Katamari Damacy Exclusive Hands-On
We take an exclusive look at Namco's upcoming action game that nearly defies description.
In the last three decades, video game developers have looked to just about everything around them for inspiration as they have gone about their business of creating games. Everything from the most complicated geopolitical situation to something as mundane as a dog's life have all served as the basis for games on the market. But as games have matured, their concepts have become much more straightforward and a lot less quirky than they used to be. However, Namco has seen fit to boldly bring one of its quirkier Japanese offerings to the States to ask, "What if space aliens had to rekindle the stars by collecting junk from the earth?"
Such deep thoughts also beg this follow-up question: "What if the game mechanics mirrored that of dung beetles, only with less emphasis on the poo?" What game would pose such a question to the masses? Namco's Katamari Damacy, of course. The quirky game was released in Japan earlier this year, and it will soon be rolling its way to the US. Since the game caught our eye at last year's Tokyo Game Show, we had to be the first ones to get our hands on the US version of it.
For those unfamiliar with Katamari Damacy, the game puts you in the role of no less than the Prince of the Cosmos. While that may sound glamorous, it's actually not. The game focuses on the downside to royal life, because your days will revolve around cleaning up your dad's mess. It seems that your father, the King of the Cosmos, managed to smash all of the stars in the sky, thus creating a bit of a mess. As a result, you're tasked with making new stars. How does one go about making new stars, you ask? Apparently, by collecting all kinds of junk on Earth and growing your "katamari damacy," which translates roughly to "clump of souls."
While this may sound more than a little odd, the game manages to sell the whole premise thanks to its combination of stylized graphics, bizarrely catchy music, and goofy localization. Speaking of the game's localization, Katamari Damacy's unapologetically spacey translation is hilarious and manages to come close to nailing the off-the-wall charm of the Japanese version's text and dialogue, which unfolds as you get your soul-clump collecting on.
For those who are rusty on how one goes about collecting a clump of souls, here's a refresher course on the game's mechanics. Katamari Damacy uses a third-person view and puts you in control of the prince, a surprisingly boxy and green fellow who bears little resemblance to dear, old Dad. To make the prince's clump of potential star material, you have to push a seemingly innocuous ball in front of you throughout a level. The ball's magnetic properties will let you collect objects you run across to increase its size exponentially.
The catch is that you'll only be able to pick up tiny objects, such as thumbtacks or erasers, at first. Your limits will revolve around your ball's size, so you'll only be able to pick up items that are smaller than your current ball. Objects that are bigger than your ball will serve as immovable hindrances that will prevent you from rolling over them, and they will cause you to lose some of the goods on your clump.
Once you get your clump-collecting groove going, though, the game heads off into appropriately wacky territory. As a result, you'll find yourself collecting larger and increasingly more bizarre objects. How bizarre? Well, do bear in mind that the game comes from Japan. So plan on collecting fence posts, road cones, bicycles, cats, humans, giraffes, trees, frogs, crabs, cats, cymbal-clapping monkeys (always nice to see), dogs, gigantic cruise ships, sea monsters, and even weirder stuff. The living creatures cut loose with some hilarious antics when you pick them up, which adds to the game's surreal feel. Believe us, by the time you get to a Godzilla-like monster, you're just going to shrug, build up your ball to the appropriate size, and roll that sucker over--because it's just going to feel right.
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