I Love Katamari

Dork mode...ON!

I ordinarily save this sort of thing for obscure Internet forums, but I feel a certain perverse need to contaminate any Katamari-pure souls that might still be floating about out there, all snowily ignorant. That is to say, I think everyone should know about, and buy, my new favourite game.

Brilliant news: I hear Minna Daisuki Katamari Damashii will be released in America towards the end of this year! That's right--the greatest videogame in the HISTORY of videogaming is about to have a SEQUEL! The US release will be called We Love Katamari.

It's true, too. I love Katamari. Before Katamari Damacy, I was mainly looking forward to Final Fantasy XII. Xenosaga II, Star Ocean III, Breath of Fire V, sure, I was interested, but it was the latest chapter in the Final Fantasy saga I was waiting for. Everything else was just feeding my gaming addiction until the main event. Then came Katamari Damacy. I didn't even have to buy it--a couple of folks suggested I should, but I thought it sounded stupid. Rolling a ball around, while rubbish sticks to it? What the eff? Who the hell would play such a game? Not me. Boo. Hiss.

I got it for my birthday anyway, so I figured I might as well give it a go. Why not? Can't beat a free game, even if it's not the best. I'd even play Fist of the North Star, if it was free. At any rate, Katamari Damacy ended up in my possession. Doesn't matter how, except inasmuch as I'm eternally grateful to my katamari benefactor. I booted it up, and--

--and I was rolling up mosquitoes! Thumbtacks! Pachinko balls! Sushi! New Year's cards! Butterflies! Rats! Rats! Rats! Rats pulling trays of takoyaki! I couldn't stop rolling stuff up. I wanted to roll up every single object in the entire game. I wanted to roll up the whole world. I started looking around my messy apartment, and imagining a great big katamari rolling over everything, sucking all the Coke cans and telephone bills and computer CDs into a giant, beautiful junkball. I'd see a line of shoes coming out of the closet, and a mental katamari would follow that line, making satisfying little poit! poit! poit! noises as it ate up every last shoe. And then it would be this HUGE katamari, knocking lamps off the ceiling, pots off the stove, pillows off the couch, blinds off the windows, windows out of their frames, and then it would roll off down the street, and up into the sky, and...

Katamari Damacy is about this little green guy, the Prince of All Cosmos. His dad's just been on a massive bender and knocked all the stars out of the sky:

"No.... It was indeed not a dream.

"We really did it. The King of All Cosmos has really done it.

"A sky full of stars....

"We broke it.

"...But just between you and Us,

"it felt quite good. [picture of a heart]

"Not that We can remember very clearly, but We were in all Nature's embrace.

"We felt the beauty of all things, and felt love for all.

"That's how it was."

Except now, everyone down on Earth is pissed off, so he's got to resparkle the night sky. How? Why, by sending the Prince to Earth to roll stuff up, of course. If the Prince rolls up enough junk, the King can fashion that junk into stars. If he rolls it up fast enough, they can be shooting stars. "Shooting stars like BOOOOM!", even. Don't worry about the story, though. It doesn't make any sense, anyway. Nobody cares about the story. The King of All Cosmos is a hoser, and his trousers outline his privates in an incredibly disturbing sort of way. The Prince probably accepts these junk-rolling missions just to get away from his father's egregiously intrusive package.

Unfortunately, he can only get away for a few minutes at a time. Big-Package-Bastard has a very limited attention span. After only a fleeting tenure on Earth, the Prince gets sucked back up by a flamboyant Royal Rainbow--or, if he should fail, he gets rained upon instead. And no matter what happens, he gets insulted. "We look forward to a nice katamari, loser Prince." "It was the first goal, but it's not terribly exciting, is it? Next time, We want a much bigger one.*" "Barf!" Man, there's no pleasing this wanker.

So you run off back to Earth again. Earth is a beautiful place. It's all blocky and brightly-coloured, with wonderful objects scattered all over it. There are chalk graffiti, rolled up in their entirety from the street; there are stiffly-starched underpants, various kinds of socks, several styles of shoes and slippers, rubber boots, ferris wheels, cows, rainbows, elephants, mammoths, and even Gojira. And while you're rolling all this stuff into your katamari, you get to listen to the most entertaining soundtrack in the history of videogames. Some of the songs remind me of TM Revolution. I used to love TM Revolution. I had the biggest crush on him a few years back. I even tried to go to one of his concerts, but I couldn't get tickets. I shouldn't have waited so long. I didn't know he was so popular.

Oops. Got off on a tangent there, didn't I? Anyhow, as I was saying, the music has that same quirky, upbeat quality that endeared TM Revolution to me in years gone by. It's so cheerful you can't listen to it and sulk, no matter what's going on around you. Once you pick up the lyrics, it's also hard to resist singing along. (Don't do this after midnight, though. Your neighbours may bang on the wall, even though their fucking dog yapped all day again, and they haven't a leg to stand on in the righteous-indignation-over-noise dpeartment. Cunts.)

Of particular note, on the audio front:

* Katamari Mambo: Oh, yeah. I could dance to this all night. Infectious beat; incomprehensible lyrics; pleasant, lilting tune--what more could one want?

* Que Sera Sera: No relation to the theme from Heathers. I'm not sure why they've even called it that. This song ought to win some sort of bizarre lyrics prize--here's a sample:

"I need you to feel me;
I wanna whirl (or possibly "wad") you up into my life.
Let's lump up to make a single star in the sky
To you, oh, to you!"

What does that mean? Is it a bad English translation of something? I'm confused, but charmed.

* Katamari On The Rock: I'm still confused--

"Don't-a worry, do your best!
Picnic kibun, feel so good! (Huh!)
Suteki na afternoon;
Furachi na midnight yeah!"

--but I also feel so good. Any time can be "suteki na afternoon**", when this song is playing.

* Cherry Blossom Colour Season: Hey, doesn't that sound like something I'd name one of my drawings? This one's sung by a chorus of sweet voices, possibly the voices of children. I hate children, but I love this song.

The entire soundtrack's worth a listen, though. Every last track.

When you're not down on Earth grooving to the Sounds of All Cosmos, you can visit your object collection. There are more than 1,000 possible objects to roll up, and every single one of them has its own picture, and an odd little description. It's like having a special fortune cookie for everything on earth. Take the common peach, for example. In the real world, it's a tasty fruit. Tasty, but a little messy. In Katamari-world, it's

"A butt-shaped fruit that is more tasty than butts."

(The rat, in case you were wondering, "eats a lot and moves very fast. Multiplies rapidly." Here in the Rat's Nest, we feel shortchanged. The mouse got a much better description, one with which we could identify much more readily: "Lives in the house, but doesn't think it is really part of the family.")

You can view your object collection according to object type, size, and area of discovery. Once you've rolled up a special camera object, you can also capture screenshots of your favourite game moments for posterity. Me, I like to take pictures of rats, and toilets. I had hoped, by dint of careful manoeuvering, and by knocking things off my katamari at just the right moment, to secure a shot of a rat in a toilet, but I have not yet proven successful.

For multiplayer enthusiasts, there's the Space Mushroom, where you can participate in a two-player challenge match against one of your weird-looking little cousins. I wish I could comment on this, but I only have one controller, so I can't. Apparently, though, you can even roll up your competitor's katamari, if you get big enough.

There's only one drawback to this game: it ends. It ends, and you're left rolling a sad, lonely ball of junk around an empty ocean. You've rolled up everything from mosquitoes to mountains, and there's just nothing left. Even the island most of the game took place on is now part of your katamari. You can roll around as much as you like, hoping to find just one more whirlpool, just one more cloud, but it's over. There's no more. You're left with a feeling of supreme emptiness--kind of like the King's pants might feel if a less-endowed mortal were to put them on. You can go back to the levels you've already cleared, try to find every object, increase your katamari size, decrease your time, but now you know. You can feel it there waiting for you, that ocean of emptiness. You know that at the end of your saved game, the world is gone, and there's nothing left to roll up. If only the Kataverse could be infinite! If only you could roll through unending space, whirling up planets and galaxies, the Starship Enterprise, Narn armies, blazing red giants...gods, even; Heaven, Hell--just MORE STUFF! MORE! MORE! MORE!

Except there isn't. And then you listen closely to the lyrics of those delightful songs, and find a sort of...Kafka-esque despair. Like in The Castle, but with clumps of souls. That's what it means, Katamari Damacy--"Clump of Souls". Like this:

(Eeee-oop! Eeee-oop! Eeee-oop! Bad translation warning!)

"I was getting away
But I was crushed anyway.
I pushed and pulled,
[a line I didn't quite catch]
I [broke?]; [something, something]
[something else]."

(From "The Moon and the Prince"--anyone who can correct my translation, which could be completely wrong, is invited to do so!)

I didn't quite understand it, but I thought I caught a certain sadness, there--a certain railing against the cosmic futility of it all. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood that night. One might disregard this section of the review. I got a little overexcited, right there. Messy, when that happens.

Anyway, there is going to be more, now! New levels! New stars! A new gameplay mode, where two players control a single katamari! Maybe I'll have to buy a second controller, just for that! Who cares about Final Fantasy XII, when We Love Katamari is coming?

Yeah, there'll be another great emptiness at the end, but for now, there's hope. Maybe the series will go on forever, much like Final Fantasy. Maybe there'll be an ultra-rendered version some day, when the PS3 comes out, or possibly the PS4: one with lush graphics to match the soundtrack. Maybe in ten years, I'll be slavering over the prospect of KDXII. Or maybe not. But I'll take what I can get. I love this game.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

The controls are so easy and intuitive that even I, a clumsy good-for-nothing when it comes to most action-based games, was able to master them very quickly. The scrolling is beautiful, smooth, a work of art. The level of challenge is just high enough to make it fun, without ever being so high as to make it frustrating. There are only two small problems:

1) Occasionally, your vision will be blocked by a large object, like a wall or a tree. You can end up bumping your katamari into stuff while you can't see, and losing things from it. This is annoying.

2) Objects are always in exactly the same locations. Complete randomness would be impossible to do--there does need to be some logic in the placement of objects--but a few different possible configurations for each level would've increased the challenge factor significantly, especially for us addicts.

GRAPHICS: 10/10

Ten out of ten? What? But this game isn't even CLOSE to other PS2 games on the graphical front! And what about those disturbing King-pants? What am I thinking? The realization is perfect for the concept--that's what I'm thinking. While a fully-rendered version, with ultra-realistic textures and gracefully-swaying trees and grasses, would also be cool, the current blocky rendering style works just fine. I have no complaints at all about these graphics.

MUSIC: 10/10

I enjoyed the Katamari Damacy soundtrack more than any of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, and that's including Final Fantasy VI. It was just so damn happy (well, if one avoids listening too closely). I adore this type of chirpy music. It makes my day.

STORY: n/a

Who cares! Ha, ha!

OVERALL: 11/10

Yeah, that's right. This game gets a bonus point, for reaching heights of gaming excellence I had hitherto never imagined. I love Katamari Damacy. I don't even care about Final Fantasy XII any more--if it's released on the same day as We Love Katamari, and I can only afford one, it'll be We Love Katamari, for sure. I wish Namco would release a little soundtrack preview, maybe just one track. Oh, man. Quarter 4 seems so far away. I want that sequel TODAY! I want the King to insult me some more. I want to collect Royal Presents, and try to decide which of the Prince's accessories makes him look most effeminate. (Is he really the Princess? It's hard to tell!) I want to see if the King gets a makeover, and if his willy is still on such frightening display.

If you have not played Katamari Damacy yet, I suggest that you do. It's not just a game. It's an experience. It will change your life. It will change the very way you look at the stars, and the world, and everything in it. Katamari Damacy is, today, as Asteroids was back in the day, or the original Final Fantasy. It's something so wonderful you can't believe nobody thought of it before. Hell, you can't believe you never thought of it yourself!

And, since no game review is complete without a not-so-subtle dig at Breath of Fire IV: Breath of Fire IV sucks!

* A much bigger katamari, you pervert!

** "[What a] wonderful afternoon!"