The mid 00's saw a slew of experimental games trying something new and exciting with the medium. You probably see where this is going. I can go into detail about the games like Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Killer7, etc., but you know what game I'm going to talk about.
Katamari Damacy was a whole new brand of weird, even for the times. Releasing in 2004 on the Playstation 2, the game made you the Prince of All Cosmos, and your job was to roll up all the shit you could on earth into a ball that could be turned into a star. Your father, the King of All Cosmos, drunkenly lost the stars one night and it is your job to pick up the pieces while he sardonically judges you for not living up to his expectations. You use a little ball device called a katamari to roll junk up, starting small with tacks, batteries, and the like before getting into skyscrapers, islands, and whole continents.
Controls are weird and awkward, which only adds to the mayhem and fun. You use both analog sticks in order to move. Lean them both left to turn left, right to turn right, one up and one down to turn around, etc. They make sense, with each stick in place of one of your tiny arms, while also allowing for you to awkwardly bump into things, get stuck, and generally add to the chaos on screen. Your katamari can only grab things roughly the same size, meaning if you ran into something bigger than you (or it ran into you), a couple items will become detached from your katamari and you'd be sent flying across the level. Most levels have you starting out small, in a living room or garden or some such smaller place, only by the end of the level to have you rolling up the neighborhood, taking out people and traffic lights. There is a sincere cathartic pleasure coming back to the start of a level and being able to roll up its surround gates or fences that gave you trouble earlier, or, in later levels, noticing the entire house you started in jutting from the surface of your katamari like a pimple.
Your general goal is to reach the set size by the allotted time. The game is often very generous about its time restraints, allowing replayability in just how large you can get your katamari. It does make the game a bit easy, however. There are special stages, such as when you make particular constellations and they give you an objective like "roll up as many swans as possible" or "roll up the largest bear you can find". These are much more arcadey, since they don't really seem to have a fail state at all. They do, however, have a playful sense of humor about it. For example, in the bear level, in order to get the biggest bear you can find you must roll up copious amounts of junk and reach the proper size. The level, however, is filled to the brim with bears or bear-like objects, and the kooky King of All Cosmos isn't particularly picky when it comes to what he considers a bear. Roll up a teddy bear? That counts. A billboard? That counts. The most ridiculous case I found was for the constellation Taurus, where you have to roll up the largest cow you can find. Coming out the starting gate, I took a left and immediately picked up a carton of milk, which the King accepted as a job horribly done, but done none the less.
Katamari Damacy has been ported numerous times at this point, and the series has seen a fair share of sequels and spin offs. Reroll, the most recent incarnation, is a solid repackaging of the original game, but it is a bit ridiculous for the price of $30. Given the game is so short, it is also surprising the game didn't come packaged with We Love Katamari or Beautiful Katamari, the two major follow up games that are both over a decade old at this point. The game itself isn't much changed, and only lasts 4 hours or so. It's a unique, author-driven experience that's as ridiculous as it is fun, even if it is brief for its price.
8.5
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