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We Love Katamari Review
Balbanes writes "Tim Rogers reviews We Love Katamari. He calls it Katamari Damashii: The Videogame." The original is probably my favorite non World of Warcraft game in the last year or two. I can't wait for this game. This article has a lot of commentary on the gameplay, the music, and more. And really, if you haven't played it the original you owe it to yourself to try. The infectious music and hysterical gameplay are a serious treat.
come on man, why else would you be writing "it's a lot longer and tighter than the original" if you weren't selling the usual snake oil. :) (OMG a smilie on /., i'm a dead man walking now)
Global warming is a cube.
Was posted yesterday the link can be found here
Can someone here tell me what kind of drugs the Katamari Damacy soundtrack producer was on? Cause I want some.
Why something like this is on the main page I'll never know.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I can't get over the fact the guy basically wrote a book here to review a video game. That's one long review!
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
I just hope it ends up living up to expectations on release. Games that have loyal fans often set unrealistic and unobtainable goals and in the end the fans get upset because of unpromised features or they don't think the new one is as good as the original.
Voice your opinion!
I think another duplicate story about the US not releasing control over ICANN would generate more interest than this story. FWIW I love the original game as well, but would NOT expect to see a review of the sequel as a slashdot story.
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
I just want whatever this guy takes daily. Seriously.
Y'know it'd be great if the original was released in the UK, since I hear it was a real classic. AFAIK it's not even available anywhere in Europe. What are Sony smoking? Surely with all the great reviews the game(s) would sell here.
The original is probably my favorite non World of Warcraft game in the last year or two.
So, in other words, it is your second-favourite game. Just say it, god damnit.
Enjoy an e-piphany
In response to the "spam" claims, and general distaste for the style of article, I'd like to pose an alternate perception. Katamari Damashi is one of the all-time under-the-radar hits for any console (perhaps any game). Every person I know who has a PS/2 had not heard of it before I started passing it around. Everyone loved it. It is brilliant in its simplicity.
In addition, it came out new at $20. An outstanding market concept that few if any had really tried - a new game that was cheap to develop, with little or no marketing, priced to sell. An unfortunate side effect is that there was very little big media attention payed.
As for the part about fawning over the larger scope of the game - the original was short. Necessarily so given the target of a cheap-to-create, cheap-on-the-shelf game.
It's a good game, And the review is fair and accurate.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
seriously, look at that monolithic article with the red borders!
MY EYES ASPLODE!
slow news day?
Wouldn't all the dupes be the first clue? This is just the deal breaker.
if you haven't played it the original you owe it to yourself ot try
I've never played the original, though I really wanted to - they never released it in the UK! Rah!
One good turn - gets all the covers.
sex but not too much sex
Excuse me for asking, but what the hell is too much sex? Can such a thing exist?
Not sure how close it is to the original, but I'm certain the original one is much better if folks are liking it so much.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Yes it can, oh yes, now some one please either get me some advil or shoot me.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Can someone please explain to me what the point of this game is? I read about 2/3rds of the linked review and still have no idea; what the objective of the game is or what game play is like.
All I know is that the author feels really bad about swallowing a continent, and that he/she really likes the music, maybe, I think.
The only explination I can come up with is that this article was translated, and lost what little coherence it had to begin with in the process.
... and want to know what drugs this guy takes.
I liked the original game quite a bit. It was short, clever, fun to play. Even "innovative". However, I find it *scary* that the guy spent that many bytes fretting over so many minor details. In the end he could have said:
"The sequel is better technically but perhaps a bit overproduced (particularly in terms of music) for what it is. Fans of the original will enjoy the cleaner level design and improvements, but it doesn't stray far from the original. People who missed the first game shouln't miss it them time. 8 out of 10"
Sig under construction since 1998.
I ask because that was the longest-winded, most self-indulgent review I've ever read of anything.
I'll sum it up:
"Blah, blah, I have rarified tastes in J-pop, blah, blah, I know the producer's name, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's good, blah, blah, the game succeeded because of Japanophiles with less knowledge of Japanese culture than me, blah, blah, the game is more of the same and it's bad, blah, blah, I suggest that the producer drop his name in connection with newer projects that have nothing to do with Katamari."
The review was incoherent and was 20-30% about the author of the review more than the game. I smell blog.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
C'mon, what's a videogame review without screenshots? Here's some for the curious, courtesy of IGN.. http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/716/716651/imgs_1.h tml
...for the shortest time between /. duplicate articles. :D
There were several things I thought were slashdot worthy today. Triple star system with a planet located, new mission for deep impact, etc. I just gave up spending 20 minutes typing up a pretty article on something relevant only to have it rejected every time. Usually I would see the same story linked by one of the editors a day later (sometimes twice) so it isn't worth the time really.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
For the love of god, man, review the farging video game! I couldn't give two craps less about some japanese pop star for which you have massive wood. Just tell me about the sequel to the game I love.
One single letter prevents this story from being a dupe. ONE LETTER!
/ 134220&from=rss
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/07
YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THE LAST OF ME, SLASHDOT!
rooooar
The first few pages read like a J-popstar hagiography.
Good job editors!
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
I'm a Japanophile, too, but there's something about that culture that really attracts some creepy (or at least unsettling) gaijin.
I think it's the fact that nobody obsesses like the Japanese. Think about it. The culture prizes knowledge but excludes people outside the norm. Both forces push those with obsessive tendencies way further out over the edge than in many other countries. You don't get otaku and hikikomori in other countries to the level that whole industries cater to them.
Because of that our own obsessive and socially outcast people get the false impression that obsessing over their entertainment and so on is socially acceptable there. Therefore, it's not bad to be like that. Other people understand. Listen, covering your walls in anime posters and keeping figurines of female characters is even more of a turn-off for women there than it is here. It doesn't help that (much like tabletop gaming and first-person shooters in the states) anime fandom has been tarnished by a few murders by fans Where the media latched onto their hobbies as the cause of their mental degeneration.
(FYI, otaku is not a nice word. It inherently carries connotations of creepy, socially-stunted hermits. The term use for obsessed geeks comes from its use by such people who would use it to greet each other (as a polite form of "you") because they couldn't remember other people's names. Don't wear it like a badge of pride.)
I think if more people realized that the Japanese didn't like their creepy fanboys anymore than we do, it might lose a bit of its sheen. As for the other factors, I'd say that, yes, technology, kid-like spirit, obscurity, and sexual undertones in addition to action and escapist elements strongly influence anime fandom. For those of us that gain no joy from reality television, sit-coms sports, or other drivel, anime makes a nice escape. The problem is the people who don't know how to come back to reality afterwards.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
That's the sentence you decided you go with? Writing once and not revising isn't writing at all. It's typing.
exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
Bayesian. Too many duplicates required to train?
Other suggestions?
Deleted
From TFA, "when the lonely depression that game was trying to make the player aware of finally settled in..."
Uhhhhh..... ok... I'm sorry you feel sad, but that game was charming and fun.
Why do people insist on spelling it "Damashii"? "Damacy" is the official transliteration of the name used by the original creators of the game; who can overrule that?
but I don't own a PS2, and at the point when the original came out, there wasn't much reason to buy one (it was so late in this console cycle that buying any machine prior to the inevitably price-drops is questionable; and particularly the PS2, which was pretty obviously eclipsed by that point).
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an Xbox 360 release, though.
I'm all for PC ports, but how would you control KD on the PC? I can't imagine playing this without the DualShock 2's analog stick configuration.
e2 | LJ
If I had a ps2 I might. Too bad I dont. Anyone want to send me one? :)
That was the most incomprehensible body of text I've ever attempted to read.
I got tired of him imagining the girl singing the music (in the video game?) after about 3 paragraphs, so I skipped closer to the end only to find out he was still talking about her and relating the game to Armageddon the movie?
Question everything
Ther are many dual-analog gamepads available.
There are alsp ps2/xbox to pc/usb converters if you must use an exact console controller.
everything in moderation
This is not the greatest game in the world. This is just a review.
Yes he does. He talks about one of female vocalists, and how the new soundtrack is japanese hip hop, which is nothing like american hip hop.
(FYI, otaku is not a nice word. It inherently carries connotations of creepy, socially-stunted hermits. The term use for obsessed geeks comes from its use by such people who would use it to greet each other (as a polite form of "you") because they couldn't remember other people's names. Don't wear it like a badge of pride.)
:
t ,'" this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth running it through her Sandbenders, whose translation functions updated automatically whenever she ported.
William Gibson, Idoru
"Masahiko is seventeen," Mitsuko said. "He is a 'pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-defici
"A what?"
"Otaku," Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese. The translation burped its clumsy word string again.
"Oh," Chia said, "we have those, We even use the same word."
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Can someone please explain to me what the point of this game is? I read about 2/3rds of the linked review and still have no idea; what the objective of the game is or what game play is like.
Well, imagine a first-person shooter without shooting. Ok, now cross that with an RPG with no underlying point. Now mix that with a Dance Dance Dance soundtrack, and pass that thru a mix machine.
Now imagine it's in a foreign language and your babblefish is sick and translating everything incorrectly.
It's like that.
Only more so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I thought it said "Calamari"....
After watching this game, I think it's high time Maxis came out with Sim Dung Beetle.
It may be short, but it's not like you play through it once and never look at it again. I'm playing it almost every night, mostly because I want to get the Eternal level on "Make the Moon", damn it! It's making me crazy.
So, it's short, but replay value is high. Not just because of locked "eternals" either... it'd still be fun to play even without that. Actually, I think it'd be more fun to play without a time limit, that's why I'm working to unlock it. Stupid locked features. I just want to be able to roam the world, sticking huge islands to my big silly ball of stuff, why make me do some impossible stunt first? Darn it. Making the moon and stars are their own reward, I shouldn't have to make an 800m moon to unlock a doesn't-matter-a-wit free-play level. Seriously. It's just so frustrating to unlock the eternals that one is tempted to cheat, and that's not cool. That's probably my only complaint about the game... it's stupid how fun it is otherwise.
Every now and then, though, I need an antidote, and have to fire up GTA...
(FYI, otaku is not a nice word. It inherently carries connotations of creepy, socially-stunted hermits. The term use for obsessed geeks comes from its use by such people who would use it to greet each other (as a polite form of "you") because they couldn't remember other people's names. Don't wear it like a badge of pride.)
Actually, the word "otaku," like the english terms "geek" and "nerd," have softened over the years, as less "creepy, socially stunted hermits" and more normal fans began to wear it as a badge of honor.
I was quite taken aback that you believe that words have "inherent connotations". The word connotation literally means "something written together with it", a meaning outside the actual meaning of the word. In other words, an allusion or metaphor attached to the word based on outside knowledge of myth, history, or allegory.
Say I had a best friend named Heavy, and one day Heavy turned on me and helped murder me. Everyone who heard the name "Heavy" would think of my friend and my untimely death. They might even go so far as to create adjectives such as "Heavylike" to describe a sudden and monstrous act, or to call murderers, the callous and the uncaring "Heavies." That wouldn't change the meaning of the word "heavy", would it? It would still mean something that weighed a lot.
If I were Julius Caesar the above story would be true. "Brutus" in Latin means heavy or unweildy (and also, by roman metaphor, dull in the mental sense.) We call sudden attacks "brutal" and mean people "brutes" because of Brutus. Likewise, if I named my child "Brute" and he turned out to be christlike in his compassion and gentleness, the connotation of the word would reverse. But that doesn't change the core of the word. It all still means heavy.
In other words, self-identifiers define connotations. Every time someone takes it upon themselves to say, "I am an otaku," the connotation changes depending on what that person is like. They define the connotations of the word, not you. You can sit and spout about how "otaku" means crazy all you like, but when smart, sociable, balanced people use the term to define themselves, you're instantly wrong.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Seriously, does anybody really listen to "Pizzicato Five"? I thought that people only said they did to sound cool and obscure - like how people claim to enjoy the works of Tarkovsky.
I just beat the game last night... It's longer than the first one, and overall, MUCH better. I couldn't understand it (JP version), but you don't need to know any Japanese to play it. I'm definitely picking it up and beating it again as soon as it's released in North America.
I don't think you're paying attention... it *has* been released. This is a review, not a preview.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Here's a torrent for over 2 hours of music ripped from the new game:
i ls&id=352259&query=katamari
http://torrentspy.com/search.asp?mode=torrentdeta
Katamari is more about visuals than listening to some long-winded super-emotional Pitchforkmedia/Livejournal discussion.
That was, without exception, the WORST review I have ever read. That wasn't even a review. It was a love letter to Nomiya Maki.
Oh my! They have upset a Slashdot reader! When they hear this, they will no doubt make every effort to bring the game to your platform of choice!
Personally, I love Tim Rogers' writing.
The problem is that many of you go into this "Review" thinking that you are going to be reading a review of a game, but in actuality you are reading a story. An experience, if you will. Kind of a review of what was going in Tim's life when he played Katamari Damacy, rather than a review of the game itself.
It might put off a lot of the people here, but I think it is quite interesting. His writing is frenetic at times, and most certainly stream-of-concious, and he oftentimes assumes the reader already knows about every obscure thing which interests him, but that is what makes his writing interesting. It serves to really get the reader into Tim's mind, and see things the way he sees them. It's this great internal perspective that really shows why things are wonderful to Tim, and captures certain insights that we would never make or experience ourselves, but are somehow made our own through Tim's writing.
The State of Tokyo Transit is one of his fiction stories which I first stumbled upon two years ago, and from the first sentence I was entranced. I highly reccommend giving it a read. He has a whole series on Tokyopia entitled, "The State of Tokyo" & randWord, but I think this is his best. Seriously, go read it. I think it's just great. I liked it so much that I e-mailed him after I read it the first time, and he told me that it's part of a book that he's written but has never been published. He seemed like quite a nice guy.
You've never been to prison, have you?
There's a much wider variety of objectives this time. All of the major level types from the first game are back (the infamous cow level and infamous bear level have been replaced by the extremely frustrating cow-and-bear level) plus some new ones, asking the player to roll up objects that cost the most, roll up the most flowers or fireflies in super-saturated stages, roll up the most food (the player's ball in this level is actually a sumo wrestler -- this is a highlight of the game), roll up clouds in a level where the ball seems like it's full of helium, an underwater stage with floaty physics, roll up a burning ball while continuing to feed the fire so it doesn't go out, a level where the ball constantly rolls forward at high speed and you can only steer where it goes, one where you get 100 items as fast as you can, one where you try to make the biggest ball you can within 50 items, and best of all, the Cosmos stage, which contains all the planets you made in the previous levels, and have to make a ball bigger than the freaking sun. The collect-the-nations level is back (with a kinder camera this time), but I still can't seem to get them all in time, dammit.
There are still a few size levels, but they seem like less of the thrust of the game this time around. Many levels now feature multiple versions; at least two, maybe it was three, have three versions. (Including the Sumo level, hooray!) Many levels, including most of the raw size levels, have a normal version that works like the prior game, and a time attack version where you can't fail, but the level ends once the target size is reached.
My favorite part of the original game, what I affectionately call The Big Level, the one with the largest scale and the one that makes people say "wow" the most, is now surpassed by The New The Big Level.
The problem with the original The Big Level is that, once you know what you're doing, you can quite easily clean out the whole place, leaving you and your ball alone in an ocean of blue, with four or five minutes left on the clock. Once this happens, you will probably have a ball size of 878m, give or take one meter. And that, as we say, is that. The New The Big Level has a tighter time limit (17 minutes as opposed to 25), and seems a lot harder to max out; I've been up to 2200m+ with no end in sight. One really cool thing: The King of All Cosmos is in the level! He's so large in size that it looks like he'd be super hard to collect... but not impossible.
There is one super-disappointing thing about the game so far, and that is there doesn't seem, at this point, to be any Eternal levels. While I never played the original Eternals more than twice each, The New The Big Level is so vast (featuring capsule versions of several countries: you gotta love a game containing the Hollywood Sign, the Effiel Tower and the Great Wall of China, among others) that I can't help but think the only way you could get everything is without a time limit.
As for the music... it's great, but not at catchy as the first game. It's growing on me, though. It has at least three really nice songs. The beatbox version of Katamari On The Rock, surprisingly, isn't as engaging as the originsl (which, unlike what the the linked-to review thinks, I think was *wonderful* for the first game's last level theme).
Overall it's a worthy sequel. It doesn't seem to have as much of the odd grandeur of the original game, but the Cosmos stage is *awesome*. There are so many clever little touches: for example, the "NA" "M" and "CO" letters from the save screen, as well as the (R) symbol, are on the Collection screen! (I'll leave it to you to figure out how to get them all on one file....) I wish it focused more on size objectives, but there's still a lot to like here.
The game, it must be said, is ultimately just more levels of the same, but considering the the original was one of those games that was just *begging* to have more levels added to it, I'm not complaining. If there's room for disap
Plus the linked website's layout really sucks.
Calamari was the first thing I thought of when I read the title to. I find that it can have quite a rubbery texture which really grosses some people out. I don't mind it. The plump squishiness of shrimp and the rubbery tenderness of calamari... mmmm... i'm getting hungry.
Meh.
I have the Jap version of this game and while I cannot read a single word or symbol or what ever it is they write in... I do however love the game I loved the first one and the second one is fun even I cant understand what they are saying ! I suppose also if I could read it I would know how to get to this free mode they speak of..... (would like to try that)
So when is the hot coffee mod coming out for We Love Katamari?
... and their strategy of:
Buy out a smaller game developer.
Pick their top-selling title.
Kill off development of all other titles from said developer.
Milk the franchise with endless sequels and expansion packs until it sucks.
Repeat.
EA has been crushing the innovation and fun out of PC gaming since WELL before billy-boy got his x-box.
Remember when Maxis has fun, silly, and even educational titles like Sim Ant, Sim Life and Sim Earth, instead of endless remakes and add-ons to The Sims? (Amazingly, Maxis did wind up with their top TWO titles surviving... though I still maintain that no sequel has lived up to the fun of SimCity 2000.) Remember when WestWood did cool things like that Blade Runner game, instead of endless crappy rehashes of C&C? Remember when Origin was more than just Ultima Online? (Hell... remember standalone Ultima titles?)
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Yes yes yes. This has angered me for a long time as well, and the bit you put in about the industry catering is totally true.
I like living in Japan for the food, because I've spent a while learning the language so it'd be nice to get it to some level of proficiency, and because Tokyo's interesting. It seems like more and more whenever I admit to having spent time in Japan I have to put up with the stereotypes formed by the general public based on these juvenile twits. Not everybody chooses samurai, anime and video games as their reasons for liking Japan.
Crazy how that makes such a difference, eh?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
And 8 hours later slashdot said "let there be the story about the suns". here
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
As far as I can tell, that's just something anime geeks tell themselves in order to make themselves feel better. Most Japanese folks I know seem to feel that it's a pretty bad thing to be called.
Even better are the ones who misspell it "Damashi", which is a completely different word. That won't stop a Wapanese!
Let me guess; these are the people who use "bishonen" as a synonym for "bitchin'", right?
I had the same problem when slashdot ran a story on tiny RC cars from a company called BitCharG it got caught for 'Bitch'
Given that the Katamari game series is a rough simulation of what a dung beetle does, and dung figures into a lot of sick porn, I can see how the filters might pick up Katamari as porn even without buggy "Dick Sexton" filters.