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| Item No |
SCAJ-20079 |
| Publisher |
Namco |
| Platform |
Playstation 2 |
| Category |
Japanese Software |
| Status |
Sold Out |
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To redeem his father's transgressions against the stars in the heavens, Oji-sama (Prince) has to roll. By rolling a lot of objects into a big bumpy blob, perhaps the stars will be replenished. Oji starts small with a nucleus of material which emits magical magnetic power and little objects such as saws, bottles, and boxes are soon attracted to the mass and add to its growing morass. In the early going, larger objects prove to be obstacles rather than fodder for the rolling but once Oji's ball grows a little larger, bigger items become fair game for girth seeking gamers. Once enough garbage, material, folk and anything else that might be in the way are snatched up, entire buildings become mere pickup sticks for Oji and his miraculous mass of matter. Control of the "ball" is mastered through the Dual Shock thumb sticks and maneuverability gets tougher as the mass grows ever larger. The game is a light-hearted and highly enjoyable romp but the sight of citizens adhering to a mass of mass construction may be offsetting to tender hearted gamers. The hapless souls who become stuck to the ball shiver, twitch and shake like little trapped insects. Ever see a fly whose wings have become helplessly glued to a spider's web? Those little legs flail and stammer as the fly ponders it's fate - not knowing that a predator will soon cocoon it for tomorrow's breakfast. That's what the human attachments are reminiscent of...sans the spider. Katamari Damacy probably won't sell any appreciable numbers but kudos should be given to Namco for testing an offbeat premise which may well become our sleeper of the year. View the back cover.
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| Total Number of Reviews: 1 |
| DC ARENA (1): KATAMARI DAMARCY |
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| Japanese PlayStation2 - lots of reasons to get one, but I love the machine because of the unusual games you get on the Platform - Fantavision with its twisted FMV, Dog of Bay, Kuri Kuri Mix to name a few.
Katamari Damacy is Namco's lastest release on PS2, and its certanly a departure from their recent schedule..
In this, er, you play as a green little L-shaped headed dude, who - for some typical Japanese reason - is in charge of controlling what begins as a ball through various levels. A big god type, er, dude, tells you about the level before hand (in Kanji, no less), and you begin a level.
As I said, you start by controlling a ball, and with the ball you have to roll over various objects on the ground, such as matchsticks, or chess pieces, or toy monkeys and spiders. You are given a couple of minutes to play in a level, and in that time, you have to have reached the required size. First of all you have to measure 10cm (I presume in diameter).
Now you can't just go and roll over a toy monkey with a drum to start off with, you have to start on the small stuff. So you gradually pick up bigger and bigger stuff. As you do this, the shape, size, and physics of the ball changes. For example, when you pick of a large stick of chewing gum or a large yellow spider-crab-thing, it doesn't make a smooth sphere any more, so your ball is not rolling smoothly.. Very cool. Some bits of each level aren't reachable either until you have grown in size so you can tackle curbs and ledges etc.
Control is like a tank. Its analog only, and to go forward you push both the L+R sticks forward, to turn you can either let L centre and keeping pushing R forward, or push L backwards fuly, and R forwards fully. You get the idea. You also have a like a turbo charge up feature, so you can roll through an area and grab loads of stuff. Its great fun, and after 20 mins or so the controls feel really great, and you are zipping around the level.
Graphics are nice and simple 3D, with bright colours and pretty basic textures, but the levels are large and there is loads going on - it looks very nice and the style is great.
Music - someone said its better than Mr Driller Drill Drill Land on GC and I'd have to agree - its very very cool indeed, and just makes you smile and get IN with the game - its awesome.
The game is very Japanese in style and weirdness, and I love it for it.. Proper game IMO, and its great to play and just very enjoayble so far. Levels are nice and varied, it has a 2 player split screen mode, and its nice and different. Good work, Namco.
Importability - I don't know any Kanji. I know VERY basic Katakana (like loading, saving, yes, no) and I have not come across any problems, but obviously the story is a mystery.. Not that it matters.
Oh and the cutscenes - you thought Japanese Fantavisions were weird? You're in for a treat here! More to come later.. |
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