Namco's Bizarre Object Conglomeration Game Rated

Thanks to Game Science for its review of Namco's extremely odd PlayStation 2 game, Katamari Damacy, recently released in Japan. The game's premise involves fixing your father the King's drunken heaven-trashing exploits by "...collecting a load of junk from Earth, rolling it into clumps, and sending it up into the Cosmos to make stars." The gameplay is also distinctly unconventional: "Starting with a clump no bigger than the Prince himself, you must roll around the deepest crevices [MPEG link] of a house, picking up tiny things like drawing pins, moving up to Shogi tiles and batteries", before moving all the way up to "picking up giant octopi and huge monsters." The reviewer ends by noting: "A European release can't be ruled out, but a US release seems very unlikely. It's likely to become hot property when word spreads of its goodness, so I recommend a quick purchase if you're teetering on the brink of buying it."

Comments

One step back towards reality

[MMaestro]

This is coming from a country which makes dating sims. This sort of gameplay is a step back towards reality.

On a more serious note, to be honest the game just looks like a largely expanded version of Animal Crossing's being able to make a snowman. Not very creative with that said. (Basicly what you did in Animal Crossing was start with a snowball and roll it around until it was big enough for the bottom, the middle, and the head part of a snowman.)

Light

[August_zero]

It looks like a bit of a puzzle game to me. Obviously I am not on the design team so I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that the difficulty of the game would hinge on beating time limits or being able to solve puzzles/defeat enemies. The size of the ball is continually growing and things that might hurt or kill you at one size would actually be "food" once you were big enough to absorb it (I could say a Microsoft simulator if I wanted to seize an obvious pun) Its merit would hinge on whether the game play and level design keeps in interesting after the aesthetic appeal of crushing the world under a ball of garbage wears off.

I think it looks like it could be entertaining, it is at least a unique idea for a game, and for as much as a lot of people constantly complain that there are no new ideas in the gaming industry, I have to say that I am surprised how quickly people are ready to try and nab that +1 funny by making some smarmy comment about a game they can't immediately classify and pigeon-hole. Wait a second no I'm not.