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Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy

Okay, this is a kooky game recommended by friends and by the folks at Penny Arcade.

It's a weird assed game where, in a nutshell, you roll around a ball and stuff sticks to it. The objective of each level is either to get the ball to a particular size or roll up a certain type of stuff.

My, the Earth is full of things...
The long version of the story is that the King of all Cosmos got drunk one night and woke up having somehow gotten rid of all the stars. You, the Prince, must recreate the stars from stuff that is on Earth. The Earth is full of things. So, each level you roll up a bunch of things and the resulting ball of stuff, or katamari, becomes a star or constellation.

It is amazing the amount of stuff is in this game. Even more amazing is the change in scale as the levels progress. In the final level, you can progress from the hobbit realm rolling up small stuff all the way up to the immense ginormous ball that sucks up entire islands.

It was an enjoyable weekend to play this. The control takes a bit to get a hang of. And I don't feel like I ever mastered the "dash" feature. I finished the game very easily, but at the same time, not really "finished finished" in the sense that there could be more to do within it.

Stupid bear
The stupid bear level took up a lot of time. In this level, the point is to roll up a bear for Ursa Major. But, the first bear you roll up ends up being the constellation. And if it's a tiny bear, like a bear shaped figurine, your dad, the King, totally scolds you on the picayunity of the bear. So, you want to get the biggest bear you can find. The biggest bear, according to gamefaqs is the rocket propelled grizzly with a kid riding on it. He flys around the level. You must be at least 4 meters big before you can roll over him. Before that, he just plows into you and shoots you in some random direction that inevitable lands you on some small bear like a cub. That's the frustrating part of this level. The first bear ends the level. And then you get scolded. I never got the grizzly. The biggest bear I got was a medium-sized man in a bear suit. And well, after spending Saturday trying to get the grizzly, I felt satisfied at having gotten that far.

I just now realized that I play my ps2 through a video capture card. And that if I'm to do proper reviews, I should take screenshots. I will do so from now on. The game I'm currently playing is XenoSaga I. I'll tell you more about it later.

Posted by joel at November 16, 2004 12:06 PM