Katamari Damacy

“Almost too elegant a roll. Fab, the prince is fabulous,” so declares the King of All Cosmos as the prince rolls the katamari around a field created just for the purpose of learning the skill.

Once there was a sky full of stars, and then the King of All Cosmos broke it. The people were furious, and not even the king was spared their wrath. Thus it befalls the prince to bring back the stars. How?

Well, that is the task that permeates Katamari Damacy, a PlayStation 2 title from Namco slated for release in mid-September.

GameZone received a preview build of the title and undertook the task. The goal of the game is rather simple – you roll the katamari about, and with its sticky surface it collects most of what it rolls over. Create a large enough ball and the king will end the task and send the ball up into the sky as a star named for whatever you collected the most of.

For example, in the tutorial, more jelly bean-type things were collected than anything else, and when the katamari (which is Japanese for clump or large mass) was 10 centimeters in size, the king intervened and took the katamari and sent it up into the sky.

To say this is an unusual or unique game is a bit of an understatement. The best way to characterize the set-up/cutscene graphics is to bring back images from media such as The Beatles’ movie, Yellow Submarine, or perhaps the Monty Python ‘cartoons’ that have gone perky while combining familiar with unfamiliar for a look that is … well, different. The action features some sort of bizarre oblong-headed prince creature rolling a bubble-surfaced ball about, collecting things.

The missions can be timed, and the goal is to make bigger and bigger katamaris.

While the graphical elements are strange, the audio is borderline irritating. The conversations, at least in this preview build, were scratchy-squeaky sounds, and the music was redundant and sounded a bit like a cross between toddler music and elevator music.

The game might be viewed as a young child’s game, but some of the language is geared for older players and the action does get more intense and more involved as you progress.

The control elements are rather simple and allow you to change directions, hurry up the katamari, jump over it and even jump up for a look around to see where the most refuse may be in order to steer your katamari in that direction. The controls for moving the katamari rely in the left and right thumbsticks, with the left and right trigger buttons controlling the look and jump abilities.

The setup home screen is not that well done, compared to the king scenes, and the worlds are rather strangely rendered. However the game does offer some nice little adjuncts to the game play. One of the first stops on Earth may be Thailand. The king will tell you a little bit about Thailand, such as Muay Thai is the fighting style the nation is known for. What that has to do with the game is a mystery.

While this game does rely on a bit of intelligence to chart a course through hazards while rolling your katamari over as much as possible, the overall game is a big reflexive in nature. While it certainly won’t appeal to everyone, the game does have some challenge as well as a unique flavor.