I am not a huge fan of Japanese games. I don’t have a particular fondness for the contributions Japanese developers have made to the role-playing genre, and I thank God every day that “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure”-style dating sims have never taken off over here. Neither am I a believer that Japanese games always equate to quality, as Japanese publishers ship plenty of dogs every year. There are some games that escape from Japan, however, that defy convention and even description. When these games are assembled by competent developers, lovingly crafted and seeded with Blizzard-like touches of personality and style, the game industry and we gamers are better off for them. “Katamari Damacy” is one of these games. Developed by Namco for the PlayStation 2, “Katamari” throws the player into one of the most bewildering games of all time. But don’t let this frighten you off, because “Katamari” isn’t being weird for weirdness’ sake, nor is it straining against the fabric of rationality in an attempt at cleverness. No, “Katamari” is simply strange, but the developers ensured that the fun came first, resulting in a memorable and enjoyable puzzle game. The protagonist of “Katamari” is referred to simply as The Prince. He is the miniscule son of The King of All Cosmos, and the one to whom The King turns to in this time of crisis. You see, The King, well, went out and got hammered the night before and ended up partying his way into destroying the cosmos. In fact, one of the few objects left in the void seems to be the Earth, and it is here that The Prince will assist The King in restoring the stars and constellations to the sky. The player assumes the role of The Prince, and has the unusual task of rolling a ball (or katamari) around on the ground. If the ball runs into an object smaller than itself, the ball picks that object up and gets a little larger. The underlying goal of most of the game is to make your ball as large as possible within a limited amount of time. The game starts off with a tutorial to familiarize the player with the controls, and then introduces the game environment to the player. The player can go to Earth to play the game, perform various game functions at Home Planet, or initiate two-player split-screen combat at the Space Mushroom. The main game is split into a series of ten missions. These involve rolling your ball through the game environment in an attempt to get your katamari to a specific size before time expires. Meeting the goal allows you to continue on to the next mission. Failing the requirement results in a rather humorous chewing out from The King, but does not seem to adversely affect The Prince’s standing. Indeed, too small a katamari can be turned into stardust to pretty up the sky, so there isn’t always a need to restore from a saved game in the event of a blown mission. In addition to the main missions, a series of additional missions exist that have different requirements. The goals of these vary from picking up as many of one kind of thing as possible (like picking up as many girls as possible to form the constellation Virgo), to picking up the largest example possible of only one thing (like picking up the largest bull to form Taurus). The gameplay in “Katamari” is fantastic. The entire concept is ingenious, resulting in a rare experience that does not easily remind you of any other game. The controls are responsive and vibration is used to the game’s benefit. Overall, I was only able to find two annoyances with the game. The first is that the katamari can occasionally become too big for the screen. A manual camera zoom control would have been ideal (much more useful than the mystifying Jump capability). Second, all of the game’s missions take place in only three environments. Though the placement of objects is shifted slightly from mission to mission, simple memorization of object locations makes the game easier than perhaps it should be. Graphically, “Katamari” is simple yet effective. A lack of graphical detail can be excused by the sheer numbers of objects that exist within the environment. The way that the game is able to scale from the perspective of a tiny katamari to the perspective of a katamari large enough to pick up skyscrapers is impressive. There were a few instances of obvious draw distance pop-ins, but these were rare. The game soundtrack features a number of interesting and memorable tunes (I was pleased to see that one of the songs, “Katamari on the Rocks”, will be on the soundtrack for Namco’s forthcoming drum game “Taiko: Drum Master” for PlayStation 2). Sound effects are adequate and even entertaining in some cases. The King’s “record-scratching” speech noise got a bit irritating after a while, but no more so than the “beepity-beep” noise typified by most other games. “Katamari” is a short game. Playing through all of the game’s missions will probably take between five and ten hours. The game does have some built-in replay value, as the game encourages the player to find hidden special items during each mission. Also, the game has around fifteen hundred items to roll over, so some players may be encouraged to replay levels to complete their collections. The relative brevity of the game is offset by its budget-minded price. The game retails for around $20, making it quite the bargain for such a high quality title. Though not the best puzzle game ever, “Katamari Damacy” will certainly rank amongst the most memorable and unique, surely to be overshadowed only by the forthcoming sequel. If you’re having one of those “been-there-done-that” gaming days, roll on over to your favorite retailer and give up a twenty for this game. It just may reaffirm your faith in the industry’s ability to release something both top-notch and inimitable.
Katamari Damacy is one of those rare gems that make absolutely no sense and surround the player in absurdity, yet provide for hours upon hours of bliss. It may pull you in with its dancing panda bears, colorful mushrooms... Read Full Review
From the opening sequence, it’s clear that Katamari Damacy is something unique and wholly original. The game’s premise is as simple and bizarre as its gameplay, as the King of All Cosmos tasks his young son, the Prince... Read Full Review
