My vote for sleeper game of the year

[EricaLubarsky]

goes to....

Katamari Damacy (or Damashi depending on translation).

You play as the son of the king of the universe. The king has knocked all the stars out of the sky and has broken them. Your job is to pick up a super-ball-sized gravity ball and roll it around, picking up things until the ball is enormous and the king can compact it and throw it up into the sky to replace the missing stars. This game is as unique and as bizarre as it gets. Half the fun of the game is its quirkiness, the other half ot the fun comes from rolling a ball around and having it pick up tacks, mice, dogs, humans, and eventually islands and skyscrapers.

For 20 dollars it certainly is worth a try.

[Phil Helmuth]

20 bucks? Just donate it to charity rather than throw it in the trash on this crap.

[EricaLubarsky]

Originally posted by: Phil Helmuth
20 bucks? Just donate it to charity rather than throw it in the trash on this crap.

Sad that a 39 year old guy who plays games for a living wouldn't appreciate the finer technological games.

[Phil Helmuth]

Do you have an infinte amount of money? If not why not put the money towards a " finer technological game" such as GTA: San Andreas. That is a " finer technological game."

[irontoad]

Looks like an interesting game... definitely has a unique plot!

[Evilmav2]

That Damaschi game looks pretty good, and the fan reviews look pretty positive. I myself, have been completely addicted to Rome: Total War for the last two weeks. The darned thing is as addictive a game as I have ever seen, and the battle engine is unprecedentedly superb (it's only been out three weeks, and it has already won the IGN best game of 04 award, and gamespy Best strategy game award)...

[EricaLubarsky]

Interesting factoid: Rome's video engine was used on the History Channel's hit show Decisive battles. The show was able to recreate battles of more than 50,000 men without a multi-million dollar budget.

[Evilmav2]

As I watch the history channel all the time, I've seen all of the episodes of the Summer series, Decisive Battles, and that's just one more reason I've spent the last half-year anticipating the release of this darned game. I'm also a huge Roman history buff, so after playing the thing I would say that this is certainly the most enjoyable game that I have played since Civ III and Warcraft III came out, and for my own taste, I actually find RTW to be a superior game to both of those recent classics, but it's just unfortunate that the programmers didn't smooth out a couple of minor bugs before releasing it...

[Murphy3]

The Damaschi game looks....well, I'll defer to Phil Helmuth on that one.

The Rome game looks pretty damn good though.

[mavsman55]

Originally posted by: Phil Helmuth
20 bucks? Just donate it to charity rather than throw it in the trash on this crap.

It's a video game. Don't be such a douche.

[Rod1975]

Speaking of sleeper games, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms series is very addicting. Your mission is to unite ancient China under one flag. I'm playing VIII now and I hope to get IX soon.