Hello fellow game enthusiasts, and welcome to this week’s edition of Game of the Week. This week I’ll be covering an oldie but a goodie, Katamari Damacy. In this tripped out, colorful world, you control a character known as the Prince, trying to collect huge amounts of stuff into giant balls with an object known as a Katamari. I didn’t read too much into the storyline, as I was having too much fun actually playing the game. While the characters were fun and memorable, it was the gameplay and casual fun-ness of it all that drew me in and kept me playing for hours and hours on end while trying to complete each level. Overall I would definitely recommend that you pick up this game if you want to have an extra casual, interesting game to play that will keep you entertained when your Diablo or Call of Duty gets stale.
The storyline of the original Katamari Damacy is rather simple. The King of the Cosmos, your father, is disappointed with your miniscule 5cm height and goes on a binge drinking spree, essentially destroying most of the universe. He challenges you with collecting enough material from Earth using your katamari to re-create the universe from scratch. That is essentially everything you need to know about the plot of Katamari Damacy, with a few steps missing here and there. The side story follows the Hoshino family, who’s father, an astronaut, is unable to go to the moon after the King wipes it out alongside everything else. That element has a good laugh at the end of it, with a tinge of light humor to keep things interesting and rather amusing.
The gameplay itself is incredibly unique and fun, despite being simple. By using the analog sticks of your controller, you can move the ball and turn it to go in different directions. Simple, yet satisfying. You pick up small objects at first, like paperclips and pennies and tiny tiny specks of dust, and eventually get your ball big enough to pick up items like cows and people. Eventually your katamari gets large enough for you to pick up houses and trees and other gigantic things scattered around the many environments of Earth. Additionally there is a co-op mode that allows two players to work together and control a single katamari. One player manages the left side while the other manages the right in a tag-team that usually ends up giving a few laughs when you can’t quite pick up that tiny speck that you need because your partner missed a beat. There is also a versus mode that allows two players to pit themselves against one another in a race to pick up the most amount of materials in the shortest amount of time.
Overall, Katamari Damacy and its sequels are all must-have games for those of you who enjoy platforming and puzzle games to some extent. While it may not seem like it at first, gauging how big the next object is and if you can pick it up are incredibly difficult to do when your katamari doesn’t like you. You may find that at some points your katamari will pick things up at a certain size in one level and not do it at the same size the next. Hopefully I’ve spurred you on to pick up this gem of a game, if not any of the games that came after it. If not, then I at least hope you manage to give it a try, as it truly is something to blow off steam and relax with when you’ve had a rough day. This has been your Game of the Week, thanks for reading!
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