DAY 3 / GAME 3 Katamari Damacy

DAY 3 / GAME 3

Katamari Damacy

             So, the thing about Katamari Damacy is that it's good example of Penny Arcade's power over my purchase decisions.  It's been about a decade since I've actually browsed game review sites for suggestions regarding new releases.  They nitpick, categorize and well, do their job really.  But I can never get behind how negative it all feels to me.  Over the years things have changed, there's lots of ways to get a good feel for a game before playing it.  Trailers, demos, walkthroughs; all kinds of material to base your own opinion.  And of course now, with gaming being a much more popular media to ingest, it's easy to find a friend who can recommend a particular game.  And for me, a recommendation from someone I know is worth more than a hundred reviews from someone paid to play.

           That's how Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade fame have always felt to me.  When one of them recommends a game, I have never been steered wrong.  We may not be friends, but we definitely see eye-to-eye when it comes to games.  Such was the case with Katamari.  I remember one of them described it in such a manner that caused me to quite actually drop what I was doing at the time and take a run out to buy it.  I hadn't seen anything about it outside of their recomendation, I barely remembered what it was called, but I had to have it.  At first I was a little disappointed.  I was sold on the idea of rolling up this ball so big I could eventually be rolling up actual people.  For the first couple levels it seemed as if I may make it there, but I would probably just be making a whole ball of thumbtacks and erasers.  But it payed off and soon I was rolling up cars, houses, and then whole islands.  It was great.

             Katamari had a quirky Japanese charm I hadn't seen since the Dreamcast first came out.  Games like Pen Pen Tri-icelon and Don't Panic!  Seaman seemed like they were too oddball to get sold in the western market.  Absurd and totally off track but I loved them.  Katamari brought back that same feel.  An odd game that didn't try in the least to appeal to a western market, but it caught on nonetheless. 

             Now I'm totally in the mood to go play some Katamari..
Out of a rating of a number of stars, I'm going to give this game:        A Whole Bunch of Stars.