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Saturday 16 February, 2008
GAMELOG 4
ENRTY #2
GAMEPLAY:
After a little bit over another hour and a half with Katamari Damacy (KD) some of the issues that bother me less in the first hour are starting to bother me a lot more. The controls are really starting to get on my nerves, especially when the ball gets bigger (and to a lesser extent when it is smaller). They seem a little unresponsive, with cost you precious seconds, and moving the camera around it a pain. You don’t have direct control over it, instead you have to move your character and the camera adjusts in response. The confusing and very non-intuitive controls don’t exactly make this an easy task (some movement is done by using one, either the left or right it doesn’t matter, and some is done by pressing both in the same or opposite direction and push up move you left and down moves you right…easy right?).
Speaking of the camera, it gets the way a good amount when the ball gets to relatively large size. Aside from it being hard to see what is in front of you (making it hard to avoid hazards that will knock objects off your ball and cost you time) it often gets caught inside a building or behind a wall, so you are left rolling around blindly until it adjusts itself. Very frustrating to say the least. Inconstancies in the game world are also starting to make me frustrated. Why can I pick up a penguin but not a barrel that is clearly smaller than the penguin? Since mass seems to have nothing to do with gameplay (and if it does why is there only an indicator that measures the size of the ball and not its mass?) I don’t understand what is the problem.
With that said the game is still very fun. I am really starting to get into now that I start with a large ball in each level and I can now roll up really big things (like people, benches, fences, vending machines, etc). Interestingly enough some of the levels seem to have an almost racing like feel to them, which I find pretty fun. Getting the ball up to high speeds and plowing through a bunch of objects (while picking them up of course) while avoiding obstacles that would cost you time and knock objects off the ball is really fun.
The game is also still very rewarding in terms of pure gameplay (of course the cut scenes and dialog are still horrible) but I have stumbled upon something that has actually decreased my enjoyment of the game somewhat. After having to repeat a level a few times I realized that the goal to this game pretty much boils down to memorizing the “best path” in a level (i.e, figure out where to go to pick up small stuff for your ball then get it to a certain size, then move on to the area with the next biggest stuff, and so on). I guess its nothing major, but once I realized this it did affect my enjoyment of the game quite a bit. Still a fun game, but not as fun as before when I was just cruising around and picking things up having a blast getting my ball bigger and bigger.
DESIGN:
KD is a very unique gameplay experience and has an equally unique set of design characteristics. I’ll start with the superficial stuff, the visual look and the sound. The in game music and sound effects are nothing special, nor are they bad, They do fit the game quite well however. The half-pop-half-elevator music sound track fits the tone of the game perfectly; it is quirky, lighthearted, and fun. Also, it does a good job of blending into the background of the game and keeping the gameplay relaxing and never too tense. The visuals also set a clear tone for the game. Its is not suppose to be a “serious” game at all. Judging from the art style I would say that it is not even suppose to make much sense. The cartoony visuals are an excellent fit for a game that clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is interesting to note, that even thought the core gameplay mechanic is so fun, I don’t think that it would work with any other visual style quite as well. I can’t picture this game being half as fun if it was photo-realistic or had some kind of dark/grimy art direction that took itself too seriously.
As mention in my first gamelog, this game isn’t about story, or character or plot it is all about the core gameplay mechanic of rolling you ball around and adding to it. The entire game is naturally build around this mechanic and almost all aspects of the game are executed nearly flawlessly.
Simply put, all the levels (which in turn constitute the entire game) that I have played so far as excellent and very well though out. Every time a level starts there are sections that you cannot access because your ball is too small. So you roll around collecting what you need to get it bigger. But once your ball is a certain size areas of the game that were once easily accessible to you before now become difficult to navigate or impossible to get into because of the size of your ball. For example, navigating you ball around a tight area like a little alley isn’t too hard until it is the size of a small house. Then it becomes almost impossible and you lose of lot of time having to do it.
So as one the challenge of getting your ball bigger gets easier (the bigger it is the easier it is to pick up other large things) the challenge of navigating your ball through the environment gets harder. This trade off promotes strategy (or memorizing the best path if you have played the level before) and replay since you always want to beat your best time. This inverse relationship is also where most of the challenge in the game comes from. And despite it sounding deceptively simple, it is quite frustrating and requires a lot of coordination and in advance planning.
The reward system is also very satisfying and again is derived directly from the gameplay. To be more precise, the reward system IS the gameplay. Other than the time restriction (beating your best) and the arbitrary “collection” (a little gallery of the items you have collected) there is no other reward except for the satisfaction you get from making your ball bigger and bigger and being able to roll up larger and larger items. It is extremely satisfying to roll up cows, cars, people, street signs, and other large items that we in life generally perceive as being “bigger” than us and can’t directly manipulate in real life. It is very fun to get to treat these things as toys that you can manipulate and collect.
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