The first time I smoked weed was the summer between 10th and 11th grade when I worked construction. I say I worked construction, but us high schoolers only hauled wheelbarrows full of wet concrete from one side of the site to the other for a few hours while LIUNA guys fit beams and bricks together around us.

Anyway, this one day at lunch, a couple of the older kids pulled out a joint. It slowly made its way around to me. It’s important for you to understand that I have never had a magical, affirming, or romantic experience with drugs that everyone always talks about; it’s always been ugly or uncomfortable for me. This joint burned the hell out of my throat, and the older kids laughed as I coughed hunks of lung out. As the weed pinched and swirled my brain into a spiral of bad feelings, I had an instant anxiety attack that my parents somehow saw me inhale and they’d kill me when they got home from work that night.

I looked up the chute of steel beams and scaffolding extending above me and felt like my life was another ledge to fall from.

I went home and loaded this game in my PS2. The King of All Cosmos told me what happened to all the stars: “We felt the beauty of all things, and felt love for all. That’s how it was. Did you see? We smiled a genuine smile. Did you see? The stars splintering in perfect beauty. So many there used to be, almost a nuisance. Now there’s nothing but darkness.”

After a few levels, my anxiety waned, and I was left floating in a sad, languid pool. I looked around my room and saw that this, too, was a stellar nursery, and all this shit surrounding me, the furniture and appliances and assorted ephemera I’d accumulated, would be compacted into bigger and bigger balls that might one day find their way to the fluted edges of this low-end galaxy.

I guess I was just another stoned kid blinking into the light of a half-formed realization that our small life ends, and the King of All Cosmos is aloof at best, and we are always collecting or building things under some hazy directive, even when we don’t know why or whether doing it does anything. Still, there is superfluous beauty and love for all. Did you see?

No conocía la existencia de Katamari, de hecho hasta pasó de lado cuando se anunció un port de We ♥ Katamari para la Switch en un Direct. La verdad es que ni se como me he enterado de la existencia de este juego pero... quise darle una oportunidad y me cago en la leche. Ya desde la pantalla de carga de la memory card me dio toda la buena vibra y jugarlo ha sido toda una experiencia. Desde su sentido del humor tan tonto a lo simple de aprender a jugar que es, la banda sonora... todo. Absolutamente todo me ha gustado de este juego.

Tal es así que hasta lo he comprado para PS2 nada mas terminarlo. Y mas pronto que tarde me veo comprando la versión de Steam también. Lo diré así:

JUE GA ZO!

If someone stopped me on the streets, begging me to give him the name of the gamest game, I might have to tell him Katamari. Why ?

Katamari takes on a simple concept, you roll a ball on objects and it gets progressively larger, leading to rolling bigger items etc... all while executing the idea perfectly, keeping it's simplicity while brilliantly playing around it. In a way it might also be the best take on the arcade genre.

It never felt so good to progress in a video game, and the final levels of the game are something that you'll only experience here.

Now let's talk about the Artistic Direction : Couldn't have been better, every object has its own unique charm, the levels are perfectly crafted and looks cute, and the soundtrack is one of the best things that happened to video game music having its own Frank Sinatra impersonator on one of the tracks.

Now mix all of that, and you have the best cocktail ever.
Katamari managed to encapsulate all of this into a single game, with the perfect amount of everything and with every single parts tied together, all while crafting all of its elements with the same amount of love.

And that's why Katamari is the gamest game, because it takes on a simple game idea, and do all that's possible to elevate it without altering its core concept.

Play it and you'll understand.