Because I am almost 100% sure you nerds are all tired of listening to me waffle on and on about how much I adore Assassin’s Creed and everything they do, I’m going to take a break from that and talk about another game franchise that’s very dear to my heart.  It’s called Katamari Damacy, and I love it in all its wacky glory.

The principle of the game is a simple one; you’re given a ball to roll things up to a certain size in a set amount of time.  There are variations on this theme and different environments to explore, but the core of it is the same…Make big ball.

You play as The Prince of the Cosmos.  A little green fella with an unfortunate red growth sprouting from his skull (which has no bearing on the game, I just wanted to give you a visual).  Usually the game starts out with your father, the King of the Cosmos, knocking all the stars from the heavens or something equally as tragic (and ridiculous).  Yes, he makes a mess and then it is up to you, his son, to pick up after him and fix his problem.  This is (apparently) solved by making stars out of large clusters of objects/animals/people/whatever-is-in-the-way-at-the-time and putting them back up in the sky.  This task proves to be both fun and addicting.  Failure to get your ball to the appropriate size leads to the ungracious King looming over you and giving you a speech about how disappointed he is in you that you haven’t fixed the problem he caused yet.

The twists come in the form of you not being able to roll up things that you are smaller than, though this rule is ambiguous at best and can sometimes leave you cursing the quirky Japanese game makers who came up with that mechanic.  Also, (depend on which version of the game you are playing) there are levels where you can only roll up things that are flammable, where you try to gather as many fireflies as possible (in order to light a student’s reading…yep, you roll him up too), and even fatten up a Sumo for his big fight.

Still, there’s something really satisfying about doing all this, sort of like polishing metal, or cleaning your room.  It gives you that “I’m actually doing something” feeling.  The game is weird, there’s no doubt about it, but it’s straight-forward and quirky and extremely therapeutic.  If you’ve played it before?  Go play it again.

I highly recommend it.

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