This game has come out ages ago, but I am still rock-living-under-guy, so, I have only just recently got to play it. Katamari Damacy is an amazingly simple, game. It is like Pac-Man plus, and just as groundbreaking. The story is, that the King of all Cosmos has gotten inebriated, and smashed all of the stars in the sky. You play the prince, whos job it is, is to make new stars. How do you do that? You are given a ball, the so-called Katamari Damacy that you can use to pick up stuff. What kind of stuff? Oh, you start off with ants, tacks, push pins, and work your way up to cards, pots, pans, toys, children, people, cows, cars, trucks, trees, giant squid, buildings, skyscrapers, islands, the land itself, until you are picking up Godzilla, rainbows and cruise liners.

There is something resembling a storyline here, but it really is secondary to the game, instead of being a driving force like say, Final Fantasy. There is a two player mode, but it really seems like an afterthought, thrown into the game so that you won't bore your friends to death. However, the cool part of the game is that to play in the 2 player mode, you fly to the gigantic Space Mushroom. When you want to play a one player game, you fly back to earth, and move around until you find the kind of star or constellation you want to build. Finally, you can fly to your home planet where you can save and load your games, change your settings, and view things like: all the items you have collected, the rare items, places you have gone, special gifts you have received (and put them on!) The game really is one big cohesive unit in this way, you are always controlling the little prince, and any meta action (saving, loading, settings, etc.) is done by an in game action (visiting your house, going to the woodpecker to turn vibration on, etc.).

The game itself, as you can imagine, gets quite insane. I mean, you can pick up cows, people, giant squids... expect tonnes of maniacal laughter. On top of that, the King of All Cosmos speaks in something akin to both a riddle, and horribly translated Japanese. From what I understand this was done on purpose. The king is supposed to be a little insane. On top of that, the intro of the game is good for a barrel of larfs. Look for the pot leafs and mushrooms falling on the happy pandas.

The pacing of the game is right on target. Its lots of fun, and easy to pick up, but not too easy. Very fun, without getting too hard. I bet it has excellent replayability, but I have only been playing it for a day or so. I love it. Obsessive Goodness.

There is also quite a fan club happening. Check out delicious tags katamari, katamaridamacy for all kinds of goodness. Including Beads, Hats and Obsessive Fan Art.