Rough Draft

Katamari Damacy

After reading Mike's post I had to find out what Katamari Damacy was. Turns out, it's this very simple game by Namaco where you push around a ball that stuff sticks to. And by stuff, I mean pretty much anything. That's the game, push around ball and stuff sticks to it, as the ball gets bigger, you can pick up bigger things. So simple. I read some reviews praising the game, and given it's $20 price point and the fact that I wasn't doing anything else I decided to go pick it up.

I drove down Steven's Creek to the GameStop, but they didn't have it. Actually when I got there I couldn't exactly remember the name of the game, but I looked and didn't see it. So I decided to ask the clerk. No sooner than I said "I'm looking for this PS2 game, but I'm not quite sure on the name," he goes "Katamari Damacy? we're sold out." Damn. Fortunately, there's a Best Buy not more than 3 blocks away, so I went there. I got there, looked at the shelves and didn't see it, but then a worker came up and asked if I needed any help. So I described the game I was looking for. (I hadn't fully caught the name when the GameStop clerk said it.) The guy says, "Yeah, I've read about that game, it's gotten good reviews, I think we have it in the back." About 30 seconds later he comes back with a copy of the game. Victory!

And now, having played the game I can say it was easily worth the $20 (and dealing with trying to park at Best Buy). You simply use the two analog sticks to roll the ball around. No other buttons are necessary. You can use R1 to get an aerial view of the area your in, and you can use L1 to look around in first person view. It takes about a minute before you are rolling the katamari around and picking stuff up.

Now, like any puzzle type game, of course there is also story. The King of All Cosmos has accidently broken all of the stars. So by using the katamari to roll things up, they can be turned into new stars. So he sends his son, the prince, to Earth to do just that.

In the first few levels, the goal katamari size is pretty small, so you end up picking up a bunch of smaller sized objects. However, the moment when you are playing and your katamari is large enough to start picking up small animals and people, will go down as one of the most fun moments in video game history. That's right, once you reach the right size animals and people are no longer safe. The children tend to laugh when you pick them up, while the adults scream. It's all very amusing.

The game contains very amusing textual speech. The funniest so far being when you fail to meet the katamari size for the level and the King says something along the lines of "We have the best eyes in the universe and still can't see you're katamari. Well, small is in, and being a trendy prince you would want to try that wouldn't you."

Also of note is the background music. It's a rather wide selection of genres, but nothing quite beats rolling a ball around picking stuff up with a J-pop background.

There is also a 2 player mode, where you compete to see who can get the larger katamari. I haven't actually tried the 2 player game yet, but apparently if you get significantly bigger than your opponent, you can pick them up as well while they struggle to try and break free.

Anyone with a PS2 needs to pick up this game. For $20 you can't go wrong.