Customer Reviews
Rainbow-colored zen...
Katamari Damacy's appeal is hard to explain to people who haven't played it already.
"What do you DO in this game??" asked my father-in-law, another dedicated gamer, when he heard rumors that I was glued to the PS2.
"Um, you roll this ball around and get stuff stuck to it. You just keep rolling and getting the ball as big as you can within a certain time limit," I replied, a little lamely.
His eyes glazed over. "And that's fun?" he snorted.
"Yes. It's fun. Really fun. It cheers me up. There isn't anything to think about; you just roll," I attempted.
"And there's no monsters?" he asked. (I'm usually an RPG-er.)
"Well, there's a Thunder God, but you just roll him up too," I replied. "But you can only roll him up when your ball of stuff is so big that you're rolling up skyscrapers and clouds and islands too."
There was a silence.
"Well, you just enjoy yourself," he said.
"Oh, I DO!!" I tried again, a little desperately, "It might sound dumb, and it IS ... but it's so much fun!"
You are the tiny, green-clothed Prince, the son of the omnipotent King of All Cosmos, and it is your job to rebuild the night sky after the King, in a kind of meditative daze, smashed it to smithereens. The King is a towering figure in a rainbow-colored headpiece and purple Elizabethan-ruffed wrestling leotard who loves to use the royal "we" and insult your puny efforts. You are sent to three different areas (the house, the town, and the world) and given various missions to complete within a certain time frame. For example, one of your first missions is to roll a 10cm "katamari" (which translates to "clump of stuff" from Japanese) in 3 minutes, I think, or was it 2?? Either way, you are plonked down in the world with your katamari (which starts out looking rather like a bumpy dog-toy), and you start to roll up stuff. The king pops in every now and again (as a disembodied head!) to make comments (usually insulting) or guide you to another area during your mission. It is almost as simple as it sounds, but each item in the game requires your katamari to have attained a certain size before you can pick it up. Thus, you have to get significantly bigger from when you could roll up a ham sandwich to when you can roll up a person or an elephant.
I was addicted within a few minutes. It was the moment I rolled up my first person, and she shrieked "AAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" and kicked and waved her arms around. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKK" went the guy in the business suit. "**!!!!!!!!TRUMPET!!!!!!!!!!!**" went the elephant and "**HHHHHOOOOOOONNNNNKKKK**" went the bus. And I just kept going. I rolled until I beat the game two weeks later (I'm an after-work gamer), and then I ran out and bought the sequel, "We Love Katamari".
Why? Well, the music is so cheerful, for starters; it gets in your head. When I'm stuck in an especially boring meeting, I think "Na naaa na na na na na na na na naaaa na na na naaaaa" (you'll know what I mean) and feel instantly better.
The graphics are rainbow-colored, bright, and cute. There's a sort of "order from chaos" appeal as you pick things up, and there really are a lot of things to pick up in the game. Because this game is Japanese, a lot of the stuff is not what you would normally find lying around your (un-Japanese) house. Why would this be interesting? Well, my mother is Japanese, and she loves to go to American supermarkets "just to look at all the stuff." (Yes, there's sushi lying around in Katamari Damacy. However, there are also robotic action figures from around 1977 that my brother used to fanatically collect. Definitely different.)
It is stress-busting in the extreme when you are flying through the city, rolling up skyscrapers, trees, vending machines, cows, and traffic - (especially taxis!) after you spent a frustrating hour or two stuck in real-life traffic, getting buzzed by taxis, if not cows. Often, after a bad commute, I rolled until there was nothing left in the world but the katamari and me. It was funny, and it made me see the lighter side of it. (Don't ask me what "it" is - you either get it or you don't.)
Katamari Damacy's appeal can be summed up like this: this game treats the grind of everyday life like a gigantic, cosmic joke. I hope you get it and laugh as hard as the rest of us.
SO COOL.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This game is the best! It's so simple, but really really REALLY addicting, and it's hard to beat. I'm 14 and I LOVE it to DEATH! It's a great game for all ages, actually; smaller kids have fun with in, big kids can actually beat it. I just bought the game a few days ago, but i played it over the summer and I had soo much FUN! The concept is ridiculously funny. Trust me, your kids (and probably you, too!) will love this game. And, if I were you, I'd buy it through amazon, only because since it got popular it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find it in real stores. In the past three weeks I've been in, approximately 29 stores looking for it, and only 2 stores had it. An Elektronics World that only had a used copy that was scratched to death, and an EB Games who had just gotten it, used and in good condidtion, five minutes before i fought another kid for it. :-D It's THAT good. Buy it!
Puzzle game on drugs
If you watch anime, you might have some idea of what to expect from Katamari Damacy. Though even that won't fully prepare you.
A huge planet-sized dude with a rolled-up carpet for a head called the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys all the stars. To fix things, he has you, his tiny son, roll up clumps of things on Earth and replaces the stars with these "katamari" (Japanese for "wad of stuff).
So, using the two analog sticks as if controlling a pair of tank treads, you roll a small sticky ball around the landscape, picking up anything and everything. The object of each level is to get your katamari to a set size within a set time. If you fail, never fear. You can try again as many times as you need to until you get it done.
The controls are quite intuitive. The two analog stick setup is easily mastered within a couple minutes at most, but it is also extremely versatile. Added to the routine are a couple uses of the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons, and X and triangle to make selections in the between-level menus. That's it. It is a very simple game.
But it is also very immersive. The physics of the game are mind-boggling if you take the time to think about it, but that is all kept in the background. All you need to know is that your katamari can pick up *anything*. *ANYTHING AT ALL*, provided your katamari is big enough. When you begin, you'll have a tiny 5 cm peanut rolling along table tops and the floor. You'll pick up thumb tacks, push pins, small candies, and coins, while you dodge the cat. Eventually you'll come across a pencil, which will be too big to pick up. Roll around some more, come back to the pencil a minute later, and suddenly, this time it sticks! And then you'll have a large oblong object poking off the side of your katamari that makes it roll in a funny, lopsided fashion.
So you keep rolling around the table and the floor, picking up more and more stuff and still dodging the cat. Pretty soon, you can teach kitty a lesson. Then you can pick up the TV, and the table itself, and the people sitting at the table (who will scream in terror as they're assimilated into your katamari) and then the whole house. Afterward, the clouds and the mountains will look like tempting targets.
Through it all, the composition of your katamari is constantly changing, forcing the game to keep track of the ever-changing physics of your wad of things. For example: if you can pick up a coat button, can you pick up a nine volt battery? How big does your katamari need to be to pick up an umbrella? How about that washing machine? How about that sidewalk food cart? How about the vendor working at that food cart? Perhaps you can pick up the sapling on the street corner, but the old oak tree in the park is quite a bit bigger. And so on.
Levels are all very large and have a huge variety of stuff to roll up. No matter how often you play, you'll always find new things to collect and new rooms to open up. As repetitive as the game actually is, it never feels that way.
The graphics are *extremely* blocky, but in such a way as to make the game even more entertaining. Everything has a very simple, almost fluorescent appearance, adding to the wacky atmosphere of the game. The only problem is that, while your katamari is still small, the camera tends to get stuck behind walls and items, obscuring your view. This is usually easy to fix, though, and stops being a problem later in the game.
The soundtrack is also incredibly addictive. Though it consists almost entirely of j-pop songs (Japanese pop, for those of you not up on anime lingo), the songs just refuse to leave your mind after you end the game session. Listening to a Japanese lady singing about the "katamari mamba" nearly made me die laughing. And the sound effects are just as good. Listening to people and animals scream in terror as I rolled them up sent me even closer to the brink than did the katamari mamba.
And when you've finally had enough of rolling up your katamari, you can retire to the menu and peruse the list of items you've rolled up. There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of possible items to collect, broken up into a few different lists. There is a list based on type of object (e.g. "dangerous", "aquarium", "police", etc.), based on object size, or based on where you rolled them up. You can also see the list of special presents you've found, which the King of All Cosmos leaves one of hidden in each level. Or you can fly over to the giant space mushroom for some multiplayer action. (Mmmm. Giant mushroom. Appropriate for a drug trip like this game.)
Loading times are very fast, there's no graphical slowdown, the controls are intuitive and responsive, even the between-level story of two block-headed kids and their block-headed mom going for a trip doesn't detract from the experience, though there are one or two eye-rollers. What more could you ask for? Katamari Damacy is a great game. It is deceptively simple but so addictive that it will suck you in as surely as if you yourself were rolled into a giant katamari. And it's less than $20. So what are you waiting for? If you have a PS2, go get Katamari Damacy.
Summary:
Pros:
- Simple but versatile controls
- Easy but addictive game play
- Fabulous atmosphere
- Great graphics and sound
- Wacky stories
- Very fast load times
Cons:
- Camera can be a bit annoying early on
- One or two eye-rolling events
Final Score:
Five stars all around. No contest whatsoever.
