Weird Storyline Showcase: Katamari Damacy and Uncharted

I'm going to start up a new regular series, the Weird Storyline Showcase. These posts will highlight the wonderfully weird stories of gaming, from the off-the-wall Japanese ones to the poorly written or cliche-filled western ones. These will require a spoiler warning, so I'll post the names of the games whose storylines I'll be discussing before each actual post body. Anyway, for today's showcase I've chosen Katamari Damacy and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. So, just to warn you:


Katamari Damacy and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune SPOILER WARNING


So anyway, Katamari Damacy is probably the best example of the off-the-wall, out-of-left-field, zany, silly Japanese storyline. (The box art on the right is great, isn't it?) In case you haven't heard of it yet, you are the Prince under the King of All Cosmos and you have to roll lots of stuff on Earth up into a huge ball. Your ball (a Katamari) has to be a certain size by the end of the level. The basic trick is rolling smaller things up enough so that you can roll bigger things up so that you can roll the biggest things up.

The storyline isn't very complex or especially important in the game, but here it is. The King of All Cosmos got drunk and knocked all the stars out of the sky on accident. You're the Prince, so you've got to roll up stuff on Earth into big balls, uh, I mean Katamaris that he can somehow turn into more stars. (I'm not trying to insinuate that the game is gay, by the way, even though it probably seems like it. I've played every Katamari Damacy game, they're really good at turning around a bad day) The story never really advances beyond that, but there are countless unexplained weird bits such as Strawberry Pandas (as opposed to the conventional chocolate panda, apparently) and every pre and post-level conversation with the King. The King of All Cosmos is second on my list of Creepiest Monarchs, just behind the Burger King. Compare:


Nice, aren't they? Moving on...

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is the one you'll more likely care about spoilers on, given that it's new and actually has a storyline. The story follows a sort of Indiana Jones-ish path throughout, with alternate history thriving. The main character (who has my name) is a descendant of Sir Francis Drake, English explorer and privateer, and the game begins with him just having found Drake's coffin off the coast of Panama. However, he and the show host Elena soon find out that there is only Drake's diary inside the coffin, not a body. Nathan Drake is then attacked by pirates, saved by his friend Sullivan, and a lot of not too-weird story follows.

The weird part (spoiler alert, again) comes maybe three quarters of the way into the game. Up until then, the story has been just treasure hunting fights between Gabriel Roman (bad guy) and Drake, Elena, and Sullivan (good guys). At that point, suddenly the story shifts into Mutants and Nazis instead of modern pirates and 16th century treasure. It turns out in the end, El Dorado (in this story a gold statue, not a city) corrupts people into mutants. This supplies the enemies for this section of the game, which require a completely different sort of combat, so it's really good for gameplay. Also, there were apparently Nazis looking for the treasure as well that don't really factor into the game other than providing a new look for these chapters. You don't ever fight a Nazi or anything, you just see two U-boats and some rotten Nazi skeletons.

So that gives you Japanese and American examples of weird storylines. The Japanese one is typically crazy, while the American one is just a weird plot twist that didn't make a whole lot of sense, especially the Nazi part. The plot twist allowed for a nice switch-up in gameplay, though, so it's good, but still weird. I wouldn't have included it today if it weren't for how recently I've played it, but I'll be like the Oscars (and Game of the Year awards) and just give it to the last good movie/game that came out this year. Both games are terrific, I should say, these mentions are not in any way to denigrate them.