The King of the Cosmos has broken all of the stars (oops) so he assigns you - the3 prince - the job of making all new ones out of random junk found on Earth. So you have this ball you roll around - your katamari - and as you run over things, they stick to it. Your katamiri gets bigger and bigger and can pick up more stuff the bigger it gets. You start out really small in each level, mere inches tall, able to pick up only miniscule items like pushpins and cons and ants and the like. But the more stuff you glom onto, the bigger you get, which in turn enables you to pick up larger items. This accellerates the further you get into the levels.
You have to avoid bumping into living creatures, because they'll make stuff fall off of your katamiri. In the start, you might be really scared of small mice. But after a few minutes, you're scooping up mice no problem and those cats - formerly huge compared to you, are now starting to look pretty tempting. 5 minutes later, humans will be fleeing in terror from your 2 meter wide katamari! Muahahahaha! There is just nothing cooler than the feeling of getting bigger and bigger, going from really teensy to taking out entire villages in the space of 15 minutes.
The candyish graphics, the wonderfully quirky music, the offbeat dialogue, it's all wonderful, in a strange Japanese way. And there is a never-ending supply of weird junk to pick up - sushi, wind-up monkeys with cymbals, puppy dogs, musicians with huge afros, the Loch Ness Monster, school children, guys in cow suits, shrubbery, it's all there and if you're big enogh, you can grab it all!
Oh yeah, and the controls are so simple, anyone can pick it up and be playing in a few minutes. My wife - who doesn't play games at all, aside from Animal Crossing - was at it in no time flat.
And on top of all of this bizarre goodness, there's the price-tag: A mere 20 bucks!
How can you go wrong? Not that big an investment: If it at all sounds intriguing, check it out!
-mike
here you are, small in the start of a level:
slightly further along, about to glom onto some slippers on the left there:
much later, grabbing entire chunks of the town!
) . so now i need to go round to mr sony-europe, break his door down and force him to give it a pal release.
