Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy is a game published by Namco, originally from Japan. Katamari means "Clump" and Damashii means "Soul".

Gameplay consists of rolling a mass, called a katamari, around an expansive 3D environment. Colliding with smaller objects will cause them to stick to your katamari and become part of it. Colliding with objects you cannot assimilate will usually cause things to break off from your katamari, though sometimes you can climb over something or knock it over.

Goals for various levels include: growing your katamari to a certain diameter within a certain time, capturing as many of one kind of object as possible, or capturing the largest of one kind of object as possible.

The graphics are very colorful, though living creatures are depicted very simplistically, with square heads and lots of right angles. This keeps the polygon count low, so that many objects can be drawn on the screen without losing framerate.

The astonishing thing about KD is that game's consistency persists even as you seamlessly progress in scope and scale. You can add virtually ANYTHING to the Katamari, provided it's big enough. In the final map, you start with a 10cm Katamari, barely able to pick up tiny trinkets in a house, and can end up with an 850+m monster, rolling up supertankers, godzilla, the clouds, a rainbow, and the islands themselves.

There's a satisfying stress-relief factor also, since your initial Katamari has very limited pickup capability, but you can often return to early areas in a map and assimilate those previously pesky obstacles.

The presentation is also exceedingly wacky (think MontyPython meets trippy anime), with a crazy story to boot, and great unique music.

It's not a long game, you'll probably 'finish' it in a couple afternoons, but at $20 it's a steal, and it looks to have very promising replay value.

CategoryGame