Malik
(10/5/04) Katamari
Damacy Honored For Design...and Other Namco News According
to Gamespot.com, The Japan Industrial Design Promotion
Organization, which puts out an annual Good Design Award for unique
product design for a Japanese product, has awarded the first award
to a video game. The game would be none other than what I feel is
the most brilliantly designed game of all time; Katamari
Damacy. This
award is given out for ingenious and original (but still quality
orientated) design of a new product in any range from entertainment
to practical products. In it's history, it has been award to some
video game hardware before, such as the GBASP, but never has it been
given to software. Also, at the same time, Namco was honored a
second time with receiving an additional award for their (soon to be
released in the US) Taiko Drum Master game. KD
was honored because of it's simple and easy to use controls, it's
colorful and vivid visuals and for the unique characters. Meanwhile,
Taiko Drum Master was honored because of the nature of it's Tatakon Controller
(which is shaped like said drums), which, according to one of the
judges, just looks in a way that you feel like you must play with
it. Sadly,
on a different note, Namco is planning to follow the route of so
many other RPG designing game studios. Tales
of Eternia Online will be beta testing in 2005. I call this bad
news since Namco has a perfectly good and fun franchise with their
Tales games, yet if the competition is any indication, making the
jump to online will probably be disastrous...not for Namco, who will
cash in on the already overly bloated MMO industry (which, by all
logic, should have folded by now...or at least suffered the same
"bubble bursting" that took the dot com industry down a
major peg about 5 years ago), but for fans of the series. The fans
will soon see their beloved series, with it's amazing stories and
interesting characters, get reduced to another mindless MMO that
serves only one purpose..."the grind" (battle stuff, gain
levels, get new powers, go to a new area and repeat...until you
reach the level peak...like all other MMOs), which is the opposite
of what Tales games have always given their players (plot). So,
while Namco has done good with KD and Taiko, it's sad to see them
tarnish such a birght week with news of more MMO tedium.
Malik
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