Katamari Damacy
Weird, bizarre and absolutely irresistible.
Published: September 23, 2004
We've already said this in our preview, but Namco is taking a moderate risk releasing Katamari Damacy to a largely unknowing public. For the past couple of weeks, though, it's been the buzz of the industry, with everyone randomly quipping "have you played that rolly game?" There's just something incredibly endearing about the whole experience of rolling up everything in sight; people, cars, buildings, islands, tropical weather storms... Yeah, it's that insane.
No, wait, insane may be a bit too polite. Katamari shoots for "bat$#!^ effing insane" and scores on every count from the story to the characters to the environments -- a feeling of acid trip meeting cracked-out pure Japanese weirdness pervades every part of the game, and once you stop laughing at how completely nuts the whole experience is, you really do start to fall in love with how amazingly simple yet subtly complex the gameplay becomes after just a few minutes.
It all starts with The Grand King of the Cosmos going on a bender one night, accidentally smashing every star to stardust and completely obliterating the moon. Being the eccentric lord of everything that he is, he enlists his son (that'd be you), to rebuild the sky before the coming dawn so that wifey never gets wise to what happened.
Being the good little enabler that you are, you happily agree to help hide the results of dear ol' Dad's spiral into insanity (or is that out of it?) by rolling up everything you can on Earth with an ultra-sticky bulbous katamari. The catch? You can only roll up things about the same size as katamari, so you'll have to start out small, with things like boxes of food, cups, plates, and the like.
As you get larger, however, more and more things become readily available to your ever-growing katamari, but there's a bit of strategy to the simple mechanic of just rolling stuff up (accomplished, by the way with tank-like controls using both analog sticks, so pointing both in one direction will push things that way, and going in opposites will rotate you) -- if you get too big too fast, you won't be able to duck into some of the areas with overhangs like tables and eaves that may hold a hidden present that Dad tossed to Earth at the beginning of each level.
You also have to watch out for things that are mobile and are far larger than you (like cars, people, and, uh, people riding on things that form cars like barbells and tricycles), since a good solid hit from them will send you flying, and hitting any hard objects with a bit of force will knock things off your katamari. Big no-no, since you want to get to a certain size before time runs out and Dad comes to fetch your cache of people, chairs, ducks, and what have you.
That's more or less how simple the core gameplay is. As you get progressively larger, the King my toss you a few hints as to where you can go next in a level to make sure you meet the deadline, but it's doubtful anyone will spend more than a weekend or so just fulfilling the basic requirements. Actually mastering each of the levels and rolling up everything available, however, takes far more strategy, and actually requires that you master some of the more advanced moves (flicking the analog sticks back and forth a bit will give you a Sonic-like spin boost to propel you forward, while hitting R1 will let you get a bird's eye view of the level and L1 lets you peer around a bit to get your bearings, or just clicking both sticks down will flip you to the other side of the katamari for a quick 180).
It's mainly something for the more hardcore players, but offering a way to master every level adds a fantastic level of replay value for those that can't get enough, and there are even some limited puzzles on a few levels that require that you get the biggest animal (cow, bear, etc.) in the level, which involves plenty of planning ahead to make sure you don't accidentally roll over a smaller one.
Beyond the deceptively simplistic gameplay, though, lies the other key factor in Katamari's charm: the visual look. The levels, whether by hardware necessity (likely) or just a deliberate style, are all sparely textured. There's no lighting to speak of, and no real shading. Even textures are relegated to things like signage or trees -- things that need texture, so the whole visual look is left for the designers to push through sheer tinkering with polygons.
It works surprisingly well for a game that looks like it could have been a tech demo for the original PlayStation in a lot of ways. With everything so blocky and angular, the game certainly won't win any graphics awards (save for overall design, of course). This continues into the four- or five-line cutscenes that break in between levels to show the progress of the sky being rebuilt by highlighting a quirky Japanese family of apparent block people; a daughter that can feel the cosmos, a son that can see the normally invisible King and Prince and a mom that's just plain clueless. It's a hilariously weird intermission from the already hilariously weird game, and just serves to cause further head-scratching.
The audio during the game, aside from the brilliant music, is about as spartan as the graphics, offering cute little squeaks, chimes, chirps, screams from people and aurally springy recoils. Like the graphics it gets the job done, but there's not a whole lot here to tease the eardrums. That task is wisely left to the background music, which is a mix of languid jazz mixes and uptempo Japanese chanted anthems. All of it sets the perfect mood for the game, and there's even a limited level of interactivity as you travel from one part of the level to the next.
Here's the bottom line. Go buy this friggin' game. Now. Reward Namco for having the balls to put out something this... well, Japanese. For $20, you're getting one hell of a party game. The bulk of the responses within the first couple minutes of people seeing the game (and the more the merrier, trust me) will probably be some combination of "what the..." and then a cuss word, some part of an animals anatomy, some reference to a deity, or all of the above. Give it a half hour, though, and soon there'll be no end to people in your circle asking about "that rolly game" for weeks on end.
No, wait, insane may be a bit too polite. Katamari shoots for "bat$#!^ effing insane" and scores on every count from the story to the characters to the environments -- a feeling of acid trip meeting cracked-out pure Japanese weirdness pervades every part of the game, and once you stop laughing at how completely nuts the whole experience is, you really do start to fall in love with how amazingly simple yet subtly complex the gameplay becomes after just a few minutes.
It all starts with The Grand King of the Cosmos going on a bender one night, accidentally smashing every star to stardust and completely obliterating the moon. Being the eccentric lord of everything that he is, he enlists his son (that'd be you), to rebuild the sky before the coming dawn so that wifey never gets wise to what happened.
Being the good little enabler that you are, you happily agree to help hide the results of dear ol' Dad's spiral into insanity (or is that out of it?) by rolling up everything you can on Earth with an ultra-sticky bulbous katamari. The catch? You can only roll up things about the same size as katamari, so you'll have to start out small, with things like boxes of food, cups, plates, and the like.
As you get larger, however, more and more things become readily available to your ever-growing katamari, but there's a bit of strategy to the simple mechanic of just rolling stuff up (accomplished, by the way with tank-like controls using both analog sticks, so pointing both in one direction will push things that way, and going in opposites will rotate you) -- if you get too big too fast, you won't be able to duck into some of the areas with overhangs like tables and eaves that may hold a hidden present that Dad tossed to Earth at the beginning of each level.
You also have to watch out for things that are mobile and are far larger than you (like cars, people, and, uh, people riding on things that form cars like barbells and tricycles), since a good solid hit from them will send you flying, and hitting any hard objects with a bit of force will knock things off your katamari. Big no-no, since you want to get to a certain size before time runs out and Dad comes to fetch your cache of people, chairs, ducks, and what have you.
That's more or less how simple the core gameplay is. As you get progressively larger, the King my toss you a few hints as to where you can go next in a level to make sure you meet the deadline, but it's doubtful anyone will spend more than a weekend or so just fulfilling the basic requirements. Actually mastering each of the levels and rolling up everything available, however, takes far more strategy, and actually requires that you master some of the more advanced moves (flicking the analog sticks back and forth a bit will give you a Sonic-like spin boost to propel you forward, while hitting R1 will let you get a bird's eye view of the level and L1 lets you peer around a bit to get your bearings, or just clicking both sticks down will flip you to the other side of the katamari for a quick 180).
It's mainly something for the more hardcore players, but offering a way to master every level adds a fantastic level of replay value for those that can't get enough, and there are even some limited puzzles on a few levels that require that you get the biggest animal (cow, bear, etc.) in the level, which involves plenty of planning ahead to make sure you don't accidentally roll over a smaller one.
Beyond the deceptively simplistic gameplay, though, lies the other key factor in Katamari's charm: the visual look. The levels, whether by hardware necessity (likely) or just a deliberate style, are all sparely textured. There's no lighting to speak of, and no real shading. Even textures are relegated to things like signage or trees -- things that need texture, so the whole visual look is left for the designers to push through sheer tinkering with polygons.
It works surprisingly well for a game that looks like it could have been a tech demo for the original PlayStation in a lot of ways. With everything so blocky and angular, the game certainly won't win any graphics awards (save for overall design, of course). This continues into the four- or five-line cutscenes that break in between levels to show the progress of the sky being rebuilt by highlighting a quirky Japanese family of apparent block people; a daughter that can feel the cosmos, a son that can see the normally invisible King and Prince and a mom that's just plain clueless. It's a hilariously weird intermission from the already hilariously weird game, and just serves to cause further head-scratching.
The audio during the game, aside from the brilliant music, is about as spartan as the graphics, offering cute little squeaks, chimes, chirps, screams from people and aurally springy recoils. Like the graphics it gets the job done, but there's not a whole lot here to tease the eardrums. That task is wisely left to the background music, which is a mix of languid jazz mixes and uptempo Japanese chanted anthems. All of it sets the perfect mood for the game, and there's even a limited level of interactivity as you travel from one part of the level to the next.
Here's the bottom line. Go buy this friggin' game. Now. Reward Namco for having the balls to put out something this... well, Japanese. For $20, you're getting one hell of a party game. The bulk of the responses within the first couple minutes of people seeing the game (and the more the merrier, trust me) will probably be some combination of "what the..." and then a cuss word, some part of an animals anatomy, some reference to a deity, or all of the above. Give it a half hour, though, and soon there'll be no end to people in your circle asking about "that rolly game" for weeks on end.