Luke from Kotaku was right: I wanted so badly to, yes, love this game that perhaps its weaknesses—a cripplingly low frame rate and, yes, the onset of some serious tiltage needed to keep moving after the first few minutes—didn't fully sink in until I just couldn't play past the fourth level while sitting on the can (weeping).
But no matter—Namco/Bandai has dropped an update that almost entirely fixes our woes. Framerate throughout has been greatly improved, with the only brief hiccups coming when you level up to the next size of Katamari—all else is smooth. And in addition, even though I still stand by my preference of ILK's tilt controls over Monkey Ball's, a new gauge has been added to let you know where you are in the accelerometer's X-Y tilt axes, which helps a lot. Still, I wish there was a way to re-zero your acceleromter so you don't have to tilt forward so much to roll at full speed, but even without that, Katamari is infinitely more playable now. [I Love Katamari - iTunes, Kotaku]