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Thursday 21 February, 2008
Gameplay
Okay, the game is still esentially the same as it was before. There has been no change to the story and the drunkard king is still making you clean up his mess. You still control a katamari and your still rebuilding stars. Now that that's out of the way, I found out that the prince has cousins scattered throughout the levels and finding and picking them up unlocks them for multiplayer usage. It adds some level of humor in the multiplayer mode when you have different odd things pushing sticky balls around, one of which looked like a ball himself (herself?). Anyway, they don't have much too offer to the gameplay or experience of the multiplayer unless you have cousins like me who supply the audio commentary.
My continuation of single player mode led to many more surprises and amusements. Now many people wouldnt be at this point yet but I kinda sped through some things. On the last level, the objective is to build the moon. You would think the stars would have to be pretty large and that the katamari replacing them would need to be large too. Well compared to the moon, those specks of dust don't even come close. I dont remember if there was a time limit or not but it got to the point where I was uprooting forests just by pressing up on the d-pad once and at some point you find Godzilla fighting a robot. Eventually the islands became part of my moon and even the god of thunder. By the time I felt ready to put the game down I had grown large enough to pick up the clouds and possibly a few tornadoes or hurricanes. It's difficult to express how this experience felt but it was like drinking multiple bottles of Jones' Soda while watching UHF through a kaleidoscope.
Design
If I were to list one innovative element of the game it would probably have to be the use of the katamari. Afterall this is the first game in which we see an entire game based on rolling around a growing ball. To elaborate more on the game's design, it feels old but in a good way. It reminds me of games like Sonic the Hedgehog or Pacman where the entire game is based off of a singular simple objective (in Sonic, run to the end of the level; in pac man eat all the dots) without losing its replay value.
On the other hand, the games use of cutscenes seemed to be tacked on after the levels simply because people are used to them. I mean, after a star was completed a.k.a. a level was beaten, there was a funny little cutscene that served no purpose other than to amuse the audience and to give some sort of semblance of a complex story. In actuality, they have nothing to do with the games main plot and serve only to fill in the apparent void where modern gamers would view a cutscene that's purpose was to hold the gamer's attention and keep them from becoming bored with the gameplay. In the case of Katamari Damacy, it was an unnecissary addition to a great game.
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