Last Stages

I played "Make A Moon" last night in Katamari. Beat it first try, and had a blast. Most games will save the biggest, toughest challenge for last, you know? Alaska in SSX Tricky, or the hand in Super Smash Bros, or that one fiery stage I could never beat in F-Zero, and am apparently too lazy to look up.

Katamari was different. Katamari wasn't a challenge; it was an experience. "Make A Moon" showed me how much I had grown. It distilled everything that was good about the game into a single 20 minute burst of joy. The joy of rolling up people, then the buildings, then the islands the buildngs are on*. Twice in the last stage I came across what I thought was a new area, before realizing that it was just my new perspective which had rendered the scene unrecognizable.

Katamari's easy-but-perfect last stage isn't unique. Space Channel 5, whatever its shortcomings, has a non-challenging but ecstacy-inducing final stage, and Brave Fencer Musashi had an extremely good final stage that transcended the unambitious game it was stuck in.

These are not games about telling stories or overcoming challenges. These are games about the joy of playing games. (less true of BFM, definitely true of KD and SC5) Katamari is an easy game to recommend to anyone, as Ryan's evangelism, and mine, have shown. You don't have to like stories. You don't have to like challenges. You just have to like new kinds of joy.

*I am hoping the game does well enough in Germany that we will some day have a single word that eloquently communicates this feeling. Also needed: "The joy of rolling over a schoolyard fence, rolling up all the kids inside, and being so fat with children that you can roll up the fence on your way out." And: "The joy of rolling up a few cows, and on your way out of the field rolling up a previously-unseen sign that reads 'no cow stealing'." And, of course, "The joy of the first time you roll up a cat because, you know, fucking cats."