Katamari Damacy (PlayStation 2, 2004)

It's hard to put a finger on exactly why this game caught my fancy. The graphics are fun, giving you a whole new appreciation of everyday items, like paperclips, sticks of gum, and even crazy things like teakettles and earth moving equipment. Who would ever have thought the same game would have all these items?

The premise is crazy - the stars have been "put out" from the night sky (in the Japanese version, the King of All Cosmos got drunk and went on a bender, but in the politically correct US version (:rolleyes:), he just has a bad night. He gives his son, the tiny Prince, the job of repopulating the sky, from the smallest speck of a star to the moon, with bonus levels of the various constellations.

There are cut scenes of a Japanese family who's father is an astronaut that are very funny and silly, because nobody seems to notice the craziness going on around them other than the son (who's very quiet).

You start small, rolling up objects on the "katamari" (basically meaning blob) like tacks and paperclips and sticks of gum, working your way up to bigger and bigger objects to make a katamari big enough to satisfy the King's requirement for that particular star. The King is very demanding, and woe betide you if your star isn't big enough ... what a mean guy! Eventually the objects you roll up get bigger and bigger and you go from the table to the house to the lawn and eventually into town in search of bigger objects for your katamari until you're rolling up elephants, octopi, and carnivals.

It's funny and surreal, and the bonus constellation rounds are based on picking up objects that relate to the particular one you're working on (for example ... you're judged by how many crabs you roll into your crab nebula ... and they're all over! ... maidens for Virgo ... it's all so funny!). The biggest challenge is the moon, and good luck to you in the time you're allowed to roll up that much stuff!

The things you can explore in the game are fun, too ... like an inventory of the objects you've picked up and the places you've been rolling stuff up. It really makes you aware of what a consumer oriented society we live in in some ways.

The music is catchy, and the game is easy to learn, though a challenge to master ... but isn't anything worth mastering fun?

I highly recommend it, even as a party game ... even the person who claims they're the most inept at video games will have fun trying to make a star.

So why are you still reading this? Go find a copy and play!

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