Ingenious and addictive in every possible way…
After a night on the town, the King of the Cosmos (in his drunken stupor) has destroyed all of the stars in the sky. Where one could always depend on the North Star to guide them home there is only darkness. Cassiopeia no longer sits next to her king, and Pegasus flies no more…Obviously, then, this poses a problem. In his almighty wisdom, the now sober King instructs you, his tiny son, to gather as many pieces of earth memorabilia as possible so that he can fix his dreadful error by turning the Earth junk into stars. Thus, your journey begins.
Start with extremely intuitive gameplay, mix in some catchy Japanese tunes, throw in a ton of varied environments and you get the basis of Katamari Damacy. Starting at just a few cm or larger, depending on the level, you are required to roll and roll… and roll some more, collecting everything that is smaller than your Katamari, or the ball you are controlling by way of the analog sticks. Think of it as a giant ball of scotch tape, if that helps. Each level has a size goal, which increases as the levels progress, and you are only given a certain amount of time to reach each size. In there lies the replayability aspect of the title, in that you can go back an infinite number of times, if you wish, to beat your previous size and time.
In the first few levels, your Katamari will stay quite small, and the objects in question will range from office supplies to makeup and small varieties of food and drink. However, in later levels, you can expect to roll up cars, people, circus animals, skyscrapers and even entire islands and clouds!
Going back to the aforementioned concept of infinity, the eternal levels (which are unlocked by way of huge sizes on their specific levels) allow for a free play option. No time limit, no size requirement – just roll…roll to your heart’s content…or until the room can hold you no longer, whichever comes first. The eternal levels also offer great opportunities for present gathering (one present per level) and collection completion. Yes, readers, even though we didn’t need more motivation to play, we have still been given some – that motivation being to reach the 100% completion mark in your item database.
Each time you collect a new and specific object (for instance, a red crayon, as opposed to a green crayon), that item earns an entry in your collection. Finding all of the items, which have varying rarities, is half of the fun of the title as a whole, since most are of a Japanese nature, and it’s always interesting to see what sorts of…stuff our counterparts overseas have come up with.
And while collecting baskets, the neighbor’s annoying dog, bikes, umbrellas, the neighbor, tractors and so on is addictive in a crack sort of way (or so I’ve been told), there are also the more general levels that add a bit of variety to a system that might outwardly seem repetitive. These specific levels are constellation retrieving levels, mostly based on the signs of the Zodiac, like Pisces. Since Pisces is represented by fish, that level would be timed and would make you gather as many fish as you can in that set time limit.
While this overall premise might seem a bit boring on paper, there’s something about the execution of the title that keeps players, like myself, coming back and begging for more. Could it be the blocky, colorful graphics and obvious Japanese influence? How about the songs that will have you humming along for hours after your experience is over? Or, better yet, could it be the simple joy of rolling over people that, at smaller sizes, chased you with shopping carts and tried to bash you upside your head? Yeah, I’d say it’s the latter. So run, don’t walk, to your nearest video game outlet and track down a copy of this amazing game. You’ll be thanking me later…