By Jonathan Mackley, Staff Writer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy
It’s the reincarnation of “Marble Madness!” “Katamari Damacy” is about rolling everyday items up, and forming a progressively bigger ball so you can roll bigger pieces up. The ball collected, is called a katamari, hence to name of the game. Now after some hard work one may get the katamari big enough to absorb skyscrapers, giant squids, the god of thunder and eventually whole countries.
Now lets get to the game itself, the game features rolling materials up, but the reason is very intriguing. In the game the character is played as the Prince of all Cosmos. The ultra hip King of all Cosmos became intoxicated, broke the sky and destroyed the stars and it’s the players job to replace them buy rolling up your katamari with random objects found on earth and giving it to the King of all Cosmos to change into a star. There is a problem though, the King of all Cosmos is the size of three Earths, yet the Prince Is about as big as a paperclip. So when you start you need to start small, like rolling up thumbtacks, paperclips, and matchsticks off a kitchen table, then getting bigger like a spoon or a knife, then a dinner plate, then a pot roast and eventually you can pick up the table itself. Then you can pick up people, power lines, small houses, and then you get to skyscrapers. Sounds easy, what’s the catch? The catch is that being the ultra hip King of all Cosmos is the ultra hip King of ALL Cosmos, he is not very patient, so you have a time limit for every level, and if your katamari is not big enough he will berate you incredibly with the royal plural, such as,
“Hmm…Arrggh…my…WHAT IS THIS! Speechless, utterly speechless, what is this supposed to be, why is it so itty-bitty? We may go to the trouble of making rain and putting on faces. It’s just with such a small katamari our morale drops. We knew we should have asked one of your cousins instead. It’s not your fault, it’s our fault for believing in you. All our fault. Now forget everything. Now forget EVERYTHING. Now leave. GOOD BYE!”
The graphics are blocky, very blocky, as in people are square (the shape, not the mentality), but that is the desired look they were going for, though some find it quite irksome. The music though is where this music shines, a complete soundtrack of originals made just for this game, from lounge lizard singing to techno to j-rock. Now the controls are a bit difficult to get used to, you see, this game is so far exclusive for the PS2 and what you use to move your Katamari is the two analog sticks on the bottom of the controller in tandem. To move around your Katamari, you move one analog stick at a time. There is also a two-player mode where the contestants are placed in an arena filled with junk and have to get the biggest Katamari in the time allotted, but with the repetition of the level design it gets boring quickly.
So al l in all this game is at least worth renting if you feel like you need a fresh idea in video games. And if you got the reference at the beginning of this article, you are officially old.
Now lets get to the game itself, the game features rolling materials up, but the reason is very intriguing. In the game the character is played as the Prince of all Cosmos. The ultra hip King of all Cosmos became intoxicated, broke the sky and destroyed the stars and it’s the players job to replace them buy rolling up your katamari with random objects found on earth and giving it to the King of all Cosmos to change into a star. There is a problem though, the King of all Cosmos is the size of three Earths, yet the Prince Is about as big as a paperclip. So when you start you need to start small, like rolling up thumbtacks, paperclips, and matchsticks off a kitchen table, then getting bigger like a spoon or a knife, then a dinner plate, then a pot roast and eventually you can pick up the table itself. Then you can pick up people, power lines, small houses, and then you get to skyscrapers. Sounds easy, what’s the catch? The catch is that being the ultra hip King of all Cosmos is the ultra hip King of ALL Cosmos, he is not very patient, so you have a time limit for every level, and if your katamari is not big enough he will berate you incredibly with the royal plural, such as,
“Hmm…Arrggh…my…WHAT IS THIS! Speechless, utterly speechless, what is this supposed to be, why is it so itty-bitty? We may go to the trouble of making rain and putting on faces. It’s just with such a small katamari our morale drops. We knew we should have asked one of your cousins instead. It’s not your fault, it’s our fault for believing in you. All our fault. Now forget everything. Now forget EVERYTHING. Now leave. GOOD BYE!”
The graphics are blocky, very blocky, as in people are square (the shape, not the mentality), but that is the desired look they were going for, though some find it quite irksome. The music though is where this music shines, a complete soundtrack of originals made just for this game, from lounge lizard singing to techno to j-rock. Now the controls are a bit difficult to get used to, you see, this game is so far exclusive for the PS2 and what you use to move your Katamari is the two analog sticks on the bottom of the controller in tandem. To move around your Katamari, you move one analog stick at a time. There is also a two-player mode where the contestants are placed in an arena filled with junk and have to get the biggest Katamari in the time allotted, but with the repetition of the level design it gets boring quickly.
So al l in all this game is at least worth renting if you feel like you need a fresh idea in video games. And if you got the reference at the beginning of this article, you are officially old.