Reviews// Katamari Damacy

But for the full totally insane and incomprehensible effect, we’ve attempted to decipher the storyline. It’s not an easy task, and has taken the assistance of several highly qualified psycho-analysts, but during therapy, something along these lines came out...

The apparently unmarried King of the Cosmos, beneath his 'super gorgeous' crown and fetching moustache, wants to go around earth collecting lots of lovely things which he uses to turn into lovely stars to make the sky look less 'airy'. “Isn’t the sky supposed to be airy?” We hear you cry. Well, yes, but after a ‘crazy’ night out, the King managed to lose all the stars, and obviously, they need to be replaced. So he 'believes' in a little 'Damacy'. This is the character you control, and although he purports to be Prince of the Cosmos, he doesn't look much like the King and, of course, because the King is almost certainly gay, the Prince actually seems to be little more than a figment of his extremely highness' imagination. Anyway, whoever or whatever on earth it is, this green thing rolls around a 'Katamari' ball which all objects have magnetic-like attraction to, but, and here's the rub: he can only believe in this damacy for about ten minutes at a time, hence the game’s time-limits. We won’t insult the intelligence of our readership by pretending that any of this requires any further explanation.

Intertwined with the sensible main premise is a parallel storyline portraying the life of quite a special Japanese family, which unfurls with various cut-scenes between levels. The father is an astronaut, and the children have magicool powers. The little girl can feel the power of the cosmos in her backpack, and the little boy can actually see The King of the Cosmos in the sky. And of course, you know where this is heading. It's the same old story, time and time again [sigh]... girl feels cosmos... boy sees King... King loses stars... father goes to space... Damacy rolls Katamari… King make stars… sky looks lovely... father sees lovely sky… you win game etc. It’s all totally obvious and predictable isn’t it?

So, If you could have a go on this, which you can't, you'd be immediately seduced not just by the sheer zaniness and originality but also by the instantaneous accessibility of the whole thing. Even though you'd never really be able to understand anything about the spectacularly surreal storyline, replete with totally insane translations that preserve every minutia of madness, the gameplay is entirely instinctive. The only controls you need are the two analogue controls, the left which represents your left arm, and the right, the right. It’s beautifully simple and works without flaw. You're just rolling a sticky ball over increasingly large objects, as the clump of random things grows in girth, it can pick up heavier objects until you're eventually just left with an enormous big thing that's made mostly of small things. And then you level-up and go on to a slighter bigger world, full of things, that you have to wander around, gathering more things with the big thing of things. It’s a bit like a 3D Tetris, only totally different. Got it? Good.