Katamari Damacy

1. Katamari Damacy By Kenneth Chung

2. Katamari Damacy? • A third-person puzzle-action game for the PS2

3. Where did this thing come from? • Katamari Damacy was published and developed by Namco • It was released March 18, 2004 in Japan and September 22, 2004 in North America • The lead designer is Keita Takahashi and the composer is Yu Miyake

4. How do I run this thing? • Pay $50 for the Katamari Damacy box in 2004 • Open the Katamari Damacy box • Check if there is a disk labeled Katamari Damacy in the box • Turn on PS2 • Insert disk into PS2 • Other excessive actions

5. Story Overview • The King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys the stars and other space junk after a drunken night and tasks his tiny 5cm son, the Prince, to rebuild the obliterated celestial bodies • In order to create the celestial bodies, the Prince must roll a ball (the Katamari) around the Earth accumulating matter to be converted into stars

6. What do I do here? • The player controls the 5cm Prince who rolls the spherical Katamari using the two analog sticks on the PS2 controller, similar to RC controls • Begin picking up tiny objects like mahjong pieces and erasers then gradually move on to rolling up entire continents as the Katamari size increases • The game is split into several levels of differing environments and objectives. The most common objective is to increase the Katamari to a certain size before the time limit is up. There are also levels with unique objectives such as rolling up the largest cow possible or trying to accumulate as many twins as possible

7. Everything Looks Beautiful • The game starts out in a household environment with seemingly random object spread out across the room. Being 5cm’s, tables are towering building and mice are mean jerks. Gradually the Katamari grows in size until finally, sweet mice e-raticating vengeance is yours. Then you get too big to fit in the house and move onto the backyard. • Once out of the home environment, the Prince moves onto the suburban neighborhood environment eventually being big enough to pick up screaming, rapidly flagellating human beings • After consuming all he can in the neighborhood, the Prince moves onto the open world and can travel to neighboring urban cities or the rural countryside • Eventually when the Prince reaches Godzilla size, he can travel across the oceans, obliterating entire cities, Godzilla himself, clouds, and a few Shinto gods. At the end, he is able to pick up the countries of the world while the credits roll <-pun.

8. Everything Sounds Beautiful • One of the most memorable attributes of the game is the amazing soundtrack. The main theme of “Na naaaa nanana nana na na na na na nana na dun duga dun dun dugaduga dun dun” is something that will be haunting the player for weeks. • From jazz to scat (the music) to nonsense, it really makes no difference if you cannot understand the English, the Japanese, or the undecipherable Japanese-accented English. The tracks meld perfectly with the psychotic environment and the screams of the objects you pick up.

9. Everything Sounds Beautiful (Cont.) • When the Prince picks up an object, it makes its own unique noise. For instance picking up a “Calico Cat” would make a “meow” sound while picking up “Busy Momma” would produce the sound of a woman screaming. • The individual sounds each object makes when the Prince picks them up is intensely gratifying. It feels so good.

10. Review – The Good • The gameplay is absolutely brilliant. Commonly referred to as “crack”, Katamari Damacy completely consumes the players. Similar to RPG’s which use a progressively more enticing “dangling carrot” of character enhancement to death grip the player’s attention, Katamari Damacy also uses the allure of the “dangling carrot”. Except they juiced the carrot and are feeding the sweet nectar intravenously into the player’s veins. Because every object of the thousands of objects the Prince picks up increases the size and shape of the Katamari, power is gained in an extremely constant and fluid manner. • As previously detailed, the music and sound is masterfully done and melds perfectly with the peculiar gameplay. • While the graphics are outdated in this era of gaming, the designers really took advantage of the blockiness of the PS2 and made it incredibly charming. Life gave the designers lemons so they made them into cubes. Not even bothering with any kind of realistic interpretation of animals and objects, the artists achieved whimsy through simplicity. • With hundreds of objects to collect in the game, the replayability of Katamari Damacy is decent. A list of every object collected along with its description, its rotatable graphic, and the sound it makes when it is picked up is unlocked in the “Collections” menu. Achieving certain unwritten objectives also unlocks comets that can be shot off when looking at the night sky. Rolling up presents unlock different items the Prince can carry or wear like a guitar or a duck dress (a la Bjork). Rolling up the Prince’s cousins unlocks them for usage in the two player head-to-head game.

11. Review – The Bad • The two player head-to-head game is more of a mediocre afterthought rather than a major component of the game. The players are locked into a small room with an assortment of objects and the player that ends up the largest wins. The bigger player can knock the smaller player around more easily. If the size discrepancy is large enough, the bigger player can roll the smaller one into his Katamari for a duration. • There are many design problem with the two player game. Unlike the one player game, the setting is just a small undetailed circular room. Environment plays such a major role in the one player game that without the feel of explorational discovery, the game lacks the grounding connection to real life. • Similarly, when the Katamari gets to country collecting size, the game quickly loses the submersive quality of being in a familiar environment which is present in the previous environments like the house or the neighborhood. Rolling up a house is imaginable, but rolling up an entire country just becomes too intangible. • The story is barely existent. It’s not a game that will make the player feel much if anything for anyone involved in the plotline. While the music can generate an emotional response, little else in the game has as much emotional depth. Katamari Damacy is a light whimsical game so if the player is looking for a heavy, emotional, plot-driven game, they need to lighten up and find another game.

12. Copycats • The very core of Katamari Damacy’s gameplay is similar to traditional RPG’s. In a traditional RPG, characters grow in power as they accomplish certain tasks which in turn allows them to accomplish progressively more difficult tasks. Katamari Damacy compresses this system by making the tasks quick, simple, and plentiful with instant rewards. • Katamari Damacy was the first in a long line of copycats • The microscopic stage in the PC game Spore by Maxis, similar to the Flash game flOw, used the same formula of: Consume stuff -> Grow -> Consume bigger stuff • This spawned all kinds copycat online Flash games usually involving cannibalistic fish. • The closest clone of Katamari Damacy is a Steam game called The Wonderful End of the World, which was decent but was not nearly as charming, expansive, or complex as Katamari Damacy. • The quality of these games compared to Katamari Damacy is of course much worse.

13. Demographics • The target demographics for Katamari Damacy is the practically the entire spectrum of gamers. • The gameplay and controls are extremely simplistic. The only controls used in the course of the game are the two analog control sticks. All the player needs is two limbs or stubs or flaps of skin to maneuver the Katamari. All you need to know about the gameplay is to roll over stuff. This makes the game accessible to hardcore, casual, and even non-gamers of all ages. Infants could be placed on the analog sticks and their erratic movements would progress the game. • The difficulty is almost entirely dependent on the player’s knowledge of the object placement in each level. No matter how apt at RC controls a player is, without knowledge of an efficient growth/time path, the game becomes more luck-based than skill-based. But through trial and error, discovery of an efficient path lessens the difficulty of the game significantly. Still, there are many more objects than the player can possibly collect in each level within the time constraint so extremely hardcore players can appreciate the futility of trying to collect everything in each level. • There are very few elements in the game that parents could find objectionable for their children. A hardcore teetotaling family may find the short statement about the drunken King of all Cosmos in the beginning offensive. There are also topless block men in the game. If a parent is concerned about their children’s world obliterating tendencies, they may also want to avoid this game.

14. Conclusion • The strengths of Katamari Damacy are it’s accessibility, the constant power increase, immersion into a familiar environment, ageless, whimsical graphics, catchy music, gratifying sound effects, and a large capacity for exploration. • The weaknesses are the two player game, weak plotline, and may be too ridiculous for hard-nosed businessmen. • Katamari Damacy is definitely worth the purchase and is a must for everyone.