Katamari Damacy (2004)

I've been cooped up this weekend with covid booster bleh so I got Reroll and finished it. Y'all, can I be honest? Once the quirkiness wears off, (which it did for me about 15 years ago) it's just kind of a frustrating mess. Okay, it looks better. The camera is awful, the controls are awful, you still get improbably stuck a million times a level, stuff crashes and flies off of you way faster than you can seem to gather it. The great soundtrack stops being so great when you've repeated the same stage and four minute song for three hours.

I've just tried to unlock the first "eternal" stage and after twelve attempts, I can't do it. I get so close. I follow the same routes and try all the same stuff people do on YouTube, and I can't do it. I give up. This can go back in the museum. This was a creative, weird, fun time in 2004 but I guess I've come a long way since then.

Katamari is one of the greatest video game concepts in the history of video games. Both super enjoyable to play and ridiculously funny and bizarre as the idea. This couldn't be invented anywhere else but in Japan. It's absolutely phenomenal. The original Katamari Damacy started quite a long series of games and as much as they are basically all the same, if you're willing to try just one of them, Katamari Forever on PS3 is the definitive version in my opinion, but it's not easy or cheap to get though, so any other will do just fine to be honest.

One personal note. I thought it was accidental the last time I played a Katamari game, but apparently not: during the longer gaming sessions I start feeling very dizzy, so for me it's best to be played in 30-60 minutes portions.

Picked up this for the Switch. Pretty much the same Katamari as I remember from 20 years ago, which is fine. The core game loop is fun.

But the amount of text and dialogue you get from the King in the beginning is just ridiculous. The game definitely suffers from not being able to jump into it quickly. I just want to roll stuff up into a ball; I don't need a reason. Also when you fail a level you get like a full paragraph of text displayed slowly line by line on how bad you are. Bizarre.

Perfect gameplay. Perfect graphics art style. Perfect soundtrack. Perfect video game character.

(The King of All Cosmos, obviously.)

I played a good chunk of this game via a friend's PS2 back in the day, and it's been a delight to return to it on the Switch. (This is a game that should just always be available on all current-gen systems, every console generation.) Katamari Damacy is one of those rare games that I would recommend to anyone and everyone, regardless of their genre preferences. Katamari Damacy defies genre, defies all expectations of what a video game can be. Something that can be picked up and enjoyed by veterans and newcomers alike. For those that don't know, in this game you push around a ball (the "katamari") and roll it over stuff, all of which sticks to the katamari (so long as the items are not too big for it). Over time, your katamari will grow bigger and bigger, and thus be able to pick up larger items. It's arcade-style levels that are timed, your goal generally being to make a katamari larger than some specified size ("three meters," etc) before time's up. The way you roll the ball is unique, requiring two joysticks for tank-like controls (perhaps comparable to Cyber Troopers). Push both forward to go forward, both backward to go backward, one forward and one backward to turn/swivel left or right.

Everything about this game is joyful. A game that is truly and unabashedly goofy from start to finish, inside and out. There are a few quibbles I could throw out for this one, but they are mere peanuts that are crushed beneath the elephant-sized katamari of the game's ingenuity and uniqueness.