Namco is best known for fighting games like the Tekken and Soul Calibur series, so when the announcement that the offbeat Katamari (sounds like calamari) Damacy (think dah-MAH-shee) would make it to the U.S. was a pleasant surprise. With a 2004 market flooded with sequels and derivative first person shooters and platform titles, it's not only interesting to see an innovative new title hit the shelves, but at a release price of $20 it becomes one of the must-have games of the season.
If you didn't know you were buying a slightly different game by the cover art of rainbows and cows, you'd figure it out as soon as you were presented with the game's story. The King of the Cosmos, who dresses in disturbingly tight-fitting clothes, went on a chemically-induced spree of destroying the stars. All of the stars. You are the Royal Prince, and your task is to create stars to fill this void.
Back to physics 101. We all know how stars are created, right? Objects are attracted by the force of gravity. The more mass an object has the more gravitational attraction. Draw enough matter together and the force of its own gravity will start the nuclear fusion chain reaction and a star is born. In Katamari Damacy that's what you do: pull enough crap together until it creates a star, kind of like Jennifer Lopez' career.
The gameplay in Katamari Damacy is as amazingly fun as it is amazingly simple. You start each level with a ball, appropriately called a Katamari, which you roll around. As you roll over objects, they stick to the Katamari. As you pick stuff up your Katamari gets larger and larger and you're able to pick up larger objects. At the size of a few centimeters, you can only pick up things like thumbtacks and coins. At the size of a several meters, you can pick up cars, trees, animals, you name it. Like the national deficit, your Katamari grows with a snowball effect.
This is Marble Madness meets Japanese pop culture. The U.S. version is a direct translation of the Japanese original, complete with everything from normal everyday items in the Japanese home to huge Godzilla and Ultraman inspired characters. The overall mood is one of wackiness, not only with crazy things in the world (like giant octopi) but even down to the story and object descriptions.
The control is amazingly simple. All movement is done with the dual analog sticks, and the control scheme is easy to pick up but takes a little while to really master. The Katamari not only rolls up steps and bounces off obstacles, but when odd-shaped objects are stuck to it they cam affect how it moves. Having a telephone pole sticking out of one end will make the Katamari 'limp' over the protrusion. Initially you're confined to small areas, like the inside of a house, but as you progress and the Katamari gets larger, items that previously blocked your way can be sucked up and you can pass through.
Each stage has a specific goal; the basic create a star stages give you a size goal and a time limit, while the create a constellation stages have different goals, like rolling up as many crabs as possible to make Cancer within a time limit. The difficulty level is just about right, with early stages being fairly easy and later stages requiring two or three tries at most. The game's look and feel will attract younger players who should be able to pick it up and do well with the simple controls.
At first blush the graphics are fairly poor. Everything is blocky with simple textures, though the colors are really vibrant and animations are fairly decent. This is quickly forgotten, though -- the framerate is solid and the world is amazingly huge with no loads between areas of a level. It's pretty amazing to play the final stage, for example, where you have 25 minutes to roll up everything possible, starting with a fairly small Katamari. You go from only being able to roll up tomatoes to being able to pick up buildings and even entire islands. Yes, the entire world is interactive and you can even pick up the terrain and clouds.
The sound is a take it or leave it affair. Namco gets bonus points for keeping the entirely original Japanese soundtrack, though some people won't "get it" and there are only a handful of different songs. The ambient sounds are great and many objects make special sounds when you grab them, especially people. If you're a fan of Japanese culture, consider the sound a 10 because you'll love the music.
The main downfall to Damacy is that it's awfully short. There are only ten main create a star stages and about as many create a constellation ones. After mastering the controls it only takes a few hours to rip through everything. The good news is for gamers who like to explore and for completists, who will find a lot to do. In many of the stages, there are several different routes to take, and special bonus and hidden items. The game also keeps track of all of the items you've collected and you can look through them; completists will have hundreds of objects to find and roll up. Adding to the replay value is the fact that the constellation stages can be passed without collecting 100% of the objects you're looking for, so going back to find that last hidden fish or swan is always a challenge. As a final bonus, if you finish some levels fast enough you can play them as eternal levels, with no time limit.
One other complaint I have is the camera. Like so many games, Damacy has a couple of camera control issues, though they are very minor. For the most part, the camera follows very well, but sometimes you'll be looking at a wall or a tree instead of being able to see what's around. There are a couple of 'look' options to manually control the camera but they can only be used when you're stopped, which wastes precious time.
If for no other reasons, you should get Katamari Damacy because it is such a unique game and because it's only $20. Sure, you could buy another sequel of another first person shooter or real time strategy game, but don't you want to play something new? Damacy is one of those games that you'll end up playing for three hours when you meant to pick it up for fifteen minutes and have some fun. And, let's face it, what's more fun than rolling a bunch of cows and minivans into a giant ball?
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