Slashdot Mirror
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.
-- 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 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.
Can someone here tell me what kind of drugs the Katamari Damacy soundtrack producer was on?
Who cares about the soundtrack? The entire fucking game is one huge mushroom/acid twofer.
I mean seriously, when you roll over a "meow cat" and sit there laughing hysterically, sober, meowing at the screen you know that you're stoned.
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
No yesterday's article was
We Love Katamari Preview
Today's article is
We Love Katamari Review
Clearly this is not a Dupe.
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
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
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").
Find out more about the original here.
In general, the game is about you controlling a "prince" who has to replace all the stars in the sky. He does this by rolling around a "Katamari", which objects stick to. When you start out, you've got a 1 cm tall Katamari, and you're rolling over thumbtacks and coins. As you collect items, the Katamari gets bigger, and can pick up bigger items. So the mouse that was chasing you around and knocking items off your Katamari eventually finds itself PART of the Katamari.
And the great part is that the items don't just disappear into the Katamari - they're all quite visible on the outside, and actually affect how the Katamari rolls. Grab a pencil, and suddenly it doesn't roll well at all in the direction of the pencil, and you need to roll a different way to even it out.
The later stages are really fun - you can start off rolling items sitting under the car next to a house, to rolling over items around the car, to rolling up the pets, then the owner of the house, then the car itself, then the house.
It really is an amazing game.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
There has to be something fundamentaly wrong with the slashdot-iverse when I get more information from those few lines than the entirety of the article to which the front page links. Surely things cannot be MEANT to work this way.
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?
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
This is not the greatest game in the world. This is just a review.
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! --
After watching this game, I think it's high time Maxis came out with Sim Dung Beetle.