In case it wasn’t blatantly obvious from the above screen shot, Noby Noby Boy comes from the mind of Keita Takahashi, creator of the Katamari Damacy series, and it is every bit as strange as it’s predecessor. The concept is simple: stretch Boy as far as you can, eating everything you can (including cats, houses, and people) along the way. With a fairly simple gameplay mechanic and charming graphics, Noby Noby Boy appears to be Namco Bandai’s attempt at recapturing the magic felt by gamers everywhere the first time they played Katamari Damacy. The results of that attempt are somewhat mixed.

The gameplay is simple enough. The object of the game is simply to stretch Boy out as far as you can. You do this by steering his head, and back end in different directions, getting him wrapped around things, and moving his head and bottom as far from one another as possible. The bigger you get, the harder this becomes. Now, here’s the interesting part: as you make Boy longer and longer, you have the opportunity to visit Girl, who is slowly stretching her way towards the stars. As each and every gamer playing this game reports their growth to Girl, she will stretch that much closer to the next heavenly body in her path. Currently, she has made it to the moon, and is on her way to Mars. Each new heavenly body she visits opens up new levels to everyone who has the game. This adds a certain level of community, as well as longevity to the game. I definitely plan on checking in every couple of weeks to see how far Girl has stretched, and what new planets have opened up.

While the concept behind Noby Noby Boy is solid, the execution is not without fault. The camera is very much your biggest enemy in this game. Zoom in too close, and you can’t see everything that’s going on. Zoom out too far, and the finer details of what Boy is doing will be lost on you. I had a hard time finding a good distance to keep the camera at, and once I did, it frequently followed the center of Boy without my telling it to do any such thing. Given the fact that you control Boy’s head and his bottom, this made for some rather frustrating moments. Also, in order to quit the game, or to switch levels, you have to go into Boy’s house. Sounds easy right? Well it’s not. Once you’ve got a well stretched Boy, zooming the camera in to a level where you can clearly make out your door, and make your way to it yields nothing but chaos, as Boy wiggles and squirms all about the screen, with his elongated body folding over itself again and again.

The art style is very much the same in Noby Noby Boy as it was in Katamari Damacy. If you enjoyed the colorful, blocky objects found in the Katamari games, then you will almost certainly appreciate the art found in Noby Noby Boy. The sound, on the other hand, is somewhat lacking. The Katamari games had excellent soundtracks that complimented the visuals nicely, where as Noby Noby Boy provides only basic background music. Sure, some of the sound effects are amusing, but that doesn’t really make up for the void left where the whimsical, off beat  music should be.

As a game, Noby Noby Boy is a little broken. Fun, but broken. I see it as more of an interactive toy. Something to fiddle around with while I’m killing time waiting for my coffee to brew, or while I unwind at the end of the day. The flaws keep me from taking it too seriously, but as a ten minute distraction it is quite enjoyable. If you’ve got five bucks burning a hole in your pocket, there are far worse things you could spend it on.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy, PS3, PSN, review

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