Eat. Shit. Die.
Some argue that is the sum of our existence. Keita Takahashi of Katamari Damacy fame decided to replace die with stretch and make an event out of it.
To sum up Noby Noby boy, it’s Katamari Damacy with stretching instead of rolling and a global goal instead of a local one. Like Katamari, the game is primarily controlled with the two controller sticks and the shoulder buttons. Your avatar for this bizarre world is BOY whose goal is to stretch so that he can contribute that stretching to GIRL who is stretching out from Earth into the solar system. I hear she just made it to the moon. Mars is next. Yes, it uses the real scale. Mars may be a while.
To stretch boy, you use the fairly simple controls. Left stick controls his head, right stick controls his ass. L2 eats stuff and makes his head jump around, R2 poops stuff and flops around his buttocks. It seems if you eat the right amount of things they can combine into strange creations such as a masturbating toucan-man. Twist and turn around trees and other heavy objects for some tension to get your stretching going. I once floated up into the sky and looped myself into three donut shaped holes and then brought them crashing down to earth.
No one was harmed.
So the game is hardly a game at all outside of the meta-goal of getting GIRL so stretched that we get to visit new places like the moon. What’s crazy is some of the reactions people have been having to the game. Without goals people seem confused. Sure, there is the goal of everyone stretching really far so that GIRL can make it to the various planets but there is nothing else outside of a few Trophies.Â
The idea of just playing in a virtual world seems lost on people. Have we gotten to the point where just playing isn’t enough? Noby Noby Boy gives us plenty to do but no real reason to do it. Does that take away from what makes a game? Isn’t the sense of a game in it’s rules as well as it’s goals? And if the goals aren’t very strong does that happen to take away from it?
The fat that you can make your own goals like “connect the clouds” or “make a freaky potato guy” allows for more than enough to do. For someone like me who prefers rigid goals in games I can find it to be frustrating as hell at times but it still feels nice to sit back and just play.
