Review #159: Katamari Damacy

Let's roll up to beee a single star up in the sky!

  I know weird. At least I thought I did, until I played Katamari Damacy and learned what "Weird" really was. And boy, is weird something awesome! Katamari Damacy is unlike anything else you've played before.... unless you play it now a days, in 2014, when thousand of flash games based on it have already come out, games in which you get bigger as you eat stuff, allowing you to eat bigger stuff. That's Katamari Damacy in a nutshell.

 This is the skinny: You play as the Prince, yes that's his name, son of the King of All Cosmos, a very irresponsible King who gets drunk and, basically, destroys all the stars in the sky. Of course his highness can't be bothered to right his wrong, so he send you to the Earth, in order to gather stuff and remake the Stars. Totally makes sense. There's also a subplot, told through cutscenes after each stage, concerning a family that's going to see the father, an astronaut, set off into space. This family is really weird, and so is the story, which is awesome. The King will talk to you before each stage, greeting you in different languages and rambling about the stage's objective. He is really weird, which makes him really awesome, and funny. I tend to say this a lot, but you don't play this game for the story, even if it only adds up to the weirdness, which in turn adds up to the awesome.

 In order to gather stuff to create the new stars, the Prince is given a Katamari, a ball that will stick to itself anything you roll over that is smaller than it. As you add up stuff to the Katamari, it will eventually grow bigger allowing you to grab even bigger stuff. It's as fun as it sounds, and some levels are downright impressive, since you may start up smaller than a mouse, but by the end of the level you will be picking up people into the Katamari... and then vehicles, and then buildings, and then the land itself! Seeing your Katamari grow in size, alongside seeing everything rolled up into it, is very rewarding, and never gets old, nor does picking up people as they scream in fear and try to run away from your rolling Katamari of doom! While you are given a time limit for each stage, you can unlock "Eternal" versions of all three levels, with no time limit, in order to goof around, which is a pretty neat addition.

 The game does have a few shortcomings, for starters, it's pretty short. Yes, the game has 3 different "levels", although the game has 9 main missions spread through those 3 levels, plus, there are special "Make a constellation" levels that task you with different objectives, such as grabbing the biggest, and only the biggest, of a certain type of item, so you have to avoid the smaller ones as you try to grow bigger. There are also side objectives, such as finding a present hidden in every level(Which grant items that you can equip on the prince!), or getting 100% on the "Collection", basically, grabbing one of every kind of item in the game. Regardless, the game does feel pretty short, which is really disappointing as it's so much fun.

  A minor gripe comes in the form of the controls, which can take a while to get used to. You must push on both analog sticks on the direction that you want to roll the Katamari, or in order to turn around on either side, you push up on one stick and down on the other. It takes a while getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature. The biggest any in the game, however, is the camera. It's very easy to lose sight of the Katamari behind a wall, making it impossible to see if there's an obstacle on your way until you manage to get out of there. This ties up to the fact that crashing onto stuff usually means having stuff fall out of your Katamari, which is a fairly common occurrence. And that ties up into another flaw... in order to go up certain steps or buildings, you have to roll towards it... which many times means that your Katamari will "crash" into it, no matter how close you are, and you'll see your stuff fall right out of your Katamari, sometimes it's impossible not to lose stuff as you try to climb over stuff, and depending on what you have on your Katamari, climbing might not be a possibility, since a pole or something of the like will get in the way of the climb.

 Katamari Damacy is a very simple game, when it comes to graphics. Objects, even humans, are fairly blocky and simple, heck, the Prince is a 2D sprite! However, it was probably the style they were going for, plus, seeing all the stuff you've rolled up on your Katamari is very impressive and often times amusing(Just look at the screenshots!). The soundtrack on the other hand is very quirky-slash-awesome, and fits the game perfectly, plus, some of the tunes are pretty catchy. There's also a bit of voice acting, and it's terrible, but it adds to the awesome.

 This game is very weird. It's also very awesome. Despite it's small, but sometimes annoying flaws(The camera, in particular), the game is so much fun that they are easy to ignore, plus, the game is unlike anything else you can find on a console.
 8.0 out of 10.