Namco Bandai today unveiled a four-player versus mode for Beautiful Katamari, the Xbox 360 version of the popular ball-rolling franchise. And yes, Beautiful Katamari’s four-player versus mode will be online.
Beautiful Katamari will mark the first time the franchise is headed online, as the four-player versus mode will have players competing against each other in a “Thingy Battle.” The objective of this battle mode — which can take place in one of five stages — is to roll up the most of one particular item, which will be decided by the King of all Cosmos. The player with the most items collected at the end of the time limit will win the session.
In addition to the online versus mode, Beautiful Katamari will include online worldwide leaderboards for the number of presents and cousins collected in the single-player game, as well as a worldwide online ranking that shows off players’ individual scores for the online versus mode. The game also includes a planet called “Everyone’s Katamari” that shows the combined size of everyone’s Katamari by a cow grazing in a field. The more players rolls up in their own games, the larger the online cow becomes. Yes, that’s just a bit odd.
Additional updates to the Xbox 360 version of the game include 720p high-definition graphics, new levels, mounds of original items to pick up, new cousins to play as, new presents to discover, a new soundtrack and the online mode.