops, fast food outlets and other everyday settings, acquiring more random junk as you go.

Handling couldn't be simpler, however, as you simply push up on both sticks, pull back on the pair, or alternately move them up or down at the same time to turn, manipulating the ball (aka a 'katamari') around goofy, but pleasingly childish 3-D environments. And really, that's all you need to understand to begin sucking up increasingly larger items, as you start small (sushi, milk cartons, mice, coins) and eventually work your way up to bigger targets (cars, people, buildings and so forth). There's a catch: You'll pretty much have to find a way to grow your katamari to a certain size within a set time limit at every turn, knowing that you'll have to build it by set degrees, since tinier objects must be absorbed before you can start ingesting those of relatively larger magnitude. And, naturally, even for the hyper-caffeinated teens and twenty-somethings the title is squarely aimed at, this is bound to prove a surprisingly challenging task.

On a positive note, the setup works as well as ever, assuming you're one for madcap sprints and bubbly J-pop soundtracks. (Not to mention the ridiculous one-liners your all-powerful papa spouts, e.g. 'We love Uranus!' and senseless strings of text he spits out during loading screens.) Then again, to play devil's advocate, it's also one you've potentially experienced several times before, with little in the way of meaningful twists added since the concept first debuted. Granted, this time around you get to experience the pleasures of the 'Princedom,' a living backdrop/level hub populated with buildings and celestial relatives from which you can access new stages, enjoy collectible gifts, take pictures, and otherwise fart around. And with single-player mode over so swiftly -- expect to be finished with the title in as little as two days -- newfound online battle options do extend replay value, even if co-op play is still limited to two players sitting in the same room, inexplicably controlling the same katamari. (Seriously... confusing as the process is, and as unsatisfying compared with features that let you compete to snag certain items while bumping into buddies and shaking stuff loose from their spheres, why even bother giving gamers the option?)