by RadiumEyes, HSM team writer
Sometimes, the phrase “weird as hell” enters one’s mind when approaching some work that, on the surface, feels too abstruse for conventional labeling.
Of course, labeling has its disadvantages, as placing things in categories could result in some unfortunate implications — from food descriptions (with the proliferation of “real” and “natural”) to video game conventions such as level grinding, one can find numerous examples of how labeling brings up some curious asides.
What’s the “unnatural” alternative to a food, as Gary Larson jokingly points out in one Far Side strip?
For games, we’ve seen so much over the years that we may be at a point where calling something (to give an example) an RPG doesn’t completely articulate what the game entails – the Atelier series, for example, focuses on alchemical synthesis, with fights and gathering not only helping your characters level up, but also provide raw materials for your atelier. It’s not something you see in, say, Final Fantasy VII or Tales of Xillia – their narratives are great, no doubts there, and the fights follow the classic style of RPGs prevalent since the NES days. Gamers who played RPGs since the third generation (where games such as Dragon Warrior and the original Final Fantasy made the rounds) would notice some of the general trends RPGs followed – dungeon crawling, leveling up, the purchase of weapons and armor, etc. Déjà vu stands out for its point-and-click style of gameplay, with a film noir atmosphere that didn’t really get much representation; it’s not strictly an RPG, since your character doesn’t level up or fight monsters, but it’s a great way of showing how diverse narratives were at the time.
Today, we have a slew of games to play and examine, and several of them present unique approaches to gameplay – Psychonauts (entering the psyches of others), Okami (where the brush becomes an integra tool for fighting), Atelier Rorona Plus (the story of a young atelier, with synthesis and bonding being the primary focus), Persona 4 Arena (which retains the narrative structure of its RPG roots, as it tells the story through the inner monologues of characters forced to participate in a fighting tournament), and other offerings show how one can diverge from the “standard” presentation of a genre and still produce a great game.
Then we have the games that may not be easily categorized at all – Katamari Damacy, the first of the Katamari franchise (released on the PS4 in 2004), may be an excellent example of this, as it presents players with the task of rolling up random objects, ranging from calligraphy practice sheets to planets, in order to repair the universe after the King of All Cosmos somehow destroys the entire universe, save for the planet Earth. It’s simultaneously a simple yet bizarre concept; how does one describe a game where you place a Prince whose father makes him restore the universe after he obliterated most of it through some freak accident?
One of the most famous examples of a WJT (“Weird Japanese Game”), Katamari Damacy catches people off-guard for how offbeat it is; it is colorful, simple and outright strange in its presentation, and one might initially be stumped to explain it, or what genre it would be place into.
Yet, that’s part of the charm of the franchise – its sheer goofiness and sense of humor earmark the games as quintessential oddities in the game world, while simultaneously giving it some clout as a no-frills puzzle-type series that allows one to roll up whatever’s in your way with an adhesive Buckyball-esque device in order to repopulate the cosmos that the King destroys in every outing.
Katamari Forever (2009), one of the most recent releases, serves as a good example of the narrative structure and gameplay; after the King suffers from amnesia after a blow to the head, the Prince and his Cousins (of which there are several) create a RoboKing to help out, but this mechanical simulacrum goes berserk and destroys the universe, a rare example of where the King himself doesn’t cause destruction.
As the Prince, you have the unenviable task of bringing the universe back to life via your katamari and a host of objects to gather up. Each stage contains different objects – one has you rolling up hot objects in order to make a sun, while another asks for as many sweets as possible, and each has a time limit. If you played any of the previous games, you’ll notice that the stages have been recycled from them; the formula remains, but Katamari Forever splits the stages amongst the amnesiac King and the RoboKing. In addition, the game provides different modes of play: Katamari (the standard “roll up stuff” routine), Katamari Drive (which increases your speed and gives a smaller time limit), Eternal (only available in some stages, it removes the time limit altogether) and Classic (a throwback to earlier games, which didn’t include the Prince Hop or the King’s Heart present in Forever).
Not having played anything Katamari in some time, I found Forever to be both immensely fun and at times frustrating; to give an example of the latter, a stage requires you to make a katamari that registers 10,000 degrees Celsius. Hot items (such as hamburgers, eggs and mittens) increase the temperature, while cold items (such as penguins, snowmen and ice cream) decrease the temperature; one can lose in an instant if one hits one of the King’s Hearts located in the level, as that turns your katamari into a magnet, picking up everything small enough to be collected in the vicinity. I had to play that stage numerous times because with the King’s Heart activated, the temperature immediately dropped to zero degrees, resulting in a Game Over – quite frustrating when you want to get as far as you can.
At the same time, though, it’s relaxing to simply gather objects; Katamari Forever allows you to simply sit back and enjoy the game’s scenery, if you unlocked Eternal mode for a level, and the timed ones don’t always feel like a rush to the finish line, because you have this large area to roam around in. On top of all that, the peculiar nature of your tasks lends itself well to humor; the various short videos you unlock provide some nice laughs, as they poke fun at conventions. A five-part series of cutscenes, for example, shows a sentai team known as the Jumbomen bickering with one another as a series of meteors approach, all of which explains the formation of the Black Star that caused the King’s amnesia. It may not make sense at first, but Katamari Forever revels in comedic delivery – everything ties together, and it’s amusing to see how the story unfolds.
I mentioned before how labeling can be difficult and off-putting; Katamari Forever has the ostensible category of “puzzle-adventure,” which adequately explains the gameplay, but anyone unfamiliar with the series may not anticipate the oddity of it all. The game’s puzzle elements are the challenges the King and RoboKing give you – each stage has its own task (even if a few are variations on “make a katamari this size or larger”), and you, as the Prince or one of the Cousins, have to figure out what you can roll up as your katamari gets larger. The WJT category exists because some games take a genre in a silly direction, and Katamari Forever illustrates this well – you’re given a single objective (getting the universe back in working order), and the way you accomplish this is hilariously absurd.
Leave it to Namco Bandai to release a game series based around using stuff you find on Earth to recreate the Cosmos.
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