Katamari Damacy
Jun. 19th, 2011 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupThis is me, explaining Katamari to a co-worker who said he was tired because he spent all night playing Starcraft.
Me: Yeah, I've been playing Katamari lately.
Him: What's that?
Me: you roll around a ball and it picks up stuff that's smaller than you and it makes the ball bigger.
Him: And then you use the ball to...?
Me: Nothing. I mean, you turn it into a star, but that's just the story, not a mechanic.
Him: but when you pick up certain items, they make you roll faster or shoot lasers or something, right?
Me: Nope. You just get bigger.
The point being: Katamari is an excellent game, but I have probably given up all chance of ever being a hardcore gamer by saying that. Also by being bad at it.
What I learned from Resident Evil was that killing things was fun, but exploration for the point of stealing things was just as fun if not more so. Katamari cuts out the middle man by having a single action that could be construed as both exploring, stealing, and killing, which lets you grow bigger and kill/steal more things. And because you're in the same environment the entire time, you have the satisfaction of moving from running away from things, to absorbing them, to absorbing their houses and then eventually godzilla. It's short, but I refuse to consider that a negative unless a game costs a lot of money, and I borrowed this game from a friend for free. According to the internet Katamari is chauk full of replay value, but I don't seem to be good enough to do anything but make the same mistakes over and over again, so I gave up.
The incessant talking between levels was my biggest complaint. It has that obnoxious old-timey thing where you have to hit a button twice to skip each sentence, with pauses between sentences. If you were lucky. The fact that I found myself leaving to empty the litter box between levels is probably a bad sign. The worst were the levels where, for reasons that don't matter, finishing early meant you'd done poorly. I wanted to retry the level, but I couldn't take listening to my father drone on more than twice, knowing that a gust of wind could have me fail out the next one in 30 seconds too.
Katamari represents a personal triumph for me. I basically had to give up everything but god games because of my weak, inflammation prone tendons. 3 years ago I tried Katamari and loved it, but couldn't play for more than 10 minutes before my wrists caught on fire. This week I played it with no problems. Hurray for healing.
Take home message: stealing things is fun and crushing things is fun and combining them into a single action is awesome.
Me: Yeah, I've been playing Katamari lately.
Him: What's that?
Me: you roll around a ball and it picks up stuff that's smaller than you and it makes the ball bigger.
Him: And then you use the ball to...?
Me: Nothing. I mean, you turn it into a star, but that's just the story, not a mechanic.
Him: but when you pick up certain items, they make you roll faster or shoot lasers or something, right?
Me: Nope. You just get bigger.
The point being: Katamari is an excellent game, but I have probably given up all chance of ever being a hardcore gamer by saying that. Also by being bad at it.
What I learned from Resident Evil was that killing things was fun, but exploration for the point of stealing things was just as fun if not more so. Katamari cuts out the middle man by having a single action that could be construed as both exploring, stealing, and killing, which lets you grow bigger and kill/steal more things. And because you're in the same environment the entire time, you have the satisfaction of moving from running away from things, to absorbing them, to absorbing their houses and then eventually godzilla. It's short, but I refuse to consider that a negative unless a game costs a lot of money, and I borrowed this game from a friend for free. According to the internet Katamari is chauk full of replay value, but I don't seem to be good enough to do anything but make the same mistakes over and over again, so I gave up.
The incessant talking between levels was my biggest complaint. It has that obnoxious old-timey thing where you have to hit a button twice to skip each sentence, with pauses between sentences. If you were lucky. The fact that I found myself leaving to empty the litter box between levels is probably a bad sign. The worst were the levels where, for reasons that don't matter, finishing early meant you'd done poorly. I wanted to retry the level, but I couldn't take listening to my father drone on more than twice, knowing that a gust of wind could have me fail out the next one in 30 seconds too.
Katamari represents a personal triumph for me. I basically had to give up everything but god games because of my weak, inflammation prone tendons. 3 years ago I tried Katamari and loved it, but couldn't play for more than 10 minutes before my wrists caught on fire. This week I played it with no problems. Hurray for healing.
Take home message: stealing things is fun and crushing things is fun and combining them into a single action is awesome.
