I guess my plan to shut up for 2 weeks was destined to fail. Que sera sera.
Check out these awesome KATAMARI DAMACY SHIRTS. Apparently getting the license was a real coup. My favorite is the dripping prince, but they’re all pretty great in the same “is this ironic? I don’t care, it is awesome regardless” way that the game is great. The highlight is reading Takahashi’s comments on each shirt (click on them to see a bunch of images, including the comments). Also great is the company’s stance on using American Apparel t-shirts.
Have I raved about Katamari Damacy here before? This game, guys, is just about the best thing ever. You control a little guy who rolls a sticky ball around. The goal is to get the ball up to a certain size. You start tiny, picking up things like thumb tacks and nickels, and as you get bigger you move up to things like toy poodles and deck chairs, and sumo wrestlers, and cars, and elephants. Earlier this week while “studying” I finally finished the game, and felt an innocent euphoria. It was pretty great.
Anyway, there are a number of reasons why I love the game.
- It’s simple, astonishingly simple: you use the directional buttons to move around and that’s pretty much it. You don’t need to learn attack combos, you just roll around.
- The attitude of the game is completely goofy and sincere and funny. It’s hard to describe, but the game is imbued with (I assume) its creator’s peculiar sensibilities, and it forms a coherent if bizarre world that it’s a pleasure to inhabit for a while.
- It’s easy. This is huge for me, because generally speaking I suck at video games. I think I’ve had the patience and ability to finish fewer than 4 games in my entire life. Rather than buy lots of games and play them all the time and have fun working my way through them, I tend to pick one game and play it off and on for six months or so, at which point I’m finally good enough to win on the “infant” setting. For this reason I mostly play sports games where you can make the computer opponent terrible, because I relish beating the despicable Dallas Cowboys 72-3.
So yeah, Katamari is easy to pick up and there’s almost no learning curve. You just roll around and pick stuff up and eventually it’s over.
- It’s great for multi-player action. Because of how easy and simple it is, this is a game that somebody can just pick up and start playing. It’s fun to compete with your friends (even the ones like me who aren’t necessarily adept at video gaming). I mean, your parents could probably get into this game. I guess that could be a negative for some people, but I think it’s pretty cool.
Without a doubt, this game is one of my all-time favorites, up there with Paperboy, NHLPA ’93, and the underrated Super Mario 2.
And there’s a sequel that I hear is really fun, too (even if the creator isn’t satisfied with it). I’ll have to pick that up soon.
Unrelated links to great comment threads:
KONG! (interesting thoughts on newspaper design, the editorial/advertising relationship, and how people are sometimes very mean on the internet)
read all the comments. all the way to #17. Engadget comment threads are filled with ignorant jerks and very smart nerds, and this thread is exemplary. Odd that nobody bothers to talk about how great/awful Apple products are, though. [link courtesy of my close personal friend, Ji, who claims not to be a huge geek despite the fact that he apparently monitors 7 month old threads on tech gadget blogs]
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