Reviewed by: Belshy
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

When was the last time you played something truly original? Something where you couldn't draw comparison between it and all the other games populating the shelves of your game's cupboard or even local software emporium? For me the answer would have to be 'When I played Katamari Damacy.' Before that....well I honestly can't remember.

We've had a staff discussion on the Deadalfs about the way we review our games being somewhat dry and technically obsessed. I raise my hand and admit to that sin on the odd occasion. Well let this review be the first in a long line that hopefully veers away from that slightly. And it won't be hard to do either, because Katamari Damacy is not a game of technical wizardy at all, but rather a game driven totally by its simple joyous gameplay concept which I will now try and describe to you.

You are a diminutive Prince, a pint-sized son of a deity. This deity has, on one drunken celestial bender, knocked all of the stars out of the sky. This has thrown the universe into an uproar and the King of the Cosmos (the diety, the Lord of All Creation) into a tizzy. It is your job, as the cute rather runty little under achieving heir to the Cosmos to roll your Katamari (a kind of nobbly celestial magnetic orb) around whatever location you've been sent to, and to pick up surrounding debris/ objects until the ball reaches a specified size. It is only then that you are called back to the Heavens via a cosmic rainbow, and your collection of objects is either mocked/ praised before being levitated into the firmament, as a replacement star/ constellation...or as a paltry amount of stardust if a bit underwhelming.

Is that making any sense to anyone? It really is a game that has to be played to be truly understood!

If I may be allowed to get a little techy here....What makes this game so instantly likeable is that there aren't any combos to memorise, or any gamepad gymnastics to master. You use your two analogue sticks like the controls of a tank. Both forward for forwards, both back for backwards, left for left, etc...One forward one back for the Prince to scoot around the static ball one way, and the opposite lock to go the other way around. Press both sticks down into the pad and you do a swift 180. L1 is jump, R1 = look. And that's it. Five minutes after the tutorial you are making your first 10cm ball of cosmic debris in someone's bedroom.

The King of the Cosmos's son is truly pint-sized. Only about 1cm in height. So at first you're dwarfed by batteries and pencil erasers, only able to pick up drawing pins and paper clips. Soon though your Katamari has perhaps nearly doubled in size, and you've picked up a battery, a cotton reel...oops, you snagged a pencil! Now your Katamari is lurching all over the screen like a man with a wooden leg that's far too long for his gait. And it's getting a bit tricky to roll your Katamari back up the ramp (comprised of a book or stack of playing cards) to get back up onto the table top to pick up the objects that were once too big but are now food for your Katamari. But when you get up there, with a bit of deft manouvering, or perhaps by smoothing out the roundness of the Katamari (with another pencil or something of a similar size) before attempting the upwards journey, you notice how the sense of scale has changed. the camera has pulled back a tad from you and your Katamari. Now you can see people (still giants to you) blurred in the distance of the house, going about their business. The once unrecognisable landscape of rubbers, batteries, books, mice and bottles has suddenly taken on the clarity of a room full of even bigger objects awaiting Katamari-isation.

With each significant transition in size there is a pleasing blurring effect, and the King of the Cosmos's head pops briefly on the screen announcing (in his hilarious 'Elizabethan Dr Seuss Street Jive' patois) that you've now reached 5cms or whatever milestone it may be. The satisfaction that this brings grows exponentially like the Katamari will soon after. Now you can return to the carpet level, and recklessly bounce around sucking up the mice (organic living objects repulse the Katamari, and make life difficult...until you upsize sufficiently) that were previously making your life a misery. The reward of suddenly racing towards the optimum size while simultaneously rolling up the critters/ people that were earlier thwarting your efforts is indescribable. Surely as big a high as defeating a fearsome boss or solving a vexing puzzle in any other game.

Now take this gameplay dynamic and move it out of the house and into the street. Now you've got 8 minutes to build a 1 meter Katamari, so you've got to start picking up bananas, buckets, fish, rubber rings, moving onto Sun Flowers, penguins, people (if you manage to knock them over first), mopeds, cars, cows, lamp posts, elephants, kiosks, shops, yachts, whales, skyscrapers. This is where this game will take you, in its madcap tale of cosmic vandalism and interstellar restoration.

All this madness is embellished with the most endearingly simple graphical style. Everything is blocky, solid, in primary colours, and depicts the most hilarious cartoon version of its real life counterpart. The almost robotic animation (think 'Money For Nothing' by Dire Straits...the video) combined with the daft sound effects of a surprised cat or indignantly mooing cow, a hysterically laughing child or screaming adult make barrelling around this world an absolute (sometimes guilty) pleasure. The King's bizzare turn of phrase, alternating between hip and quaint and always laced with an unhealthy dose of irony will keep you chuckling throughout. When you've performed badly he will lay into you, making you feel smaller than your already pin-like stature. But he will shower you with hilariously over-the-top warm adulation when you've made a Katamari to be proud of. The King himself looks like something Terry Gilliam might have drawn in Monty Python's halcyon days, and is one of the freshest characters to have come out of a video game in years.

The whole lunatic premise is set to some of the catchiest and most original gaming music I've ever clapped ears on. From the endearingly amateurish hummed version of the main theme in the opening loading screen, to the fully fledged version of the same tune, fully orchestrated and pumping from your speakers. Each geographical region has its own weird little ditty puncuating the madness. I'm singing the main theme in my head as I type!

This is a budget game in so far as its half the RRP of most full games. Admittedly it is a trifle short for the first time of playing. Six hours or so, and you've done it. But would you have achieved full Swan Katamari-isation for the constellation of Cygnus, or full Fish Katamari-isation (my own word) for Pisces? I doubt it. Then there's the split screen head to head version of the game for 2 players. A gameplay style I've yet to enjoy, but it's only a matter of time. Unlike anything else I've played, Katamari Damacy has had Jenny looking up from her books cheering me on, and (gasp) she even had a brief go! DNM will confirm that this is in itself a minor miracle! The only other downer to this game that I can think of is the occasional bit of camera jiggery pokery that usually happens when your Katamari gets too big for its boots...or surrounding area! You'll briefly disappear under a clump of trees or behind a wall. But this is a rare thing, and hardly ever spoils your progress.

It's a shame that this game is US/ JPN import only for the time being. This is a game that everyone should at least have a chance to sample, because games of this originality don't come around very often in this world of revolutionary fps gaming engines and million dollar sequel driven franchises. If you're sporting an import/ modded machine and if you're willing to forget about such testosterone pursuits as wielding guns and swords to slay various factions in whatever brooding vision of past/ future such violence is set, you're in for the most unique of gaming experiences. Ever!

Presentation	9
The most simplistically silly underachieving graphics ever on PS2, or some of the finest most original conceptual design ever to grace a video game, depending on your stance.
Gameplay	10
Like Tetris (though it's nothing like Tetris) it's all hideously addictive joyous gameplay. And you've never played the like either.
Value	8
You'll come back to it often to up the completion rate, and it has multiplayer for 2 players..but it's a short single player game first time 'round.
Benchmark	9
It's one of a kind. That being said, there really should be more games like this. Many more.
Score	9
Funny, surreal, original, a breath of fresh air. It's innocent, knowingly ironic, liberating, silly beyond belief and yet surprisingly deep. You must play this!