This game is really really Japanese. The game starts off with what someone might consider being an acid trip, you've got rainbows, flowers all over the place, dancing pandas juggling weed, a huge ass king of the universe in tights playing a guitar while his son dances doing the oogly boogly (something I made up), and once again: shrooms. It's just fucking crazy. And I love it to death.
This game is hilarious. Along with the intro you've got crazy dialouge too (thanks in part by the king of the universe), and after each stage you complete a short movie with some family pops up (it's a story that is kinda episodic and has to do with the kids freaking out because all the stars have disappeared and the idiot mom doesn't believe them lol it's hilarious). The game is just pure...fun and happiness! As ign said, it's happiness in a box.
Storywise, this isn't it's strong point but it's fun to know about and stuff. The premise of the story is that King of the Universe (or Galaxy..whatev) - your father, fucks up the whole entire galaxy one night by "accident" (some mags suggest the dude just got seriously wasted). This is where you come in, your idiot father forces you to go down to Earth and gather objects and such to create new stars and constellations using an object that makes things stick to it, the Katamari.
Okay, here's the big thing that draws you to Katamari besides the humor and the crazy story...and the amazing music: gameplay. It is quite hard to explain, and it's something you have to see to believe. For one thing, at the beginning of each stage you have a small ass katamari (the ball that the prince uses to stick shit to it), with this small Katamari you can only pick up small things ranging from shogi pieces to tacs. As the katamari increases in size (measured by the katamari-meter as I call it on the far left in cintameters and meters) you can pick up objects you couldn't before. For instance, as you start off you might want to pick up a bird who's just standing there minding his own business; Unfortunately, at this point in time you can't pick him up because your katamari is too small, but if you make the ball get bigger and get to atleast 10 CM, then you should be able to pick up the bird (chirping noises and twitching included). Every object is like this. You can't get to certain patrs of the stage unless the katamari is a certian size and you can't pick up certain objects the same way. But with all this, in each stage you have a time limit and also a size quota you must meet to beat the stage. This may sound boring but let me tell you it is far from it, it's really exciting and just plain badass being able to start from a tiny itsty bitsty katamari to a gigantic 1 Meter Katamari in just 10 minutes, at first you can only pick up shogi pieces but then by the time it's 70 CM you can pick up cats and dogs and they're all screaming and barking and just...STUCK to the katamari, this game can bring the most sadistic out of the most peaceful person. It's jsut plain fun.
Lots of people seem to be complaining about the length, heh, whatever. I have had the chance to play 3 sessions today (each one hour long) after studying and doing errands. And I have only made 4 stars and one constellation. Yes, the story part of the game may seem short, but all in all, there lots and lots of things to do. Some stage's have presents for the prince that are really REALLY hard to find. All stages have 100% features, and this means, picking up EVERY SINGLE THING ON THE STAGE IN THE TIME LIMIT. There are lots of things to do. I'm not even out of the house and I've played 3 hours, and I'm not even close to even being done with the ones I've done already. I estimate that if you try to do everything in this game it will take atleast 15-20 hours. Pretty good for a game that costed 20 bucks brand new, huh?
It's a really really good yet simplistic game. And simplisitic does not mean bad, but in this case you raelly don't give a shit because the whole premise is original. Perhaps the most original game I've played since GTAIII.
This game is excellent, certainly worth the 20 buck price tag. And for those of you suckers who even think of walking into a store and buying it off the shelf at EB or gamestop...good luck. By the time X-mas starts, I'm pretty sure this game will be pretty rare and be selling over half it's price tag on ebay. I predict this.
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120? LET'S GO!
