Katamari Damashii
Now playing: Katamari Damashii by Namco
Currently only available in Japan for PS2.
Objective: Roll up everything you can into one great big ball. Sounds lame, but it's utterly addictive and immensely satisfying.
On one of the final levels I started with a ball radius of 50cm and ended up with a radius of more than 826 metres! To begin a level rolling over and collecting fruit and homewares and steadily grow to the point where you're tearing out skyscrapers and picking up cruise-liners is just awesome. At the end of the level, I had wiped the whole planet clean. Everything in every city and in the ocean and all the landmasses and every cloud in the sky rolled up into my one clump from hell. Now that's quality original gameplay.
This game concept was conceived by a student at Namco's Game School. Realizing its potential, Namco hired the student and assigned eleven other staff to develop it into a commercial release. The satisfaction of building an ever growing clump of stuff is so much greater than you would imagine. It's pure gaming genius. Couple that with great visual style, a superbly wacky soundtrack and one of the most tripped-out zany japanese intro sequences I've ever seen and you have an instant classic.
Don't hold your breath for a western-world release.
10/10
2 Comments:
I've experienced that satisfaction of making a large snowball, rolling it down the hill and watching as it becomes so big you can't physically move it anymore. But rolling over whole planets, now that's a concept!
A concept apparently worthy of a sequel! Namco have officially announced development on Katamari Damacy Oni, the follow-up to KD. It's hard to imagine how they could possibly take the concept any further (roll up the whole universe?), though they have confirmed the sequel will support online multiplayer. Seems that the first Katamari Damashii (or 'Katamari Damacy' depending on your particular brand of westernization) sold over 100,000 copies in Japan! Not bad for a school project.
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