We Love Katamari (A Review)

I think it's fair to say that creativity is NOT as profitable as people might imagine. There are people out there making genuinely excellent, original products and all people ever seem to buy are the same old products in new boxes. One of the worst mediums for this trend in stupidity amongst the spending public is gaming. Games are expensive to make and expensive to buy. When so much money is a stake people don't take risks. People are apparently incapable of research and so instead of learning about great, innovative titles they just opt for sequals and recycled ideas that they are already quite familiar with. The games industry knows this and so instead of spending heaps of money on something risky and surprising they instead re-use the same formulas that have worked over and over and over in making money. The reason I say all this is because I'm sick of it. It sickens me that souless clones sell a zillion copies whilst exciting, original titles lay forgotten. I say all of this because We Love Katamari is one of those games.

So there I was, I had just trudged through the 60 hours or so of Final Fantasy XII and was left feeling extremely lukewarm about the ending (these games are SUPPOSED to be heavily story driven, I liked FFX's story heaps more). Sure I thought the game was good and there was some exciting new gameplay in there but after 10 hours it had grown quite familiar. Anyway after finishing it I was in need of something exciting and fun. I started to play We Love Katamari (on the Playstation 2, just so you know). So what is this game? It's really hard to describe faithfully but here it goes. You roll sticky ball around and as you do so things stick to it. Only small things at first, but as it grows bigger it can pick up larger stuff. Essentially everything (and I mean EV-ER-Y-THING) can be rolled up eventually. It doesn't sound like much but it's truely a shining example of how one simple idea can be polished up and applied in so many varying environments. There's a level where you roll a sumo wrestler around in food so that he may grow large and defeat his opponent. There's another where you go the the zoo to roll up animals for a lonely dog so that he may have some friends. I particularly like the one where you roll up the gingerbread cottage for Hansel and Gretel. Time and size are the 2 most common challenges withing the game. Roll a Katamari this big in this many minutes is the basic idea. This idea wouldn't hold up the game on it's own but everything is designed stylishly and humorously. All you ever really do is roll stuff into a ball but the design is so wickedly clever and entertaining that it never feels repeditive. I was playing this game solidly for a week before I have to send it away for a scratch repair job and I miss it quite a bit. There's not alot else to say really, I think the game is excellent and deserves to sell zillions and if you think differently you are wrong. Simple as that.