Me & My Katamari

Sony PSP

Namco

$39.99

Ring the bells! Crowd favorite Katamari Damacy is back. So grab a PSP and your favorite Katamari (some kind of magnetic ball, near as I can tell), and get to rolling it around one of this game’s many imaginative, multicolored courses, picking up nail clippers, pencils, doors, and walls as you go. Watch your Katamari grow, grow, GROW! Count up your points. Super fun! Good, clean, nonsensical super fun.

But wait. This time, the All-Seeing King of All Cosmos (up there, in the clouds) is exhorting you to absent yourself from felicity awhile and use your Katamari-rolling skills to do some small good: There are poor, homeless animals around in need of charity, you see, and you have to build them an island.

OK. So you push and pull your Katamari and begin that long, hard slog toward building the perfect island home: hard for the turtles, bright for the birds, swift for the cheetahs. Alms for the poor. Succeed and your generosity will be rewarded. Fail and the King will strike you down with furious wrath.

Now I may be wrong here, but I believe there’s something subtle, almost subliminal – something, dare I say, Christian? – in this game’s admonition to care for those less fortunate than yourself and in its threats of vengeance from on high as punishment for those who don’t.

And I’m sorry, but caring for others less fortunate than you?! In a video game?! That’s madness! We as a society depend on video games to teach our children valuable lessons about the virtues of violence and self-absorption; they’ll run wild in the streets if they get wind of this.

Anyway, my left thumb is exhausted, and I’m crap at this game.

– Josh Rosenblatt

This article appears in April 21 • 2006.

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James graduated from Columbia University in 2000 and moved to Austin a year later. Ever since, he has followed the arts and video game scene in ATX, editing and writing stories for the Chronicle along the way. Over his more than 20 years with the paper he has climbed the "corporate" ladder from lowly intern to managing editor.