NOTE:
Original hardware and various nightly builds of PCSX2 from 10-1-22 to 10-8-22 were used as the baseline of the experience.
Katamari Damacay is a game with a rather simple premise: roll up as much shit as possible to grow your ball like object to a certain size in a given time limit. It is through this simple game-play loop that Katamari portrays a brilliant satire of capitalist excess as the player is forced to optimize everything to the enth degree to please a never happy authority figure that berates you regardless of how well you do. The "flow state" of 100%ing Katamari (an all comets run) almost feels like a fun version of the daily grind as you chip away at tasks repeatedly until you optimize your route down to the moment you make a sharp turn at a certain size. This flow state is further aided by sound design that does a great job of signaling concepts to the player in a few seconds. How do you know you got the object you are trying to pick up without checking the corner of the screen and risking a mistake? Listen for a sound effect related to the object like the boing of a ball or a girl screaming. Combing this with a relaxing happy go lucky J-POP soundtrack, sharp dialogue, and some surrealist low poly visuals makes for a very memorable experience. For as much as I enjoyed my experience with Katamari Damacay I do want to warn newbies of some first installment syndrome. Sometimes it can be hard to intuit when you can pick something up, pass through a tight corridor or can scale a wall and that can unfairly knock you out of the flow state of the game. That being said, if you own a PS2, Switch, or PS3* this is a must play. Very few "arcadey" score attack style games manage to have this level of moment to moment satisfaction from the learning curve and even fewer manage to have a deeper point while doing so.
Goes by the title "Katamari Damacay Reroll" on Nintendo Switch
*Katamari Damacay was released as a PS2 Classic on the PlayStation Store. Be weary this option might no longer be an option if you are reading this years later.
Original hardware and various nightly builds of PCSX2 from 10-1-22 to 10-8-22 were used as the baseline of the experience.
Katamari Damacay is a game with a rather simple premise: roll up as much shit as possible to grow your ball like object to a certain size in a given time limit. It is through this simple game-play loop that Katamari portrays a brilliant satire of capitalist excess as the player is forced to optimize everything to the enth degree to please a never happy authority figure that berates you regardless of how well you do. The "flow state" of 100%ing Katamari (an all comets run) almost feels like a fun version of the daily grind as you chip away at tasks repeatedly until you optimize your route down to the moment you make a sharp turn at a certain size. This flow state is further aided by sound design that does a great job of signaling concepts to the player in a few seconds. How do you know you got the object you are trying to pick up without checking the corner of the screen and risking a mistake? Listen for a sound effect related to the object like the boing of a ball or a girl screaming. Combing this with a relaxing happy go lucky J-POP soundtrack, sharp dialogue, and some surrealist low poly visuals makes for a very memorable experience. For as much as I enjoyed my experience with Katamari Damacay I do want to warn newbies of some first installment syndrome. Sometimes it can be hard to intuit when you can pick something up, pass through a tight corridor or can scale a wall and that can unfairly knock you out of the flow state of the game. That being said, if you own a PS2, Switch, or PS3* this is a must play. Very few "arcadey" score attack style games manage to have this level of moment to moment satisfaction from the learning curve and even fewer manage to have a deeper point while doing so.
Goes by the title "Katamari Damacay Reroll" on Nintendo Switch
*Katamari Damacay was released as a PS2 Classic on the PlayStation Store. Be weary this option might no longer be an option if you are reading this years later.