Games: Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy
Developer: Namco
Platform: Playstation 2
Genre: Puzzle

Katamari Damacy is a strange and weird game by Namco. A better way to phrase that would be, it is absolutely unique and original. Your father is the King of All Cosmos, you are the Prince who's only 5cm tall, and your quest is to build stars. I'll jump right on to the story.

Story
Why are you building stars? Well, your father (who is humongous) was drunk one day. When he woke up the next day, he found that all the stars are gone due to his wrong-doing. So what did the King of All Cosmos do to solve this? He sent his son, you, to Earth to gather materials to rebuild the stars.

Gameplay
The question is, how do you build a star? You will be given a katamari, a round thing that sticks stuff. And you are to push this katamari to stick things. When you see an eraser, you roll it over it and it'll stick. Pens? Yes, they'll stick, too. What if you roll it over a frog? It sticks. A rat? A COW? They all stick.

The gameplay is simple. You push the katamari by using the analog sticks. Forward, backward, turn, charge. The difficult thing is to stick stuff. If you roll over pencils, it will affect the way of how your katamari rolls. It won't be very pretty when you have several pencils sticking out... the movement will be more irregular, and unpredictable.

You are racing against the time. You are asked to roll the katamari to a certain size before the time runs out, and some of the missions have different objectives, such as collecting an amount of fish. The bigger the katamari, the better it'll stick (due to the universal gravitation).

Sound
The sound is certainly fitting for this game... at the beginning you will be greeted by a single person humming voice, and then later on transit to synthesized J-pop and and jazz-like songs. The synthesized nature of those music make them very toy-like, which contribute quite a lot to the game.

Special
There are rewards on each level, some will unlock certain items, and some will unlock characters for the VS mode, and some will unlock shooting stars. The replay value of the game is high if you enjoy the game. It is a fun experience, and the fun doesn't go away when you replay it.

Overall
In short, Katamari Demacy is a very refreshing game. It is always nice to see that the company can come up with such strange ideas, yet still generates a satisfying gaming experience for the players.

Score: 8.5

I'm waiting for this and Okami to come to Gamecube, because goddammit, that's where they belong!