Now that I've had some solid time with the game, some impressions.
There is truly nothing else like it out there. Imagine starting off as a small ball rolling up ants, thumbtacks, then small candies, then hairpins, then the rats, then bumping around hallways and scaring the cats and small dogs... before you know it, you're outside in the garden uprooting plants, you realize that that big wall you kept bumping into is actually a person with a golf club..
Once you are big enough, your ball is filled with birds and cats and you're running over bicycles, buckets, teapots, benches, then people. But it doesn't stop there... you get to where fences and lampposts buckle over into your ball of death, and when those SUVs and Jeeps don't seem so menacing, the crowds scatter screaming from you. Every item you pick up fits into your katamari and affects its motion.. so if you snag a telephone pole a certain way, your ball hobbles along awkwardly.
When I started picking up houses, I thought 'okay, this is crazy. My Katamari can't get any bigger than this.' But no, houses are just the beginning.
By the end of the experience I was
This game is not a military battlefield sim. There are no vehicles to pilot and no USB headset support. There is no online component. So it may not be for all of you. But there is a Tetris-like addiction in trying to get to a certain size in the time limit, and that euphoria when you reach that size under the limit and just keep growing. The music is really great, goes from lounge to electronic to japanese pop to balls-out rock anthems.
There are also side-quests... for instance, try to get the biggest cow you can find. The catch is, you need to get your Katamari big enough to roll over and capture it.. and until you're big enough, you can't touch *anything* cow-related, including microscopic cow figurines that are scattered about, or cow pylons, or even a bottle of milk.. so you must be very wary about what you pick up. Plus, your catamari gets a 'cow skin' while you're doing this mission.
In other missions, you must pick up as many maidens, crabs, fish, or crowns, depending on the constellation you must complete). The themes are worked into each side-quest beautifully: Dogs walk past you on the street wearing crowns. Fish statues rise up out of the water. Spiders and crabs skuttle about everywhere. All depending on the theme.
The character of the "King of All Cosmos" is the most bizarre character I've ever seen in a videogame. Make sure to go into first person mode to during the tutorial and look straight up into the skylight in the top of the dome... you'll see a nice surprise!
One last thought: the Game Informer review mentioned that Katamari Damacy has some of the worst graphics seen in a videogame in the last three years. I don't think so. The characters models and textures are very primitive, but the draw distance and the sense of scale (remember, the world scales out in real-time, it is not broken down into fixed 'size ratio' levels) and the imagination employed in bringing the hundreds of world items to life is commendable.
For $20 this is a no-brainer for anyone interested in unique and creative videogames.