Katamari Damacy [PS2]

Easier to play than it is to describe, Katamari Damacy is a remarkably unpromising concept on paper. In short, you push a sticky ball (or "katamari") around the world, accumulating debris as you go. Get your ball of miscellaneous junk to a certain size before the clock runs out, and you beat the level. Put like that, it doesn't sound too attractive; but take it from us, Katamari Damacy is a far better game than it has any right to be.

Your katamari starts off tiny, only able to pick up thumb-tacks and mahjong tiles. 10 minutes later you'll be up to hedges, farm animals, and people, and later still you'll be skyscraper-sized. This colossal variation in scale is extremely amusing. At the beginning of the levels, animals and people chase when your katamari is small... but by the end, you'll have turned the tables completely. If something's causing you difficulty, it's just a matter of time before you're big enough to swallow it up (generally with an amusing sound effect to underline your achievement).

As you grow, your surroundings seem to change. Suddenly the enclosing walls are small enough to climb, and the formerly huge gate that shuts you out from the rest of the level is just another piece of junk in your katamari. Same for the houses, the streets, and bridges -- and that's where it really starts to get surreal.

Although it might be the same level, it looks -- and acts -- totally different as you progress. There's a very real thrill when you suddenly realize you're large enough to absorb most of the scenery around you, and the level's paradigm shifts in an almost stomach-churning way.

Katamari Damacy's surreal presentation verges on the indescribable. Its stages glow with riotous colors, and all the objects have an endearing Lego brick look to them. Whimsical though it may be, it can't have been easy to design a graphics engine that can display equal amounts of detail whether your katamari is five centimeters or half a kilometer in size.

In between the levels, the craziness doesn't stop. The King of the Cosmos (and his gigantic, er, scepter), who rates your katamari and introduces the levels, throws out non-sequitur after non-sequitur, but with such class and conviction you can't help but warm to him. The soundtrack is a kind of bizarre Japanese plastic-pop-electronic jazz blend that suits the game perfectly, and is just as addictive -- and hard to describe -- as the rest of the game.

Top all that off with unique tank-like controls, a just-right difficulty curve, a head-to-head two-player mode, and secrets to find in each level, and you have a recipe for a very special game indeed. It's depressing to note that every hotly anticipated title this season is a sequel of some sort, but Katamari Damacy is a world apart from generic first-person shooters or driving games.

It's a crying shame that availability problems look like preventing Katamari Damacy from reaching the enormous audience it so richly deserves. Scour your local stores for a copy, because you owe it to yourself to pick this game up straight away -- and it's selling for less than half the price of a normal new release. If you find it, snap it up, because this is a very special game indeed.