32_Footsteps's Full Review: Katamari Damacy for PlayStation 2
Since I move around with alot of gamers, the whispered hype first hit me in September. "Hey, you have to check out this weird game coming from Japan. Katamari Damacy." It was even more intriguing when it did finally hit stores and was priced to move, simply a yuppie food stamp away from being brought home. The problem was actually availability; I actually couldn't find a store that wasn't sold out of the game until right around Thanksgiving. So I knew it was cheap and word of mouth spread fast on the game.
So I put it in my PS2, and quickly got quite an eyeful. The game begins as the King of All Cosmos, incredibly huge and with a cigar-shaped head, goes out and destroys all of the stars in the universe. They never say quite why he did this, but I suspect the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster was heavily involved. Whatever the reason, the residents of the universe were quite peeved, and the King had to restore the stars in the sky. So he calls upon his five-centimeter tall son, the Prince, to restore the stars in the sky.
People such as myself will describe to those unknowing how bizarre and whimsical Japanese entertainment can get. I've long known that the Japanese will come up with any (and I do mean any) premise for entertainment. This is obvious proof, and to be honest this might be a bit "out there" for anyone weaned purely on American pop culture to grasp. Not to say this is any more weird than Mario and his mushroom-scarfing ways. Just that you must be ready for full-on Japanese whimsy before you attempt to try this title.
Truth is, though, the story is just there as a backbone for the game. No character development happens - the focus is on the action. The Prince is really a cipher, and you never hear from him (though you do see him celebrate in the screen corner when you've met a level goal, and during the ending). The King appears periodically through the game, offering cryptic clues, odd sayings, and describing what you'll be going through in general (from putting you down repeatedly to admitting during the Ursa Major and Taurus levels that he's a bit of a deadbeat). The game does throw off some people, though, by the addition of a story surrounding an astronaut's family that appears during the completion of each of the game's main chapters. Either this will amuse you (as the kids are aware something is wrong with the sky), or it will annoy you. But at least you can skip them.
For the main portion of the game (the nine Make a Star levels, and the Make the Moon level), it's a pretty basic setup. You start out with a sticky ball, the katamari, of a certain size. You're dropped off in one of three levels, and you have a limited amount of time to build up the katamari to a target size, and to surpass it once you manage to hit it. And how do you build it up? Quite simply, you run over everything you can find. It's quite that simple. If you're large enough to pick up an item, it will just stick to the katamari, and build the size up. If not, then you'll bounce off (if the other object is too large and moving, watch out - it can knock off some stuff).
The fun part is that eventually, everything you see can be rolled up into the katamari. Sure, you start out picking up matches, candies, and random detrius lying on the floor of a house. Soon you start picking up birds, boxes of Generic Chocolate Treat (I'm sure the resemblance to Pocky is completely coincidental... perfectly sure), and cats. Before long, you'll get to capture people, signage, and lampposts. But late in the game, you'll know what fun it can be to grab office buildings, islands, and even a generic version of Godzilla. Even the Loch Ness Monster isn't safe. Everything exists to be picked up.
There's also one thing that isn't explicitly mentioned but one of the greatest joys of Katamari Damacy. You'll quickly discover, on the first couple levels, the joys of the revenge pickup. Sure, at first, mice will batter your poor katamari around, knocking off the dice and the sticks of gum you've worked so hard to collect. Not exactly fair, now is it? But it doesn't take long before you start being able to pick up the mice yourself, and then you can start chasing them down as they run in fear from you. The more a given item batters you around, the more joy there is in simply collecting it later on. Not enough people bring this up, which alone is a great reason to play the game.
Granted, the game play has plenty of easily acquired appeal, but this would mean nothing if the game was difficult to control. Thankfully, it's not difficult at all, particularly if you've played any game that requires analog controls (veterans of Ape Escape in particular can pick this right up). The controls of the game rely almost exclusively on the two analog sticks. You just push them in the same direction to move the katamari in that direction. You can push them both in opposite directions to turn quickly, and can do a 180 simply by pressing them both in (which takes some getting used to if you've never done it before). The game thankfully gives you a tutorial before it begins on how to control, so you can play around with impunity to get the hang of it. The only difficult move to do is the so-called Katamari Charge, but fortunately it's never required to get through the game. It just makes some parts go faster, and unlocks some hidden stuff in the game. Overall, the controls are simple and classic.
The game play does have a slightly different dynamic on half of the levels, though. In addition to the generic star creation levels, there are specific constellation levels, most of which just require you to collect a particular item (extra items don't hurt you; they just don't count for anything). This can be quite amusing - Cancer requires you to clear out the house level, infested with dozens of crabs. Virgo requires you to roll over as many female objects as possible. And Gemini asks you to pick up both halves of sets of twins in the time limit (for some reason, my wife, herself a twin, doesn't seem to play this level much). These levels really don't play any differently - you just aim for one particular item, but you still are trying to pick up as much as possible.
There are three levels that are different, though, and the game could have used much more of them. Ursa Major and Taurus require you to pick up just one of the particular item (a bear and a cow, obviously). The second you find one, the level is over, so you actually spend much of the level artfully avoiding the object in question in order to grab the largest one possible. It's actually quite a challenge, because the levels are infested and it's quite easy to accidentally grab a teddy bear or a carton of milk. Those levels are for those who feel like much of the game is too easy, like myself.
The final different level, Polaris, is neat because you actually have to hit a target size with the game giving you no indication as to how close you are. After a while, you get good at eyeballing how large you need to be to get an object. But to hit precisely 10 meters of size? That takes quite some precision, and I wish that more levels asked that of me.
The game does have several things driving you to replay it. First off, you do want to try to get the largest katamari possible on every level (the King praises you mightily should you retrieve a sufficient katamari). It's fun simply to see how big you can get your ball. My all-time best record is over 866 meters on the final level, and even then there were enough objects lying around that I think I could have hit 900 meters with another minute of time. Moreover, if you manage to hit the goal for each main level fast enough, you add a shooting star to your sky in addition to a new star. Trying to create the most impressive sky you can is a huge driving factor in this game.
Moreover, there is simply the urge to collect everything the game has to offer. There are around 1400 objects lying around in the game, and even in beating the game, you'll only collect around 80% of them on your first shot. You'll frequently find yourself going into a level just to see if there's just one more thing you can grab, be it a ruby ring, a 500-yen piece, a girly cell phone, or a particular building like the college. You'll also find a present from the King in each level, which you can use to customize the Prince however you want. Finding all of those is another pleasing task to drive you to play more.
Finally, there's the classic two-player mode. In this, each player controls either the Prince or one of his cousins (each of whom is hiding in one of the levels, yet another thing to track down to collect), and you challenge each other on a split screen to collect as many objects as you can in three minutes. This is a simple joy, as you race along to see who can collect fastest. Should you gain a sizeable lead, you can even pick up your opponent, katamari and all, into your own. It's quite fun, but a bit limited. There are only four or five layouts of items, and they're always in a limited bowl. This mode could be incredible if you actually played through one of the levels and tried to hit the level goal in the quickest amount of time. This might be the game's biggest failing: the multiplayer mode had so many options, but did not deliver on most of them.
The game's graphics are, for the most part, quite simplistic. Outside of the Prince and his family, everything is extremely blocky, and this game is never going to win awards for its graphical content. For the most part, actually, the inanimate objects look just fine. The cars actually looked less blocky than I thought they would, and the islands have a proper, slightly uneven feel. But anything alive... the people remind me of Lego mini-figures. The animals look like origami (in fact, the official site allows you to print patterns to make origami KD cats). Even the fish look a bit too chunky.
Yet, this is part of the game's charm. The graphics go right along with the surreal presence. You're a two-inch tall celestial prince with a cigar for a head. Your father is a titan with the world's most prominent crotch (just a warning - the King's groin is almost hypnotically immense. More sensitive folks may wish to cover parts of the screen while he appears). And you're grabbing every object on Earth with a sticky ball to remake the stars. Everything else is so surreal, it feels appropriate that the living creatures don't seem normal either. I could have ran the katamari through "The Persistence of Memory," and I wouldn't have blinked.
One thing that the graphics do have going is that they're all quite colorful and you never have a difficulty telling what are distinct objects. Granted, you might not expect to be able to pick up some objects (graffiti took me by surprise), but you'll never have a problem distinguishing what's in front of you. Even when the objects are crudely rendered, like the animals, you can still figure out what you're dealing with.
The game may have skimped on the graphics, but Namco went all-out with the music. The soundtrack is, quite simply, amazing. I've fallen in love with several of the tunes, including "Katamari on the Rocks" (the main theme), "Que Sera Sera," and "Fugue #7777" (the King's theme). I have two friends who are even including a couple of the songs in their wedding; the soundtrack is that good. Several people I know have asked me if I know where to buy Katamari Fortissimo Damacy, the official soundtrack (I know of a couple import websites, but nothing domestic). You'll find yourself humming lines in Japanese, and even singing a few of the English lyrics months later (those who have played the game will recognize the review title as the first line of "Katamari on the Rocks"). There's a good reason that Namco included two tunes from this game in the American release of Taiko Drum Master - you will love the music. And for those trucking along in the game - the sound test opens up when you beat the game. That's something to shoot for.
The game's ambient sound is classic. At first, all you'll hear is the odd gulping sound when the katamari picks up a normal object. But later on, any time the katamari hits an object that can make a sound (in many cases, whether or not you actually pick it up), the game plays that sound. Telephones ring, cats give a meow, and people... the sounds people make are some of the best parts. Some people scream in fear. Some apologize for being in your way. Some make oddball sounds (I regularly quote the sound the punks make, which sounds like the word "zen" being stuttered repeatedly). And you get some specialty quotes, like "Detention for you, detention for you!" when you grab a school principal. And trust me, nothing is quite like music to the ears like hearing an entire office building's worth of people panic when you pick up their building.
Let me wrap this up by noting that I hate people who like attaching superlatives to everything. Every single game seems to be the greatest single game ever. Everything deserves instant Hall of Fame status, when you might not even be playing it in a month. If I was to run a video gaming Hall of Fame, I'd mandate a five-year waiting period for any game to get entry.
With that said, if there was ever a game to make me look like a hypocrite, this would be the one. I have not played a game this unique in years (although theoretically an action game with collection themes, it doesn't fit well in that category). I have not fallen in love with a soundtrack so hard since the second mix of Dance Dance Revolution. I haven't been this addicted to a video game that wasn't named Pokemon since Final Fantasy VI came out on the Super Nintendo. I love Katamari Damacy, and in fact I think everyone loves it (so much that the working title for the sequel is, in fact, Everyone Loves Katamari Damacy). Sure, it needs a better multiplayer mode, and could use some more maps. But there's so much in this game that works so well that it almost makes me cry in joy. If there was ever any video game that I would say is mandatory for everyone, it is Katamari Damacy. It earns my highest honors, and to prove it, I've actually bought three copies of the game: one for myself, one as a Christmas present for a friend, and one as a Christmas present for my mom. It's fun for this hardcore gamer, his mom, and everyone in-between.
What's left to say? This clump of souls (the literal translation of the title) is stuck to my heart, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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