- Beautiful Katamari
- Namco Bandai, for Xbox 360, $40
In one of the strangest of video-game plots, the mite-size Prince of All Cosmos attempts to impress his giant, capricious father by rolling up big balls of, well, stuff. But this bizarre storyline is, frankly, peripheral to the original, fun, and utterly addictive gameplay. The prince is armed with a katamari, a magnetic ball that attracts anything smaller than it. As the sphere is rolled across a household floor, picking up tiny items like pushpins and crackers, its mass increases, and soon it's capable of scooping books, pets, chairs, even people. Eventually, a gargantuan katamari will hit the open roads, rolling up trucks and buildings. Hidden among the surreal chaos is a lesson in comparative mass and volume. —Ages 6 and up
