This review contains spoilers
Thats me rolling da blunt 💯 💯.
One of the purest expressions of the childlike understanding of Play imaginable. Picture it: a painstakingly constructed diorama, each piece crude and small on its own, but weaving together to create little places, little stories, some sad, some thoughtful, some funny, all very very silly and creative, that in turn each weave together to a larger picture, a larger statement of the world and the vision it constructed it.
And then you come in with a wrecking ball, yelling "NEEEOORRRMMMM" and destroy it all.
Katamari Damacy captures Play how I remember it, silly, crude, anarchic, bursting with imagination and reflective of the world around me whilst having a callous disregard for permanence, consequences, and sense, with a voice from on high always on the edge of hearing, waiting to call an end to playtime.
Keita Takahashi's directorial work tends to lean more towards the idea of games as toys rather than a more modern conception of them, utilizing family-friendly graphics and very simple mechanics with de-emphasized win and lose states to make games that emphasize play for the sake of play, without drivers such as plot, mastery, or levelling up. However, Katamari Damacy raises itself above Noby Noby Boy and Wattam because of the constraints on that play it offers, the timelimits and the extra modes about avoiding or collecting specific items, are frictional elements that contextualise the experience wonderfully, like a father figure setting arbitrary tasks or constraints that push back against the barriers of a child's imagination. As much as I would prefer to just roll a big ball around sucking things up, these elements provide a sprinkle of thematic salt on an experience it would otherwise be easy to breeze through without thinking about.
And then there's the final moments of the final level, which twice now have struck me as a strangely lonely, boring experience where all you have left to do is hoover up the last few things in a vast empty space, a chore that pulls back the curtain on the artifice and pointlessness of what you've been doing. Where the diorama pieces just look pieces, when the dolls just look like dolls, when your imagination bounces right off them. When it's not Fun anymore, what is it?
There's a lot of really good pieces out there discussing this game from a variety of angles, and I agree with a lot of them, particularly those looking at the depictions of father-son relationships in the King and the Prince, but they aren't why I love Katamari Damacy.
No, I love Katamari Damacy because it makes me feel like a kid again. For good and for ill.
And then you come in with a wrecking ball, yelling "NEEEOORRRMMMM" and destroy it all.
Katamari Damacy captures Play how I remember it, silly, crude, anarchic, bursting with imagination and reflective of the world around me whilst having a callous disregard for permanence, consequences, and sense, with a voice from on high always on the edge of hearing, waiting to call an end to playtime.
Keita Takahashi's directorial work tends to lean more towards the idea of games as toys rather than a more modern conception of them, utilizing family-friendly graphics and very simple mechanics with de-emphasized win and lose states to make games that emphasize play for the sake of play, without drivers such as plot, mastery, or levelling up. However, Katamari Damacy raises itself above Noby Noby Boy and Wattam because of the constraints on that play it offers, the timelimits and the extra modes about avoiding or collecting specific items, are frictional elements that contextualise the experience wonderfully, like a father figure setting arbitrary tasks or constraints that push back against the barriers of a child's imagination. As much as I would prefer to just roll a big ball around sucking things up, these elements provide a sprinkle of thematic salt on an experience it would otherwise be easy to breeze through without thinking about.
And then there's the final moments of the final level, which twice now have struck me as a strangely lonely, boring experience where all you have left to do is hoover up the last few things in a vast empty space, a chore that pulls back the curtain on the artifice and pointlessness of what you've been doing. Where the diorama pieces just look pieces, when the dolls just look like dolls, when your imagination bounces right off them. When it's not Fun anymore, what is it?
There's a lot of really good pieces out there discussing this game from a variety of angles, and I agree with a lot of them, particularly those looking at the depictions of father-son relationships in the King and the Prince, but they aren't why I love Katamari Damacy.
No, I love Katamari Damacy because it makes me feel like a kid again. For good and for ill.
Let's talk about scale.
Most media does not do a very good job of handling scale, because scale inherently requires contrast. Anyone who's made 3D models should know that a lot of objects tend to be created at much larger sizes than what they're going to be rendered at, meaning that you'll have plenty of geometrically massive source files that are shrunken down when they're to be displayed next to other things. Designing a toothbrush to be the size of the moon doesn't really matter so long as you can scale it back down when it's time to place it in your model of a bathroom. Scale isn't just when something is big, or when something is small; it's when something is big and something else isn't.
Scale in most video games is usually limited to simple matters, such as having a physically spacious game world to navigate, or larger-than-normal enemies to indicate increased danger. This isn't a problem, per se; in fact, this commonality that you can see between many major titles — Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Grand Theft Auto V — likely indicates that public consensus deems this to be fine. Tropes and design philosophies become adopted en masse because they work. If the final boss is the size of a fucking apartment duplex ala Dead Space or God of War, it sells the scale.
But very few games are designed purely around scale. There tends to be a lot of focus on scope — more features, more objectives, more goodies — but not so much on scale. Scale often serves its purpose as more of a tool than a design document. For the second review in a row, I can bring up Shadow of the Colossus as an example of a game designed explicitly around scale; rather than an element or a one-off, the entire game is built and wrapped around embodying the concept of contrasting sizes. But Wander is always small, and the colossi are always big; again, not in any way bad, and completely appropriate for what the developers were shooting for! But what's uncommon about Shadow of the Colossus is its refusal to ever stop showcasing scale, rather than the fact that you're a small guy fighting a big guy. If that's all you're looking for, there are hundreds of games where you can fight a guy that's bigger than you. It's all about showcasing the scale from the start, rather than saving it for special occasions.
Katamari Damacy is one of the greatest examples of showing scale from both sides of the spectrum I've ever seen.
Again, if you've got any experience with 3D modelling, you're probably very keenly aware of the fact that not all models are created equally; the purpose of creating these models is usually to place them into a world as part of a greater whole, and not everything is as important as a main character or a cool weapon. Leaves, bottles, shelves, sticks, rocks: these aren't glamorous, but they're important. If you're on the creator-end of the product, you need all of these incidentals to make the world more cohesive, seem more lived-in. If you're the consumer, you probably never notice any of them. You'd notice if they were absent, but you kind of take their presence for granted.
Katamari Damacy puts quite literally all of its objects in the world at center-stage, demanding your attention for each and every one of them. No matter how big, no matter how small, all of them can — and eventually will — be absorbed into the katamari. This is what makes the game's use of scale feel incomparable; everything is important. Ants matter as much as batteries matter as much as fruit matters as much as houses matter as much as countries matter. Everything is rendered simply and lovingly, and you'll probably never notice while playing that these objects are only as focused on as they are because they were modelling practice for the art students who provided them. Of course everything matters. It wouldn't have been created if it didn't.
While the idea has certainly diminished since the mid-2000s common internet joke of Japanese media being "so weird!", a pervading perception of Katamari Damacy is that it's incomprehensible. Sure, the idea of rolling a sticky ball around and picking things up is easy enough to grok, but the surrounding narrative and theming is often read as just being surreal for its own sake. It would be silly to deny that the game is odd, sure, but the actual message the game is going for is simple. It's one of unity and togetherness. The songs — certainly good enough to justify the $20 asking price this had on release by themselves — almost all feature lyrics of love and longing, of having fun, of just enjoying life as it is. Some of the songs are You Are Smart, which kind of fucks up the whole point I'm making, but did still make me feel like a very very smart boy whenever it played. Animals flee and people scream when the katamari comes a-rolling at them, but all ends well when everyone gets together on their lunar vacation. There's a fascination with the breadth of the cosmos even down to the smallest and most incidental baubles that's infectious. No other game will manage to make you utter the line "yes, an eraser!" and mean it the way that Katamari Damacy inspires you to.
It's a wonderful little gem of a game. Completely phenomenal from top to bottom. I will never get the biggest cow on the Taurus level.
Most media does not do a very good job of handling scale, because scale inherently requires contrast. Anyone who's made 3D models should know that a lot of objects tend to be created at much larger sizes than what they're going to be rendered at, meaning that you'll have plenty of geometrically massive source files that are shrunken down when they're to be displayed next to other things. Designing a toothbrush to be the size of the moon doesn't really matter so long as you can scale it back down when it's time to place it in your model of a bathroom. Scale isn't just when something is big, or when something is small; it's when something is big and something else isn't.
Scale in most video games is usually limited to simple matters, such as having a physically spacious game world to navigate, or larger-than-normal enemies to indicate increased danger. This isn't a problem, per se; in fact, this commonality that you can see between many major titles — Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Grand Theft Auto V — likely indicates that public consensus deems this to be fine. Tropes and design philosophies become adopted en masse because they work. If the final boss is the size of a fucking apartment duplex ala Dead Space or God of War, it sells the scale.
But very few games are designed purely around scale. There tends to be a lot of focus on scope — more features, more objectives, more goodies — but not so much on scale. Scale often serves its purpose as more of a tool than a design document. For the second review in a row, I can bring up Shadow of the Colossus as an example of a game designed explicitly around scale; rather than an element or a one-off, the entire game is built and wrapped around embodying the concept of contrasting sizes. But Wander is always small, and the colossi are always big; again, not in any way bad, and completely appropriate for what the developers were shooting for! But what's uncommon about Shadow of the Colossus is its refusal to ever stop showcasing scale, rather than the fact that you're a small guy fighting a big guy. If that's all you're looking for, there are hundreds of games where you can fight a guy that's bigger than you. It's all about showcasing the scale from the start, rather than saving it for special occasions.
Katamari Damacy is one of the greatest examples of showing scale from both sides of the spectrum I've ever seen.
Again, if you've got any experience with 3D modelling, you're probably very keenly aware of the fact that not all models are created equally; the purpose of creating these models is usually to place them into a world as part of a greater whole, and not everything is as important as a main character or a cool weapon. Leaves, bottles, shelves, sticks, rocks: these aren't glamorous, but they're important. If you're on the creator-end of the product, you need all of these incidentals to make the world more cohesive, seem more lived-in. If you're the consumer, you probably never notice any of them. You'd notice if they were absent, but you kind of take their presence for granted.
Katamari Damacy puts quite literally all of its objects in the world at center-stage, demanding your attention for each and every one of them. No matter how big, no matter how small, all of them can — and eventually will — be absorbed into the katamari. This is what makes the game's use of scale feel incomparable; everything is important. Ants matter as much as batteries matter as much as fruit matters as much as houses matter as much as countries matter. Everything is rendered simply and lovingly, and you'll probably never notice while playing that these objects are only as focused on as they are because they were modelling practice for the art students who provided them. Of course everything matters. It wouldn't have been created if it didn't.
While the idea has certainly diminished since the mid-2000s common internet joke of Japanese media being "so weird!", a pervading perception of Katamari Damacy is that it's incomprehensible. Sure, the idea of rolling a sticky ball around and picking things up is easy enough to grok, but the surrounding narrative and theming is often read as just being surreal for its own sake. It would be silly to deny that the game is odd, sure, but the actual message the game is going for is simple. It's one of unity and togetherness. The songs — certainly good enough to justify the $20 asking price this had on release by themselves — almost all feature lyrics of love and longing, of having fun, of just enjoying life as it is. Some of the songs are You Are Smart, which kind of fucks up the whole point I'm making, but did still make me feel like a very very smart boy whenever it played. Animals flee and people scream when the katamari comes a-rolling at them, but all ends well when everyone gets together on their lunar vacation. There's a fascination with the breadth of the cosmos even down to the smallest and most incidental baubles that's infectious. No other game will manage to make you utter the line "yes, an eraser!" and mean it the way that Katamari Damacy inspires you to.
It's a wonderful little gem of a game. Completely phenomenal from top to bottom. I will never get the biggest cow on the Taurus level.
i go back and forth alot figuring out whether this game or its sequel is better. we heart feels nicer to play, its soundtrack has an emotional depth and even more eccentricity to it that endears me to it more even if it isnt as fantastic as the first game's as a whole, the visual aesthetic of these games is at its peak, and the new stuff like co-op and playing as different cousins adds a lot to me. technically speaking its the best katamari, and i come back to it more.
but there's 2 things that might make me default to the original as the best one. the first is that i will never ever forget the christmas afternoon i played the last level of damacy, laughing the hardest that i ever had in my whole life probably, so hard that i scared other family members in the house. the purest sense of fun ive ever gotten from a game, capped off by a beautifully sincere sequence in the credits. we heart, great as it is as "more katamari", couldn't measure up to those 25 minutes i had, and i don't think it would've even if i happened to play it first. so i highly suggest playing the original first, in the hope that you can also have that feeling that i did.
the second thing, tying into the first a bit, is that we heart has a bit too much cynicism underneath it, injected by a director who did a good job but wanted to let us know, personally, that he hated doing a sequel. i dont blame takahashi that much for feeling that way, and maybe you could say it adds a more interesting angle to the game as the start of katamari inevitably being a franchise i guess, but pitting the two games together makes me a little sad. because the bells and whistles reluctantly added after the original, as genuinely great as some of them are, cant make up for a lack of the excitedness and ingenuity that inherently came with dreaming up with the idea of katamari in the first place. the first game wears this on its sleeve without any qualifiers (even the message abt consumption behind it or the prince's deadbeat dad don't really drag it into ~dark and fucked up~ territory or whatever), beaming with its unique kind of purity and optimism that its imitators, wearing the katamari name or otherwise, can't distract me from. the first might be the best because it 100% wants you to love it; its both unapologetically happy and intensely cool without being too cool for itself. pessimism can poison games too easily, and ill always love a game that refuses to have any.
but there's 2 things that might make me default to the original as the best one. the first is that i will never ever forget the christmas afternoon i played the last level of damacy, laughing the hardest that i ever had in my whole life probably, so hard that i scared other family members in the house. the purest sense of fun ive ever gotten from a game, capped off by a beautifully sincere sequence in the credits. we heart, great as it is as "more katamari", couldn't measure up to those 25 minutes i had, and i don't think it would've even if i happened to play it first. so i highly suggest playing the original first, in the hope that you can also have that feeling that i did.
the second thing, tying into the first a bit, is that we heart has a bit too much cynicism underneath it, injected by a director who did a good job but wanted to let us know, personally, that he hated doing a sequel. i dont blame takahashi that much for feeling that way, and maybe you could say it adds a more interesting angle to the game as the start of katamari inevitably being a franchise i guess, but pitting the two games together makes me a little sad. because the bells and whistles reluctantly added after the original, as genuinely great as some of them are, cant make up for a lack of the excitedness and ingenuity that inherently came with dreaming up with the idea of katamari in the first place. the first game wears this on its sleeve without any qualifiers (even the message abt consumption behind it or the prince's deadbeat dad don't really drag it into ~dark and fucked up~ territory or whatever), beaming with its unique kind of purity and optimism that its imitators, wearing the katamari name or otherwise, can't distract me from. the first might be the best because it 100% wants you to love it; its both unapologetically happy and intensely cool without being too cool for itself. pessimism can poison games too easily, and ill always love a game that refuses to have any.
randomly a katamari damacy ost came up while i was studying and listening to a Best VideoGame Music Ever ™ playlist and i havent been the same person ever since
now i always had an idea that katamari damacy was a game that everybody loved and adored for reasons that were outside of my conscience and since i had never watched any gameplay or shit like that i was like “people love this game ! ok next” and like saw the cover art and i thought it was probably gonna be a nostalgia filled childish videogame with okay ish mechanics and a silly story and id say i was half right
after listening to masterpiece roll me in i HAD to take a leap of faith head first into this game because that ost is completely insane im not even joking if you havent just listen to it its breath taking and the fact that it single handedly lured me into a game where you roll a fucking ball is so funny to me but im glad it did
sooooooooo whats katamari . i kind of got no clue but i realised that katamari damashi aka 塊魂 means clump spirit and its honestly the funniest shit ever and also the kanji look so similar thats probably another reason why they chose this wacky title
and you can even witness how FUCKING wacky this game is by the absolute insane opening this is the closest thing to a heavy drug trip i ever experienced im not joking
basically the story follow the little prince who got ordered by his father (fathers?) king of the cosmos to roll up some katamari > clumps to make some stars out of them because he destroyed the entire universe after a psychotic episode or something like acid LSD i guess trip since he also says he had fun so . yeah its up to the little prince (cutest character ever i want to smooch him hes soooooooooo + hes like half a feet tall so best little baby man lil lil baby man lil lil baby baby man) to get the galaxies back up there using the other main character THE KATAMARI a ball yeah its basically a ball so
apart from the weird as fuck premise something that completely took ME out was the character design that i was witnessing the king is a sight to behold completely and to this moment i still cant recover from that i dont understand how they came up with this Giga Chad ultra wide hammerhead shark non binary fellow i really want to see the behind the scenes of his design im not joking im reaching out to the art direction of this game because this is unreal
hes not the only hammerhead person here the little prince and the queen (non existent character basically) and all the cousins of the king have this weird genome something that causes them to have this incredibly weird shape but i love them theyre my babies and i will protect them from people trying to stomp on them
and also yeah theres people in this game and funnily enough one side story is about a square faced family trying to get in a space station or something i got no idea while the prince is in the meantime rolling around entire cities but ok its fun i like this game
so if i tell you this game has the most stupid story and also the most stupid gameplay ? yeah masterpiece . what you gotta do is push the katamari around which ok we settled it its a ball ok a sphere so you have a tutorial where you understand how this works its kinda weird at first but you will get the hang of it in no time im stupid and i managed to get the jist of the mechanics in like 3 levels so youre fine that being said . thats it thats the gameplay you roll this ball around and run over everything that you encounter and make the ball bigger to ingest even more stuff and/or explore new areas
this is possibly the most simple concept ever created but i can assure you its a drug theres something so rudimentary and primal about the need for a person to create a mass of junk and roll it around like youre in a dung beetle simulator im just idk this satisfies possibly every need of creativity i had in my life its just so stupid like my mind goes “hehe get things ball bigger hehe swoosh” the end some new level of zen entertainment meditation people have been real silent since this dropped
so anyway this has also quite some complexity in the physics department or else it would be boring so thereslong object such as poles and arrows or shit like that that will unbalance the katamari and make it leap from time to time or when you collapse with something too big you will lose some stuff that was in the katamari in the collision and you can push the katamari up some steps if its big enough and thats it i think the end of the depth in the mechanics
so the levels follow some kind of progression and theres 2 types the "get to a certain diameter of the katamari" OR "get a certain number of objects" and thats basically it
diameter levels have some progression in scale youll begin being really small and suck up pins or coins and till the very end of the game youll be able to roll up cars people animals entire cities or entire masses of land so thats funny as hell
object levels center around the object of the constellation youre trying to recreate so thats pretty straight forward stuff sometimes the king require only one (1) object and these levels can last for and im not joking 10 seconds at best
at the end of the levels youll get a rating but nobody cares about that and some super fucking funny comments from the king i hate that bitch i swear hes so random
and thats basically it this could be the entire description of the game if only . IF ONLY there wasnt another thing that made me reach nirvana
the ost in this game is phenomenal its jaw dropping its absolutely unbelievable songs like roll me up and que sera sera or even UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WALKING ON A STAR but basically every single track in this game is an experience of its own and it has so many different genres like theres pop ???? electronic??? jazz ummmmmh ambient stuff and some piano bar and different talented artists its honestly absolutely incredible that a game like this has some of the most varied and perfect pieces of music in the videogame medium please just play it for the ost im begging you just do it for the incredible stuff that your ears are gonna listen to
so ugh
umh
i think im already done with considerations on this game damn that was fast but the fact that this is kind of a short review doesnt mean this game doesnt deserve praises its more about the fact that sometimes the most simple and straight forward stuff can be the most artistically evocative and im just leaving that here folks
this game makes me feel like a 7 year old again like this idea wouldve come out a childs mind
i watched a 1 hour documentary about this game thats how much i wanted to know about the thought process that gave birth to this odd ball + the fact that the objects ingame were modeled by students from some art school or something is so cool
the girl going “i feel it i feel the cosmos” might be the person with the most opened chakras ive ever encountered in my life i so aspire to be her her connection with her spiritual side is to be envied mooooooooo
still angry the king didnt visit italy are you italophobic
the fact that all the songs either say katamari somewhere or have some sort of pun on rolling stuff and balls its so fucking hilarious i cant believe this game is real
my only complaint would be that the levels might get kind of samey in the end and thats because it they reuse the same assets for every single level but thats fine i can close an eye for this one and its a thing that theyll fix in katamari 2 so ITS FINE ITS FINE ITS STILL GREAT
+ the sound design is fire nothing like hearing people scream in my ears animals cry and lands getting eradicated from earth
NOOOOOOOOOOO EMMA STAR
now i always had an idea that katamari damacy was a game that everybody loved and adored for reasons that were outside of my conscience and since i had never watched any gameplay or shit like that i was like “people love this game ! ok next” and like saw the cover art and i thought it was probably gonna be a nostalgia filled childish videogame with okay ish mechanics and a silly story and id say i was half right
after listening to masterpiece roll me in i HAD to take a leap of faith head first into this game because that ost is completely insane im not even joking if you havent just listen to it its breath taking and the fact that it single handedly lured me into a game where you roll a fucking ball is so funny to me but im glad it did
sooooooooo whats katamari . i kind of got no clue but i realised that katamari damashi aka 塊魂 means clump spirit and its honestly the funniest shit ever and also the kanji look so similar thats probably another reason why they chose this wacky title
and you can even witness how FUCKING wacky this game is by the absolute insane opening this is the closest thing to a heavy drug trip i ever experienced im not joking
basically the story follow the little prince who got ordered by his father (fathers?) king of the cosmos to roll up some katamari > clumps to make some stars out of them because he destroyed the entire universe after a psychotic episode or something like acid LSD i guess trip since he also says he had fun so . yeah its up to the little prince (cutest character ever i want to smooch him hes soooooooooo + hes like half a feet tall so best little baby man lil lil baby man lil lil baby baby man) to get the galaxies back up there using the other main character THE KATAMARI a ball yeah its basically a ball so
apart from the weird as fuck premise something that completely took ME out was the character design that i was witnessing the king is a sight to behold completely and to this moment i still cant recover from that i dont understand how they came up with this Giga Chad ultra wide hammerhead shark non binary fellow i really want to see the behind the scenes of his design im not joking im reaching out to the art direction of this game because this is unreal
hes not the only hammerhead person here the little prince and the queen (non existent character basically) and all the cousins of the king have this weird genome something that causes them to have this incredibly weird shape but i love them theyre my babies and i will protect them from people trying to stomp on them
and also yeah theres people in this game and funnily enough one side story is about a square faced family trying to get in a space station or something i got no idea while the prince is in the meantime rolling around entire cities but ok its fun i like this game
so if i tell you this game has the most stupid story and also the most stupid gameplay ? yeah masterpiece . what you gotta do is push the katamari around which ok we settled it its a ball ok a sphere so you have a tutorial where you understand how this works its kinda weird at first but you will get the hang of it in no time im stupid and i managed to get the jist of the mechanics in like 3 levels so youre fine that being said . thats it thats the gameplay you roll this ball around and run over everything that you encounter and make the ball bigger to ingest even more stuff and/or explore new areas
this is possibly the most simple concept ever created but i can assure you its a drug theres something so rudimentary and primal about the need for a person to create a mass of junk and roll it around like youre in a dung beetle simulator im just idk this satisfies possibly every need of creativity i had in my life its just so stupid like my mind goes “hehe get things ball bigger hehe swoosh” the end some new level of zen entertainment meditation people have been real silent since this dropped
so anyway this has also quite some complexity in the physics department or else it would be boring so thereslong object such as poles and arrows or shit like that that will unbalance the katamari and make it leap from time to time or when you collapse with something too big you will lose some stuff that was in the katamari in the collision and you can push the katamari up some steps if its big enough and thats it i think the end of the depth in the mechanics
so the levels follow some kind of progression and theres 2 types the "get to a certain diameter of the katamari" OR "get a certain number of objects" and thats basically it
diameter levels have some progression in scale youll begin being really small and suck up pins or coins and till the very end of the game youll be able to roll up cars people animals entire cities or entire masses of land so thats funny as hell
object levels center around the object of the constellation youre trying to recreate so thats pretty straight forward stuff sometimes the king require only one (1) object and these levels can last for and im not joking 10 seconds at best
at the end of the levels youll get a rating but nobody cares about that and some super fucking funny comments from the king i hate that bitch i swear hes so random
and thats basically it this could be the entire description of the game if only . IF ONLY there wasnt another thing that made me reach nirvana
the ost in this game is phenomenal its jaw dropping its absolutely unbelievable songs like roll me up and que sera sera or even UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WALKING ON A STAR but basically every single track in this game is an experience of its own and it has so many different genres like theres pop ???? electronic??? jazz ummmmmh ambient stuff and some piano bar and different talented artists its honestly absolutely incredible that a game like this has some of the most varied and perfect pieces of music in the videogame medium please just play it for the ost im begging you just do it for the incredible stuff that your ears are gonna listen to
so ugh
umh
i think im already done with considerations on this game damn that was fast but the fact that this is kind of a short review doesnt mean this game doesnt deserve praises its more about the fact that sometimes the most simple and straight forward stuff can be the most artistically evocative and im just leaving that here folks
this game makes me feel like a 7 year old again like this idea wouldve come out a childs mind
i watched a 1 hour documentary about this game thats how much i wanted to know about the thought process that gave birth to this odd ball + the fact that the objects ingame were modeled by students from some art school or something is so cool
the girl going “i feel it i feel the cosmos” might be the person with the most opened chakras ive ever encountered in my life i so aspire to be her her connection with her spiritual side is to be envied mooooooooo
still angry the king didnt visit italy are you italophobic
the fact that all the songs either say katamari somewhere or have some sort of pun on rolling stuff and balls its so fucking hilarious i cant believe this game is real
my only complaint would be that the levels might get kind of samey in the end and thats because it they reuse the same assets for every single level but thats fine i can close an eye for this one and its a thing that theyll fix in katamari 2 so ITS FINE ITS FINE ITS STILL GREAT
+ the sound design is fire nothing like hearing people scream in my ears animals cry and lands getting eradicated from earth
NOOOOOOOOOOO EMMA STAR
recently, i've noticed that many of my favorite games tend to fall into one of two opposite sides of a spectrum. one one side, you've got overambitious conceptual masterpieces too big and too passionate to fit into the games containing them, that i love dearly despite these imperfections. then, you've got games with incredible simple mechanics and concepts that do the most off-the-wall, profound and artistic things with them. the three games i've been playing obsessively the last few weeks that fall into the latter category are r4: ridge racer type 4, NiGHTS into dreams, and now, katamari damacy - which upon an adult revisit, i can firmly call one of my favorite experiences in gaming.
i hear the sequels improve the controls and level design, but with this as my only guide, i can't really say i see all that much to improve. there's a little bit of a learning curve to navigating the prince around his katamari, but when you really get into the groove, it's like figuring out how to make NiGHTS soar as one with the controller; it's fluid, the controls allow for snappy recoveries, and it's satisfyingly respondent. the aesthetics leave nothing to be improved - beautifully vibrant lo-poly work that sits comfortably between crayon shin-chan and joan cornellà with brilliant designs, the obvious standout being the ever-critical and iconic king of the cosmos. and that soundtrack... listen, man, the level where you make the pisces, i'm vibing along to catching fish with the prince and these little kids start singing one of the most beautiful pop songs i've ever heard... like something shinji sato (rest in peace angel) would've written and it genuinely - i don't care about admitting this - brought out the waterworks. this game captures that autumnal sense of the end of childhood and saying farewell to innocence in its soundtrack and style in a way no game this side of mother2 has achieved.
the actual structure of the game is genius. the growth of the katamari feels seemless, and the game hints when new objects can be grabbed by slowly turning up the color saturation on them - it's simple, contextual genius. the game lets you run wild in levels even after completion and it's AMAZING what you're allowed to pick up. seriously, by the time it was lategame and i realized entire towns and islands had become like the early game toothpicks and thumbtacks to me, the catharsis i felt was just out of sight.
this is one of those mario 64s, those half-lifes, those metal gear solids - if you haven't played this one, you should by now, especially with that remake out that looks really faithful. truly one of the greatest games ever made, and if people are right about we <3 katamari edging this one out by a hair, holy smokes am i excited.
i hear the sequels improve the controls and level design, but with this as my only guide, i can't really say i see all that much to improve. there's a little bit of a learning curve to navigating the prince around his katamari, but when you really get into the groove, it's like figuring out how to make NiGHTS soar as one with the controller; it's fluid, the controls allow for snappy recoveries, and it's satisfyingly respondent. the aesthetics leave nothing to be improved - beautifully vibrant lo-poly work that sits comfortably between crayon shin-chan and joan cornellà with brilliant designs, the obvious standout being the ever-critical and iconic king of the cosmos. and that soundtrack... listen, man, the level where you make the pisces, i'm vibing along to catching fish with the prince and these little kids start singing one of the most beautiful pop songs i've ever heard... like something shinji sato (rest in peace angel) would've written and it genuinely - i don't care about admitting this - brought out the waterworks. this game captures that autumnal sense of the end of childhood and saying farewell to innocence in its soundtrack and style in a way no game this side of mother2 has achieved.
the actual structure of the game is genius. the growth of the katamari feels seemless, and the game hints when new objects can be grabbed by slowly turning up the color saturation on them - it's simple, contextual genius. the game lets you run wild in levels even after completion and it's AMAZING what you're allowed to pick up. seriously, by the time it was lategame and i realized entire towns and islands had become like the early game toothpicks and thumbtacks to me, the catharsis i felt was just out of sight.
this is one of those mario 64s, those half-lifes, those metal gear solids - if you haven't played this one, you should by now, especially with that remake out that looks really faithful. truly one of the greatest games ever made, and if people are right about we <3 katamari edging this one out by a hair, holy smokes am i excited.
Katamari Damacy might be the pinnacle of video games. It is all things that are complex while also being extremely simple.
Thanks to Sony, early 2000s analog controls are phenomenal, and Katamari Damacy is atop of the mountain of them. I haven’t enjoyed controls in a game this much since the first Ape Escape (for real this time.) A plethora of moves you can pull off all at the movement of two sticks, immaculate.
An unbelievably, beautifully sounding game. From the text sound effects to the final credits song, there is no piece of music in this game that wasn’t crafted with love. Intimate love. Straight up sex to the ears brother.
Probably the funniest story in any game, rivaled by only Undertale, with a heartwarming message to wrap things up at the end. After every level you complete you're interrupted by cutscenes of a family talking about outer space slowly being pieced back together, by you. The young girl constantly says, “Oh! I feel it! I feel the cosmos!” and it’s both the cutest and funniest thing ever. I love it. I just love it.
The king has some of the best dialogue in gaming history, too. Namco should hold their fists high in celebration of what I think might be the best game ever made.
There’s so much to say about this game, but I want you to go play it yourself. Let this review be a guide into another dimension of gaming. Writing this review made my eyes water, because you just don’t play games like this anymore. Games aren’t made with the same kind of passion and creativity, and it’s really something to behold.
During my play through, my PS2 crashed at “Make a Star 7” and I hadn’t saved since the first level. So I immediately went back and did all that shit again, no hesitation, and enjoyed every second of it. If that’s not enough to get a perfect score, then I don’t know what is. 10/10.
Thanks to Sony, early 2000s analog controls are phenomenal, and Katamari Damacy is atop of the mountain of them. I haven’t enjoyed controls in a game this much since the first Ape Escape (for real this time.) A plethora of moves you can pull off all at the movement of two sticks, immaculate.
An unbelievably, beautifully sounding game. From the text sound effects to the final credits song, there is no piece of music in this game that wasn’t crafted with love. Intimate love. Straight up sex to the ears brother.
Probably the funniest story in any game, rivaled by only Undertale, with a heartwarming message to wrap things up at the end. After every level you complete you're interrupted by cutscenes of a family talking about outer space slowly being pieced back together, by you. The young girl constantly says, “Oh! I feel it! I feel the cosmos!” and it’s both the cutest and funniest thing ever. I love it. I just love it.
The king has some of the best dialogue in gaming history, too. Namco should hold their fists high in celebration of what I think might be the best game ever made.
There’s so much to say about this game, but I want you to go play it yourself. Let this review be a guide into another dimension of gaming. Writing this review made my eyes water, because you just don’t play games like this anymore. Games aren’t made with the same kind of passion and creativity, and it’s really something to behold.
During my play through, my PS2 crashed at “Make a Star 7” and I hadn’t saved since the first level. So I immediately went back and did all that shit again, no hesitation, and enjoyed every second of it. If that’s not enough to get a perfect score, then I don’t know what is. 10/10.
first stage: "haha cute i made a pile of erasers and legos :)"
final stage: "i spirit bombed ultraman with a ball made of all of detroit"
final stage: "i spirit bombed ultraman with a ball made of all of detroit"
Sublime. The music, design, sound effects, and general goofiness are mesmerizing, but the real joy comes from the progression of gameplay and game feel throughout. Despite performing the same very simple actions, (rolling and turning a ball to pick things up) the FEEL of these actions changes drastically as the level (and the game as a whole) progresses. The joy as you shift from defenseless prey to predator as you outgrow animals is awesome. It is also incredible how the geometry of the level changes as you grow- what were once obstacles become paths, and then later mere objects to adhere to your ever-growing katamari. I loved the feeling of power as you achieve the desired goal with time leftover, and spend the last minutes on a careless mad-dash, steamrolling everything in your path.
While the base game is very casual and easily completed, there is so much challenge if you seek it out- not only in the difficult Ursa Major and Taurus levels, but also in exploring and trying to acquire every item and present. I don't think I could ever get bored of this.
While the base game is very casual and easily completed, there is so much challenge if you seek it out- not only in the difficult Ursa Major and Taurus levels, but also in exploring and trying to acquire every item and present. I don't think I could ever get bored of this.
Katamari Damacy ia just pure fun. Once you learn the controls, it's literally picking up objects. As you increase in size, so do your pickups. Racing against a time-limit is somehow relaxing just sucking up the world with ease.
Out of all the flagship game franchises that have come out for the PlayStation and its four successors, the Katamari series might've been the one that I knew the least about, which also made me very intrigued by it as a result. The only two things that I knew about the game were that you roll up a giant ball and that your father is a cosmic being, and my knowledge of the game stayed this limited up until I actually started playing it a few days ago. As soon as the game's theme started to play alongside the opening cutscene, I had a huge smile on my face, and that smile pretty much never went away whenever I was playing the game. Despite how short my playthrough was, I had an absolute blast with Katamari Damacy, and I've really never played anything like it.
Like I just mentioned, the core gameplay of Katamari Damacy involves rolling the titular ball around to collect objects, but there's so much more built in to that central idea that ends up making the game feel engaging, laid-back, and rewarding to play. Whether you're aiming to get as big of a katamari as possible to create a star or focusing on collecting specific objects to make constellations, rolling up a large amount of items is always going to be one of your main objectives in some way, as working your way through the map in terms of both navigating its terrain and clearing it out of objects adds a layer of strategy that makes you think about what routes to take, when to slow down, and when to speed up as you go against the clock. A lot of games try to evoke a sense of scale by simply making something much larger than you, but Katamari Damacy approaches this in a wholly unique way by making it both visual and mechanical, as going from collecting coins and being chased by cats to picking up monster trucks, buildings, bridges, and giant octopi is immensely satisfying with how your obstacles end up scurrying away from you in fear once you tower over them. Although the controls were a bit odd at first, they're simple enough to the point where getting a grasp on makes them feel second nature while also making your (slightly) more complex maneuvers feel useful in the right situations, with the Prince's dash being a lifesaver towards the end of the game. Katamari Damacy also features some collectathon elements by having you track the amount of objects you've collected, and the humorous descriptions were one of the main reasons as to why I wanted to do my absolute best during each level.
Despite how the record-scratch-fluent King of All Cosmos spends a majority of the game berating you, Katamari Damacy consistently maintains a lighthearted and goofy atmosphere, as every element is infused with the game's childlike wonder and charm. Along with the gameplay and timeless artstyle being chock full of surreal sight gags and satirizations of Japanese culture, the actual writing of Katamari Damacy made me laugh consistently, and that goes for both the King of all Cosmos' dialogue and the bite-sized cutscenes involving the Hoshino family whose English dubbing and breezy atmosphere weirdly reminded me of The Flying Luna Clipper. It pretty much goes without saying that all of the music here in Katamari Damacy was absolutely incredible, as the eclectic shibuya-kei songs were all immensely catchy, memorable, and imbued with joy. I will say that there was a bit of jank to this game that took away from the experience, though, as I somehow got stuck in the terrain with no way of getting out several times. That complaint is minuscule when compared to what the game did well, though, as Katamari Damacy was an awesome and wholly original game that I loved from start to finish, and I honestly can't wait to see what the game's sequel, We Love Katamari, is like.
Like I just mentioned, the core gameplay of Katamari Damacy involves rolling the titular ball around to collect objects, but there's so much more built in to that central idea that ends up making the game feel engaging, laid-back, and rewarding to play. Whether you're aiming to get as big of a katamari as possible to create a star or focusing on collecting specific objects to make constellations, rolling up a large amount of items is always going to be one of your main objectives in some way, as working your way through the map in terms of both navigating its terrain and clearing it out of objects adds a layer of strategy that makes you think about what routes to take, when to slow down, and when to speed up as you go against the clock. A lot of games try to evoke a sense of scale by simply making something much larger than you, but Katamari Damacy approaches this in a wholly unique way by making it both visual and mechanical, as going from collecting coins and being chased by cats to picking up monster trucks, buildings, bridges, and giant octopi is immensely satisfying with how your obstacles end up scurrying away from you in fear once you tower over them. Although the controls were a bit odd at first, they're simple enough to the point where getting a grasp on makes them feel second nature while also making your (slightly) more complex maneuvers feel useful in the right situations, with the Prince's dash being a lifesaver towards the end of the game. Katamari Damacy also features some collectathon elements by having you track the amount of objects you've collected, and the humorous descriptions were one of the main reasons as to why I wanted to do my absolute best during each level.
Despite how the record-scratch-fluent King of All Cosmos spends a majority of the game berating you, Katamari Damacy consistently maintains a lighthearted and goofy atmosphere, as every element is infused with the game's childlike wonder and charm. Along with the gameplay and timeless artstyle being chock full of surreal sight gags and satirizations of Japanese culture, the actual writing of Katamari Damacy made me laugh consistently, and that goes for both the King of all Cosmos' dialogue and the bite-sized cutscenes involving the Hoshino family whose English dubbing and breezy atmosphere weirdly reminded me of The Flying Luna Clipper. It pretty much goes without saying that all of the music here in Katamari Damacy was absolutely incredible, as the eclectic shibuya-kei songs were all immensely catchy, memorable, and imbued with joy. I will say that there was a bit of jank to this game that took away from the experience, though, as I somehow got stuck in the terrain with no way of getting out several times. That complaint is minuscule when compared to what the game did well, though, as Katamari Damacy was an awesome and wholly original game that I loved from start to finish, and I honestly can't wait to see what the game's sequel, We Love Katamari, is like.
The upbeat music juxtaposed with the screams of those being rolled into a joyous katamari make for a splendid and relaxing experience. Roll, roll.
One of the happiest, simplest gaming experiences I've ever come across. Roll a ball until it's big enough to suck up buildings. Watch people panic and scream while catchy, happy-go-lucky music gets stuck in your head. If you're open to unconventional experiences in gaming, this is a must-play.
Katamari Damacy is one of those games I consider “perfect” : as in, it delivers wonderfully on everything it sets out to do, with in my opinion no flaw that comes to hinder the fun and doesn’t outstay its welcome. But outside of being a “perfect” game, there is something special about Katamari Damacy; it’s just more fun than most games I’ve ever played or seen. When I play it I just smile the whole way through. And as someone who very often wonders what makes one happy or feel enjoyment, I really wanna dig into what makes me feel this way when playing this game - and since it’s my favorite game ever, I do have a lot to say about it…
I remember once an article explaining Splatoon’s popularity by how it digs into the pure, juvenile desire to make a mess with paint or anything we had in our hands when we were kids, which I honestly can’t disagree with. It may seem weird to pick the following as my first point about how fun KD is, but I believe it’s a fundamental one.
Pretty much every living being, may they be animal, vegetal, or funky fungi, have in common how they spend their entire life growing. Thinking about it, Earth really is just one big turf war of who can take the most place. And more than an instinct, it’s something fundamentally written in our very genes, we don’t want to grow, we simply do. And I honestly think that the basic goal of KD’s gameplay being something Life itself has been doing since it’s been a thing creates the basis for how good of a concept it is. Just like how Splatoon uses innate desires to stir the player into inking the ground, KD uses raw, genetic impulses to make growing your katamari an inherently satisfying experience. Now, this isn’t unique to KD, lots of games like Spore and the “Snake” genre have the same premise, and it is such a primal urge you can’t argue KD inspired them… But I very much enjoy the originality of making something grow not by eating, but by going like a dung beetle and simply wanting to have the biggest ball around ( “having the biggest ___ around” being another goal very much ingrained in our psyche). It’s so simple yet so unique, it’s so… unlike everything else. KD very much and expertly capitalizes on what our DNA defines as universally “satisfying” and turns it into a fun game through hyper creative ideas; you’ll probably have a hard time finding someone who doesn’t enjoy this game in any capacity.
Secondly, you can’t talk about KD without mentioning the presentation. I’ll include here the story and stuff like the characters too, since they’re all really the wrapping for the gameplay. But my gosh is it a wonderful wrapping - I’ll just cut to the chase and talk about the King of All Cosmos. How do you make a deadbeat, drunkard, abusive, self-entitled, absentee (implied he hasn’t seen the Prince for a while at the start of the game) dad, one of the most enjoyable, memorable, flamboyant characters in all of gaming? I guess it just takes fun and snappy dialogues, a design that goes so silly and so hard all at once, and a sick record-scratching loop. I also do like how He will compliment you if and only if you do a max score in missions; it just gives Him that little touch of humanity that makes you realize you’re not just talking to a wall of ungratefulness.
And I think, in general, this is something KD excels at : going the extra mile to make sure every corner of the game is stuffed with personality and charm. This may just be what makes KD such a memorable experience and keeps you smiling the whole way through… You’re always going to find a little joke, detail or fun thing the developers added to make your time worthwhile. The game is simply choke-full of interactions and gags you absolutely won’t see on your first or even second playthrough, which by design is a genius move given the game isn’t long. I will find myself booting up the game and playing a few missions, not just to see if I can beat my score, but just because it’s fun to roll around and take in all the care that has been put into placing every element. Something that stuck out to me during my art school years is how the more you practice and look at art, the more you become familiar with the creative process; to the point you can see what the artist thought about when they created their artwork, step by step. Not to say placing a golf ball in a nest egg because funny joke is similar to the thought process of Picasso when he painted Guernica, but I honestly find the where’s, when’s and how’s, of all the little scenes very inspiring and comparable to a renowned painter deciding his piece’s composition; even more so if you take into account the limitations of making a game like Katamari (may it be from hardware, disc space, or art style).
I think a lot of the enjoyment of these jokes stems from how the developers seemed to really find the perfect way to convey their joke in an understandable but still funny way - keep in mind that you’re always on a timer, with a big ball of everything blocking your view. Really, most people will simply not see every easter egg. Most people will simply roll them up and not even know those 2 punks in front of a turtle formed a little visual gag. But the developers put them in anyway. Was it for the off chance that someone will notice the funny and have a chuckle? Was it to make the town look more lively? Was it because filling a world full of repeating models gets boring and you thought putting 2 punks with a turtle for no reason was a fun way to break the dullness? Whatever it was, I really can only applaud the effort to go out of your way to make something that may make someone out there smile. Like a theater play, a subway comedy routine or a friend that just came up with a bad joke, it always feels like KD’s intent is to make you happy.
Also impossible to not mention when talking about KD is the music. However I won’t spend much words on it because I really can’t add much more about it that it’s fucking good, man. And so varied too! Lots of composers worked on this, lots of singers too; and straight from Yuu Miyake, the sound designer’s, mouth, singers were chosen because they used to be popular but fell out of the public eye since then. This is pure speculation on my part but, just like what I said at the end of the previous paragraph, I can’t help but think everyone who got to work on this soundtrack had a blast being there, deliberately so. Just people having a good time. May just be wishful thinking, but, just the fact that Yuu Miyake’s favorite song in the whole series apparently is Cherry Tree Times, the one track sung by a chorus of children, accompanied by such a wonderful group of strings… I don’t know man, but the whole thing just feels like a work of the heart.
Kept the gameplay for last because I think it’ll wrap up nicely what I talked about so far : KD is consistent with how it treats both the core stuff and the wrapping, so really I could say for the gameplay what I mentioned previously. While yes, the controls are a bit weird, I think they represent well the struggle of a 5 centimeters little man rolling a ball hundreds of times His size… And thankfully the Switch port has a simplified control scheme too.
It’s really absurd how simple the core gameplay is. You roll a ball. That’s it! It’s such a simple action it’s honestly hard to categorize KD. I saw it being qualified as puzzle-action on Wikipedia, but honestly I can’t really agree it’s puzzly… It’s as puzzly as, say, a 2D Sonic game is. You mostly go as fast as possible, and sometimes stop to see where to go. you don’t and can’t really plan your route, and as such I can’t qualify it as strategy either. Let’s just call it a ball-like. Anyway, that very loop of rolling and sometimes stopping to where to go also digs in that inner crave we have like I said earlier; more specifically here, just being able to bulldoze over things smaller than you. Make no mistake, having limited visibility because of the katamari is absolutely on purpose and I very much believe the game would be less fun had they made the katamari transparent or something like that. Which is why it’s so apparent that very careful sound design has been thought of for the rolling of items : here, the satisfaction relies on your ears, not just your eyes. Usually, the bigger, rarer, or funnier the item you rolled up is, the more interesting the sound will be. Sometimes they give a random small item a funny noise to capitalize on a gag they placed, like phones ringing because they filled a plaza with ‘em. Like I said, for a game you might think just goes for “hee hee random” type of humor on surface level, its philosophy is surprisingly well-thought and consistent.
Finally, I’ll point out something that I don’t see mentioned much… The game is easy. Very easy. On your first playthrough, you’ll fail a mission a couple of times at most. I had my 10 years-old niece play along a few times, both in story mode and VS mode (VS mode is fun for what it is, not really memorable enough to talk about much here though) and she never had much trouble with finishing missions on time. It is a byproduct of the “bulldoze without a thought” philosophy, as it’s not in the game’s interest to prevent you from rolling every 2 steps, that wouldn’t be fun - thus, the alternative is just letting you roll up most things with ease and letting you finish most missions without much of a sweat. And honestly, could you imagine a hard Katamari game? I think that would be actual hell. You’d get stuck everywhere, running out of time, losing girth and getting belittled by the King all the time. The devs wanted the exact opposite of that : proof of that are the Bear and Cow missions, notoriously ‘hard’ but really the easiest missions in the game, as you can finish each in a couple of seconds. They’re only hard because they have a tangible, elusive 100% goal - and it’s done so hilariously too, probably one of the funniest ways I’ve seen a hard challenge in a game be presented (I have to admit I never got neither biggest bear nor cow…), but they won’t roadblock you, there really is no roadblock in KD. The game doesn’t want to bother or annoy you, because it knows its gameplay is inherently fun and doesn’t need difficulty, and GOSH I wish I could say that about more games. A wise man once said, “if it’s not fun, why bother?” and I wish more devs out there would understand that. The KD devs completely did.
I’ll conclude this whole rant with the best way I could describe Katamari Damacy : it’s a game that rewards you for playing it. It gives you amazing music, fun visuals, silly dialogues and story and so, so fun gameplay; not behind a difficulty wall, but simply because of all video games out there, you chose to play this one, and wow you made a good decision. It knows it’s fun as hell, and it doesn’t want to restrict the player, it doesn’t want to give you satisfaction only after you passed a trial; it is just a video game that “perfectly” delivers on what a video game should set to do, let the player have fun and have a good time, smiling their whole playthrough. And as a way to wrap up, I’ll simply call back to the credits theme and how in my opinion it resumes the whole experience so well : it’s funny, it’s over-the-top but the more you pay attention and listen to it, the more you feel the sheer sincerity and passion of people who love fun, the world, the Earth, the Cosmos, and wanted to share it around. Thank you.
I remember once an article explaining Splatoon’s popularity by how it digs into the pure, juvenile desire to make a mess with paint or anything we had in our hands when we were kids, which I honestly can’t disagree with. It may seem weird to pick the following as my first point about how fun KD is, but I believe it’s a fundamental one.
Pretty much every living being, may they be animal, vegetal, or funky fungi, have in common how they spend their entire life growing. Thinking about it, Earth really is just one big turf war of who can take the most place. And more than an instinct, it’s something fundamentally written in our very genes, we don’t want to grow, we simply do. And I honestly think that the basic goal of KD’s gameplay being something Life itself has been doing since it’s been a thing creates the basis for how good of a concept it is. Just like how Splatoon uses innate desires to stir the player into inking the ground, KD uses raw, genetic impulses to make growing your katamari an inherently satisfying experience. Now, this isn’t unique to KD, lots of games like Spore and the “Snake” genre have the same premise, and it is such a primal urge you can’t argue KD inspired them… But I very much enjoy the originality of making something grow not by eating, but by going like a dung beetle and simply wanting to have the biggest ball around ( “having the biggest ___ around” being another goal very much ingrained in our psyche). It’s so simple yet so unique, it’s so… unlike everything else. KD very much and expertly capitalizes on what our DNA defines as universally “satisfying” and turns it into a fun game through hyper creative ideas; you’ll probably have a hard time finding someone who doesn’t enjoy this game in any capacity.
Secondly, you can’t talk about KD without mentioning the presentation. I’ll include here the story and stuff like the characters too, since they’re all really the wrapping for the gameplay. But my gosh is it a wonderful wrapping - I’ll just cut to the chase and talk about the King of All Cosmos. How do you make a deadbeat, drunkard, abusive, self-entitled, absentee (implied he hasn’t seen the Prince for a while at the start of the game) dad, one of the most enjoyable, memorable, flamboyant characters in all of gaming? I guess it just takes fun and snappy dialogues, a design that goes so silly and so hard all at once, and a sick record-scratching loop. I also do like how He will compliment you if and only if you do a max score in missions; it just gives Him that little touch of humanity that makes you realize you’re not just talking to a wall of ungratefulness.
And I think, in general, this is something KD excels at : going the extra mile to make sure every corner of the game is stuffed with personality and charm. This may just be what makes KD such a memorable experience and keeps you smiling the whole way through… You’re always going to find a little joke, detail or fun thing the developers added to make your time worthwhile. The game is simply choke-full of interactions and gags you absolutely won’t see on your first or even second playthrough, which by design is a genius move given the game isn’t long. I will find myself booting up the game and playing a few missions, not just to see if I can beat my score, but just because it’s fun to roll around and take in all the care that has been put into placing every element. Something that stuck out to me during my art school years is how the more you practice and look at art, the more you become familiar with the creative process; to the point you can see what the artist thought about when they created their artwork, step by step. Not to say placing a golf ball in a nest egg because funny joke is similar to the thought process of Picasso when he painted Guernica, but I honestly find the where’s, when’s and how’s, of all the little scenes very inspiring and comparable to a renowned painter deciding his piece’s composition; even more so if you take into account the limitations of making a game like Katamari (may it be from hardware, disc space, or art style).
I think a lot of the enjoyment of these jokes stems from how the developers seemed to really find the perfect way to convey their joke in an understandable but still funny way - keep in mind that you’re always on a timer, with a big ball of everything blocking your view. Really, most people will simply not see every easter egg. Most people will simply roll them up and not even know those 2 punks in front of a turtle formed a little visual gag. But the developers put them in anyway. Was it for the off chance that someone will notice the funny and have a chuckle? Was it to make the town look more lively? Was it because filling a world full of repeating models gets boring and you thought putting 2 punks with a turtle for no reason was a fun way to break the dullness? Whatever it was, I really can only applaud the effort to go out of your way to make something that may make someone out there smile. Like a theater play, a subway comedy routine or a friend that just came up with a bad joke, it always feels like KD’s intent is to make you happy.
Also impossible to not mention when talking about KD is the music. However I won’t spend much words on it because I really can’t add much more about it that it’s fucking good, man. And so varied too! Lots of composers worked on this, lots of singers too; and straight from Yuu Miyake, the sound designer’s, mouth, singers were chosen because they used to be popular but fell out of the public eye since then. This is pure speculation on my part but, just like what I said at the end of the previous paragraph, I can’t help but think everyone who got to work on this soundtrack had a blast being there, deliberately so. Just people having a good time. May just be wishful thinking, but, just the fact that Yuu Miyake’s favorite song in the whole series apparently is Cherry Tree Times, the one track sung by a chorus of children, accompanied by such a wonderful group of strings… I don’t know man, but the whole thing just feels like a work of the heart.
Kept the gameplay for last because I think it’ll wrap up nicely what I talked about so far : KD is consistent with how it treats both the core stuff and the wrapping, so really I could say for the gameplay what I mentioned previously. While yes, the controls are a bit weird, I think they represent well the struggle of a 5 centimeters little man rolling a ball hundreds of times His size… And thankfully the Switch port has a simplified control scheme too.
It’s really absurd how simple the core gameplay is. You roll a ball. That’s it! It’s such a simple action it’s honestly hard to categorize KD. I saw it being qualified as puzzle-action on Wikipedia, but honestly I can’t really agree it’s puzzly… It’s as puzzly as, say, a 2D Sonic game is. You mostly go as fast as possible, and sometimes stop to see where to go. you don’t and can’t really plan your route, and as such I can’t qualify it as strategy either. Let’s just call it a ball-like. Anyway, that very loop of rolling and sometimes stopping to where to go also digs in that inner crave we have like I said earlier; more specifically here, just being able to bulldoze over things smaller than you. Make no mistake, having limited visibility because of the katamari is absolutely on purpose and I very much believe the game would be less fun had they made the katamari transparent or something like that. Which is why it’s so apparent that very careful sound design has been thought of for the rolling of items : here, the satisfaction relies on your ears, not just your eyes. Usually, the bigger, rarer, or funnier the item you rolled up is, the more interesting the sound will be. Sometimes they give a random small item a funny noise to capitalize on a gag they placed, like phones ringing because they filled a plaza with ‘em. Like I said, for a game you might think just goes for “hee hee random” type of humor on surface level, its philosophy is surprisingly well-thought and consistent.
Finally, I’ll point out something that I don’t see mentioned much… The game is easy. Very easy. On your first playthrough, you’ll fail a mission a couple of times at most. I had my 10 years-old niece play along a few times, both in story mode and VS mode (VS mode is fun for what it is, not really memorable enough to talk about much here though) and she never had much trouble with finishing missions on time. It is a byproduct of the “bulldoze without a thought” philosophy, as it’s not in the game’s interest to prevent you from rolling every 2 steps, that wouldn’t be fun - thus, the alternative is just letting you roll up most things with ease and letting you finish most missions without much of a sweat. And honestly, could you imagine a hard Katamari game? I think that would be actual hell. You’d get stuck everywhere, running out of time, losing girth and getting belittled by the King all the time. The devs wanted the exact opposite of that : proof of that are the Bear and Cow missions, notoriously ‘hard’ but really the easiest missions in the game, as you can finish each in a couple of seconds. They’re only hard because they have a tangible, elusive 100% goal - and it’s done so hilariously too, probably one of the funniest ways I’ve seen a hard challenge in a game be presented (I have to admit I never got neither biggest bear nor cow…), but they won’t roadblock you, there really is no roadblock in KD. The game doesn’t want to bother or annoy you, because it knows its gameplay is inherently fun and doesn’t need difficulty, and GOSH I wish I could say that about more games. A wise man once said, “if it’s not fun, why bother?” and I wish more devs out there would understand that. The KD devs completely did.
I’ll conclude this whole rant with the best way I could describe Katamari Damacy : it’s a game that rewards you for playing it. It gives you amazing music, fun visuals, silly dialogues and story and so, so fun gameplay; not behind a difficulty wall, but simply because of all video games out there, you chose to play this one, and wow you made a good decision. It knows it’s fun as hell, and it doesn’t want to restrict the player, it doesn’t want to give you satisfaction only after you passed a trial; it is just a video game that “perfectly” delivers on what a video game should set to do, let the player have fun and have a good time, smiling their whole playthrough. And as a way to wrap up, I’ll simply call back to the credits theme and how in my opinion it resumes the whole experience so well : it’s funny, it’s over-the-top but the more you pay attention and listen to it, the more you feel the sheer sincerity and passion of people who love fun, the world, the Earth, the Cosmos, and wanted to share it around. Thank you.
i think sincerely labeling people as contrarians is silly, but i also genuinely can't think of any other reason why someone wouldn't love these games
The 2003 Toyota Camry of Video Games
some of the best sound design in the medium. nothing makes me smile more than hearing the cacophony of tormented cries from people and animals as i cut their lives short while massacring and demolishing their cities. genocide with a vibrant coat of paint and cheerfully procured musical score. tickles the senses in all the right ways with its artsy polygonal art direction and dynamic usage of perspective. awakens the yearning child inside us all. tragically beautiful in every sense.
I would have a hard time coming up with a solid list of games I would consider to have absolute perfect game design, but I know for sure Katamari Damacy would be on there. Despite how antithetical Katamari Damacy may feel to our collective perceived notions of videogame conventions and norms, Keita Takahashi still managed to tap into that same escapism primeval soup that characterizes so many of our favorite games, abstracting its violence to a family friendly degree while maintaining its appeal and utilizing it to create one of the most cathartic power fantasies in the medium.
What’s truly brilliant about KD is how much of its chaotic and free form nature ends up dictating its narrow and tightly focused design by default without resorting to any hand holding or pushing the player in any particular direction beyond the main premise of rolling a ball over stuff to make it bigger. Its progression naturally unfolds before you, as you increase the scope of your katamari and more things become available to be consumed by it, immediately a consequence of every choice the player makes in their unconscious toddler rampage. And whatever frustration that might arise from its more clunky mechanics and physics is quickly subverted when you finally get big enough to roll over that annoying bear that would always stop you on your tracks.
Funny then how that stroke of incredible originality and genius seems to have sparked by mere accident from just approaching video games from an outside perspective and being dissatisfied with the industry’s modus operandi and never taking itself too seriously. The final stage that beautifully represents the apex of the experience unveils the artifice of the game in its final moments, showing that you have been playing in a playground all along, and that recess time is over, the self indulgence was fun. Pardon my boomer-ism, but it’s a major bummer that we probably will never return to an age like the PS2 gen where people like Keita Takahashi get the opportunity to take the wheel and produce a unique title like this one that sits nicely next to its big budget pals.
It might come across as corny or histrionic of me, but the feeling I get while playing Katamari Damacy is one of love. This is a labor of love, a life affirming appreciation of all things that encompasses our planet, and while it does have something to say about consumerism or capitalism, it does it in a humorous and non condemning way in the same vein as Jacques Tati would with his films and without ever sacrificing the joy of rolling up everything on sight as people scream and a cheerful jazzy song plays in the background. Katamari Damacy is above analysis or interpretation, it is an achievement of ludology, up there with the likes of Tetris, and you don’t have to question where the art is because you can see it right in front of you, and you can play it. Truly a lonely rolling star in a sky filled with static dust.
What’s truly brilliant about KD is how much of its chaotic and free form nature ends up dictating its narrow and tightly focused design by default without resorting to any hand holding or pushing the player in any particular direction beyond the main premise of rolling a ball over stuff to make it bigger. Its progression naturally unfolds before you, as you increase the scope of your katamari and more things become available to be consumed by it, immediately a consequence of every choice the player makes in their unconscious toddler rampage. And whatever frustration that might arise from its more clunky mechanics and physics is quickly subverted when you finally get big enough to roll over that annoying bear that would always stop you on your tracks.
Funny then how that stroke of incredible originality and genius seems to have sparked by mere accident from just approaching video games from an outside perspective and being dissatisfied with the industry’s modus operandi and never taking itself too seriously. The final stage that beautifully represents the apex of the experience unveils the artifice of the game in its final moments, showing that you have been playing in a playground all along, and that recess time is over, the self indulgence was fun. Pardon my boomer-ism, but it’s a major bummer that we probably will never return to an age like the PS2 gen where people like Keita Takahashi get the opportunity to take the wheel and produce a unique title like this one that sits nicely next to its big budget pals.
It might come across as corny or histrionic of me, but the feeling I get while playing Katamari Damacy is one of love. This is a labor of love, a life affirming appreciation of all things that encompasses our planet, and while it does have something to say about consumerism or capitalism, it does it in a humorous and non condemning way in the same vein as Jacques Tati would with his films and without ever sacrificing the joy of rolling up everything on sight as people scream and a cheerful jazzy song plays in the background. Katamari Damacy is above analysis or interpretation, it is an achievement of ludology, up there with the likes of Tetris, and you don’t have to question where the art is because you can see it right in front of you, and you can play it. Truly a lonely rolling star in a sky filled with static dust.
Katamari Damacy's controls are such a wonderful example of frictional game design. From a certain vantage-point controlling the katamari, a giant not-really-spherical mass of assorted objects, is almost undeniably clunky, awkward and a little bit of a struggle. Most of the time it will never do quite what you want it to, and on occasion things will even just go outright badly as you accidentally careen down a slope or manage to tightly lodge yourself in a not-quite-large-enough gap that you'll have to desperately wiggle out of.
I'm honestly surprised I don't see more people getting frustrated with this aspect of the game, and I have to confess that when I was starting to dive back into videogames a couple years ago I found how this game controls quite off-putting, enough so to be pretty ambivalent towards my experience with it. I was starting to explore the medium again, but from the perspective of a late-20s adult rather than the teenager I once was, and I simply hadn't had enough experiences with videogames at that point in time to really know how to cope with a one actively resisting your attempts to control it, that wouldn't just let you input what you wanted to have happen on a one-to-one basis, and for me at least that manifested in frustration. The fact that I return here two years later and find myself having so much love for this game is a great example about how our relationship with any individual artform is always evolving over time as we learn more and have a wider variety of experiences to draw from; that exact sense of friction and push-back that the game has that was so off-putting for me before now just seems crucial to the fun that can be found here.
The Prince, who finds himself rolling around these katamaris, is a rather small fellow, and remains largely a pretty similar size even as the katamaris grow wildly out of control across the course of the game; eventually he finds himself pushing something thousands of times larger than him. The most immediate upside of the frictional controls here, that sense of resistance, is how much it heightens the immersion of putting you in his shoes; you're not just pushing a ball around in a game, but you're very specifically playing as a small little guy who is going to struggle to keep this gigantic mass of stuff under control. The lack of control here just adds to the sense of weight and size and scale, and the movement growing ever-clumsier as the katamari amasses makes the game-feel translate to you how ridiculous what you're doing here is. The friction in the controls add a sense of serendipity too, the katamari is not a perfect sphere but a mass of random objects some of which jut out in weird ways making the collision so strange. Sometimes this works against you in often-funny ways, whilst other times a piece of debris you've collected will jut out against the ground just right to lift you up somewhere you shouldn't really be able to reach; either way serves to make the experience less routine and more memorable than if the katamari was just some easily-predictable-orb.
The best part of all of this is that once you're willing to make the leap to the notion that it's okay to not have perfect control over what's happening then the decisions you're faced with when you're playing become all the more engaging. Turning is slow, and even lining yourself up doesn't guarantee you'll actually go in a straight line, so sometimes you'll just want to jam the breaks on and start going in reverse; you won't be able to see where you're going as easily but you'll grab those objects behind you a lot faster provided you do hit them. Or do you want to take the time to stop, turn round, line yourself up, trading precious seconds for a bit more confidence that you'll actually grab the objects you're after? There's a middle point on this equation too, attempting to make these turns whilst on the move, but it's sufficiently finnicky to perform that this isn't just a free option; you get a nice mix of speed and accuracy here, but only if you can stop the katamari from slipping off in the wrong direction whilst you're doing this.
This lays out my varied experiences with the control scheme, and why I've turned around on the game so much, but of course there's a tremendous amount of joy in Katamari Damacy too which was clear to me even back when I wasn't as big a fan of the game but that lands more resoundingly now. I love how the game lets you continue playing a level even after the objective is completed, and how this means the reward for completing a level faster is that you get even more time to mess around in these spaces before the timer runs out. I love how the nature of the growth of the katamari, constantly needing increasingly bigger objects to meaningfully feed it, puts the emphasis on keeping moving rather than backtracking for any individual object you accidentally rolled past. I love the iterative level design of the main storyline, where later levels directly echo the earlier ones such that you already have some amount of familiarity with them from the get-go and a good idea of where the shortcuts are going to be. I love the bonus levels based around picking up the largest version of an animal you can find, and the pain that surges through you when you realise that yes that carton of milk counts as a cow, your run is now over, sorry-not-sorry. I love the affection that is shown here for people, all our oddities, our bizarre societal rituals, our cultures and passions and humble existences, and how even in the game's quiet critique of consumerism it never lets go of this affection for us. I love just how gentle all of this is, even as your katamari goes about tearing down whole civilisations, and how even amidst the chaos on display the game manages to be relaxing and comforting.
I'm honestly surprised I don't see more people getting frustrated with this aspect of the game, and I have to confess that when I was starting to dive back into videogames a couple years ago I found how this game controls quite off-putting, enough so to be pretty ambivalent towards my experience with it. I was starting to explore the medium again, but from the perspective of a late-20s adult rather than the teenager I once was, and I simply hadn't had enough experiences with videogames at that point in time to really know how to cope with a one actively resisting your attempts to control it, that wouldn't just let you input what you wanted to have happen on a one-to-one basis, and for me at least that manifested in frustration. The fact that I return here two years later and find myself having so much love for this game is a great example about how our relationship with any individual artform is always evolving over time as we learn more and have a wider variety of experiences to draw from; that exact sense of friction and push-back that the game has that was so off-putting for me before now just seems crucial to the fun that can be found here.
The Prince, who finds himself rolling around these katamaris, is a rather small fellow, and remains largely a pretty similar size even as the katamaris grow wildly out of control across the course of the game; eventually he finds himself pushing something thousands of times larger than him. The most immediate upside of the frictional controls here, that sense of resistance, is how much it heightens the immersion of putting you in his shoes; you're not just pushing a ball around in a game, but you're very specifically playing as a small little guy who is going to struggle to keep this gigantic mass of stuff under control. The lack of control here just adds to the sense of weight and size and scale, and the movement growing ever-clumsier as the katamari amasses makes the game-feel translate to you how ridiculous what you're doing here is. The friction in the controls add a sense of serendipity too, the katamari is not a perfect sphere but a mass of random objects some of which jut out in weird ways making the collision so strange. Sometimes this works against you in often-funny ways, whilst other times a piece of debris you've collected will jut out against the ground just right to lift you up somewhere you shouldn't really be able to reach; either way serves to make the experience less routine and more memorable than if the katamari was just some easily-predictable-orb.
The best part of all of this is that once you're willing to make the leap to the notion that it's okay to not have perfect control over what's happening then the decisions you're faced with when you're playing become all the more engaging. Turning is slow, and even lining yourself up doesn't guarantee you'll actually go in a straight line, so sometimes you'll just want to jam the breaks on and start going in reverse; you won't be able to see where you're going as easily but you'll grab those objects behind you a lot faster provided you do hit them. Or do you want to take the time to stop, turn round, line yourself up, trading precious seconds for a bit more confidence that you'll actually grab the objects you're after? There's a middle point on this equation too, attempting to make these turns whilst on the move, but it's sufficiently finnicky to perform that this isn't just a free option; you get a nice mix of speed and accuracy here, but only if you can stop the katamari from slipping off in the wrong direction whilst you're doing this.
This lays out my varied experiences with the control scheme, and why I've turned around on the game so much, but of course there's a tremendous amount of joy in Katamari Damacy too which was clear to me even back when I wasn't as big a fan of the game but that lands more resoundingly now. I love how the game lets you continue playing a level even after the objective is completed, and how this means the reward for completing a level faster is that you get even more time to mess around in these spaces before the timer runs out. I love how the nature of the growth of the katamari, constantly needing increasingly bigger objects to meaningfully feed it, puts the emphasis on keeping moving rather than backtracking for any individual object you accidentally rolled past. I love the iterative level design of the main storyline, where later levels directly echo the earlier ones such that you already have some amount of familiarity with them from the get-go and a good idea of where the shortcuts are going to be. I love the bonus levels based around picking up the largest version of an animal you can find, and the pain that surges through you when you realise that yes that carton of milk counts as a cow, your run is now over, sorry-not-sorry. I love the affection that is shown here for people, all our oddities, our bizarre societal rituals, our cultures and passions and humble existences, and how even in the game's quiet critique of consumerism it never lets go of this affection for us. I love just how gentle all of this is, even as your katamari goes about tearing down whole civilisations, and how even amidst the chaos on display the game manages to be relaxing and comforting.
Katamari parece uma ideia que só poderia ter surgido de um jogo indie mais recente, e em uma geração repleta de jogos genéricos, isso o coloca no pódio dos jogos mais únicos que existiram para o PlayStation 2.
A última fase me empolgou muito, tanto pela escala em que o jogo chega, quanto pela excelente trilha sonora tema do jogo.
Já pararam pra pensar que o protagonista é um homicida?
A última fase me empolgou muito, tanto pela escala em que o jogo chega, quanto pela excelente trilha sonora tema do jogo.
Já pararam pra pensar que o protagonista é um homicida?
katamari damacy is a very easy game to undervalue. there's likely a decent portion of people who have gone "oh so this is just a quirky game about rolling a ball around to grab stuff? okay" or something to that effect, and disregarded the game. it's very hard to pitch the game without gameplay footage to complement; telling a coworker about this game reminded me of trying to sell someone on ace attorney being fun in spite of its droll-sounding premise. yet, even with this obstacle, i can safely say that this game might be the single most widely appealing and approachable game on the PS2's library short of tetris ports.
this is a deceptively simple game that focuses on doing one thing, and doing it superbly: movement. it is in its precise focus on movement that anyone can enjoy this game while still leaving a high skill ceiling and appropriate challenges to match. truthfully, i think this is a very, very easy game to sit down and beat. if you're just going for the minimum size requirements, even a bad player could swing that, give or take a handful of retries. meanwhile, for anyone who wants to really challenge themselves, the game has comet times, size thresholds, and collection aspects to tickle the brain. and while i think all three of those could use more transparency for the player in plainly stating what they're asking for, that simultaneously lends itself to this mystique that katamari damacy's aesthetic thrives on. i do want the raw numbers, but also, i kind of love that the king of all cosmos will just go "that's a 4/10" and belabor the point by saying he would've done it much better instead of telling you what size would satisfy him.
there's something to be said about what katamari damacy feels like to experience. clinically, i don't think i could name a game that utilizes sound design in a more synapse-stimulating way. this goes beyond the soundtrack, which is immaculate. rolling over objects is accompanied by this extremely memorable sound that i struggle to describe. it sounds like if you were to fire a rubber band at a giant plate of jello. it's minor, but considering all you are doing in the game is moving to collect things, making the act of collecting have an intrinsically pleasing sound is an elegant way to elevate it. and the moment-to-moment gameplay of scanning for both objects your size to get right then while also looking for objects bigger than you to hunt for later as goals is diabolically brilliant design. the player makes both conscious and unconscious decisions about what to preoccupy themselves with and what to work towards. the magic is that it's done instantly and often without the player even realizing how they're being conditioned. katamari damacy doesn't fatigue the player with analysis paralysis, because it immediately makes it apparent that you want to get shit, and you want to constantly be in the process of getting shit.
as for collecting itself, many objects will have sounds that play when you get them, adding to that feedback loop. you roll up an egg and boom, a little chickling briefly hatches and peeps a bit. you roll up a truck and you can bet you're gonna hear its horn. this even extends to people when you roll them up, and often the most fun part of any given level is when you get big enough to roll up random civilians and hear their associated voice lines when you get them. whether it's random teenage girls who give their all in screaming, old men who have no earthly idea what's going on and just moan a little in confusion, or the Towel Guy who makes this sound that easily puts him in contention for most lgbt character of all time. sometimes the fun of the game is not only seeing what you can roll up, but how it will react to you.
and while the game does have only 3 main areas, the structure of each level greatly varies. you could have one level in the house where you're just collecting random household objects like food and legos and then the next level in that same house you're suddenly swarmed with crabs to collect. something i appreciated on this replay was how dollhouse-esque this game's levels feel in their arrangement. they have this exactness to them where you can feel the dev team telling their little stories through object and people placement. it all feels so neatly arranged and deliberate, and it creates this reptilian brain response of wanting to destroy something delicate when you arrive on the scene. people lowball this game a lot and chalk up its appeal to being this silly and quirky game with not much to it, but i think that greatly does a disservice to the intentionality behind the design choices here. katamari damacy organically fosters a curiosity to its world in a way that appears effortless. all of this is done without dialogue or lore drops, just visual arrangement and responsivity to player actions. it's a masterclass.
it feels very surreal to say that this game turned 20 this year. i still vividly remember the toonami mini-review of this game when it was new. i don't want to make this about how i'm getting older, things are aging, and the like, because there's no real place for it here. i don't think katamari damacy has aged in really appreciable, significant ways. there's an evergreen quality here that will never have an expiration date. the simple nature of its gameplay lends itself to this timeless quality. moreover, we're never going to reach a point in the medium where movement becomes something dated. movement will always be inherently part of any game with a world to explore and play in. katamari damacy may not have been planning for the future with its laser-focus on a game purely based around movement, but it is one that has aged better than anyone could've speculated. this is a perfect game in that sense, and it's one of the first things that i would nominate we encase in steel and eject into space to preserve it for future civilizations and species.
this is a deceptively simple game that focuses on doing one thing, and doing it superbly: movement. it is in its precise focus on movement that anyone can enjoy this game while still leaving a high skill ceiling and appropriate challenges to match. truthfully, i think this is a very, very easy game to sit down and beat. if you're just going for the minimum size requirements, even a bad player could swing that, give or take a handful of retries. meanwhile, for anyone who wants to really challenge themselves, the game has comet times, size thresholds, and collection aspects to tickle the brain. and while i think all three of those could use more transparency for the player in plainly stating what they're asking for, that simultaneously lends itself to this mystique that katamari damacy's aesthetic thrives on. i do want the raw numbers, but also, i kind of love that the king of all cosmos will just go "that's a 4/10" and belabor the point by saying he would've done it much better instead of telling you what size would satisfy him.
there's something to be said about what katamari damacy feels like to experience. clinically, i don't think i could name a game that utilizes sound design in a more synapse-stimulating way. this goes beyond the soundtrack, which is immaculate. rolling over objects is accompanied by this extremely memorable sound that i struggle to describe. it sounds like if you were to fire a rubber band at a giant plate of jello. it's minor, but considering all you are doing in the game is moving to collect things, making the act of collecting have an intrinsically pleasing sound is an elegant way to elevate it. and the moment-to-moment gameplay of scanning for both objects your size to get right then while also looking for objects bigger than you to hunt for later as goals is diabolically brilliant design. the player makes both conscious and unconscious decisions about what to preoccupy themselves with and what to work towards. the magic is that it's done instantly and often without the player even realizing how they're being conditioned. katamari damacy doesn't fatigue the player with analysis paralysis, because it immediately makes it apparent that you want to get shit, and you want to constantly be in the process of getting shit.
as for collecting itself, many objects will have sounds that play when you get them, adding to that feedback loop. you roll up an egg and boom, a little chickling briefly hatches and peeps a bit. you roll up a truck and you can bet you're gonna hear its horn. this even extends to people when you roll them up, and often the most fun part of any given level is when you get big enough to roll up random civilians and hear their associated voice lines when you get them. whether it's random teenage girls who give their all in screaming, old men who have no earthly idea what's going on and just moan a little in confusion, or the Towel Guy who makes this sound that easily puts him in contention for most lgbt character of all time. sometimes the fun of the game is not only seeing what you can roll up, but how it will react to you.
and while the game does have only 3 main areas, the structure of each level greatly varies. you could have one level in the house where you're just collecting random household objects like food and legos and then the next level in that same house you're suddenly swarmed with crabs to collect. something i appreciated on this replay was how dollhouse-esque this game's levels feel in their arrangement. they have this exactness to them where you can feel the dev team telling their little stories through object and people placement. it all feels so neatly arranged and deliberate, and it creates this reptilian brain response of wanting to destroy something delicate when you arrive on the scene. people lowball this game a lot and chalk up its appeal to being this silly and quirky game with not much to it, but i think that greatly does a disservice to the intentionality behind the design choices here. katamari damacy organically fosters a curiosity to its world in a way that appears effortless. all of this is done without dialogue or lore drops, just visual arrangement and responsivity to player actions. it's a masterclass.
it feels very surreal to say that this game turned 20 this year. i still vividly remember the toonami mini-review of this game when it was new. i don't want to make this about how i'm getting older, things are aging, and the like, because there's no real place for it here. i don't think katamari damacy has aged in really appreciable, significant ways. there's an evergreen quality here that will never have an expiration date. the simple nature of its gameplay lends itself to this timeless quality. moreover, we're never going to reach a point in the medium where movement becomes something dated. movement will always be inherently part of any game with a world to explore and play in. katamari damacy may not have been planning for the future with its laser-focus on a game purely based around movement, but it is one that has aged better than anyone could've speculated. this is a perfect game in that sense, and it's one of the first things that i would nominate we encase in steel and eject into space to preserve it for future civilizations and species.
Her: You better be the unused shoegaze song found in the files of the tokyo game show demo of katamari damacy if you think we fuckin.
Me asf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeUtp00v2u0
Me asf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeUtp00v2u0
boots up katamari
King of the Universe: ahh my stupid ass son. Get your gay ass on earth and roll shit up for 20 minutes. OK. I hate you
the best song ever produced for a video game starts to play
King of the Universe: ahh my stupid ass son. Get your gay ass on earth and roll shit up for 20 minutes. OK. I hate you
the best song ever produced for a video game starts to play
Is it weird to say this has my favorite gameplay ever along with We Love? Maybe the most creative and original game ever. When I heard the soundtrack I knew I was in for something special. Pure weirdness and love for the world and everything in it in game form
games simply do not get better than katamari damacy
Including the REROLL remaster, this game only has 12k ratings. That means there are at least 30k Backloggd users who haven't played this game, and yet we still take opinions on this site seriously. We need to step up our game as a community.
i'm starting to think that everything in life will be okay
Technically it's pretty much flawless however it's not about murdering dudes with a double barreled shotgun
Pure, unadulterated charm, hilarity, and fun. One of those games that justifies video games existing in the first place.
when you lose literally starts a Low Tier God's speech