onotob

Gamespot recently posted their most anticipated games of 2005, a multi-part writeup from a handful of their editors. I love these kinds of lists as they help me filter through large amounts of information allowing me to focus only on those things worthy of my precious time. So far, 2005 looks to be a stellar year for games.

I have one problem with this article, however. Gamespot is an excellent game resource, full of useful previews, videos, screenshots and news. A lot of hard work is put into collecting and presenting all of this information. Why, then, are there no links to the game spaces of the recommended games? The article brims with excitement, but you have to search for further details about the games in question yourself. Links, people. Welcome to the new Internets.

In other news, I finally broke down and purchased one of those nifty and oh-so-slim Playstation 2 consoles. It is, how you say, sexy. I was finally driven to this purchase (after many a year of console-free living) by a game called Katamari Damacy, which translates into “Pure Joy Translated Into Light, With Rainbows And Music”, or something.

Here’s how the story goes: the King of all Cosmos got ripped one night and when he woke up he found that he had misplaced all the stars in the sky. Having no recollection of the previous evening’s escapades, he decides to attack the problem from another direction: he sends his son, the pure-hearted Prince (“you”) to earth with a Katamari, which is some kind of knobbed, multicolored ball which can pick up any object of appropriate size. Your job is repopulate the night sky by picking up objects on earth with your Katamari until it is large enough to be tossed into space and become a star.

In the beginning you can only pick up thumbtacks and erasers and whatnot, but as your ball of junk gets bigger it can pick up larger and larger objects. As the Katamari grows the camera zooms out and the level scales to give you some perspective. In the later levels you end up picking up buildings, airports, oil tankers, islands and even giant octopi.

And the soundtrack! It ranges from classic video game techno to smarmy lounge jazz (“I want to roll you up into my life!”), to satisfying J-pop. All this for $20.

Oh, and a sequel is scheduled for release later this year. Now you can pick up anything!

Posted at 6:41 pm.