Monday, July 03, 2006

Katamari Damacy



What's that you say? It's a PS2 game that has reinvigorated my interest in video games. Shawn bought it while we were in the US. It is the strangest game I've ever played. Strange, fun, original and addictive. Let me give you an idea. The King of the Cosmos got drunk one night and broke all the stars in the sky. How irresponsible. He's not a very good parent and as such he's making you, the prince, his son, do all the work at fixing the problem so the night sky can be all shiny again. How do you do this? The King gives you a small sticky ball (a katamari) and you have to roll it around on earth and collect lots of objects, making each Katamari big enough to make a star out of, to replace all the stars that were broken. You start off by collecting small things such as push pins and stamps, then work your way up through sushi, shoes, cats, people, to cars, houses, larger buildings, etc. Don't expect the King to be very supportive either. At the end of your efforts he may respond by telling you to get out or by saying how disappointing your katamari is.



The other thing about this game is the music. The theme song by itself is extremely infectious and it often finds it's way into my head during unrelated activities, but aside from that, you'll find that with each katamari you'll get one of several different songs. It might be cute Casio-like techno, or swing, or jazz. It's also worth mentioning that when the King speaks, the sound that comes out is vinyl record scratching. I love this game. I try not to play it too often though. I need my eyes for other things.

2 comments:

dani said...

very cute! like the idea it isn't so high tech.

s_hayley said...

Yeah. It's so good to see a game that isn't, essentially, a re-skin of a common theme.