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Friday 25 January, 2008
Katamari Damacy Gamelog 2
Gameplay
For the second round of gameplay, things started picking up as I got a better handle on the controls. After the first few levels, I realized that many of the levels had these long lines of items that you could follow with some careful maneuvering. They allow you to grow much faster than if you aimlessly wander the level and opened a new level of strategizing to the game as I tried to find the most efficient route that grew the katamari the fastest.
Although the game has a rather short set of ten story levels, there are a number of consellations like Ursa Major that the player can recreate by fulfilling certain conditions, like roll up only one bear or roll up as many crabs as you can. These variations on the story levels add more content to the game and prolong the inevitable game exhaustion one will run into after rolling up everything on a level. Despite the variety, they don’t add too much more to the game; a longer set of story levels and more varied locales to roll about are the only suggestions I could make to improve the Katamari series.
Design
When playing Katamari Damacy for the second hour, the simplicity of the game leading to complex, emergent gameplay came to mind. While the game control of the katamari and object of the game are very straightforward, a lot of strategy develops out of the fact that you have to race against the clock to reach a specific size during the story levels, which force one to determine the order to go to different areas of the world as well as finding ways to roll around the level to maximize growth within that time limit. Thus, this simple rule brings a level of strategy to the game that is not explicitly created by the game rules but an emergence from the game’s rules.
Another emergent feature of the katamari experience lies in the challenge factor that ai controlled objects add to each level. Until large enough, the cars, people, and large animals on each level slow down one’s growth when hit by them because they knock you in the direction they’re headed and knock some of your rolled up objects off the katamari. This forces players to maneuver more carefully around levels, especially when trying to reach the required size faster than before or roll up everything on the level before time’s up. Without this aspect of the game, only time would be a challenge for the game; the annoying ai controlled objects give the game a random factor that keeps the game challenging even if you know the best route to take on a level.
After completing the final level to make the moon, the eternal mode is unlocked, which allows you to replay 3 levels with unlimited time. This mode was probably created to allow players to leisurely roll up the entire world and figure out the best routes through the game for the timed levels, which adds more replay value to the game. While the time levels can eventually become too tedious to play for the 50th time, the eternal mode allows players to just enjoy the game at a less frantic pace and allow completists to get every object on the level.
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