Here's the thing. On the day that We Love Katamari was released, IT Reviews did an experiment. We went around four or five high profile video game high street retailers to look for the game. It's really quite worrying what we found. Half of them didn't stock it at all, and of those who did, none displayed it in anything even approaching a prominent position. Instead, in the key areas were the likes of FIFA 06 and Need For Speed: Most Wanted, weeks after both were released for the first time.

The potentially sad epitaph to all of this is that We Love Katamari's sales figures are likely to be quite low. So the chances of another publisher of EA's ilk picking up a game like this are diminished. For Katamari is a big hit in its native Japan, and that's a country where people are continually generating original and downright bizarre video games.

Which leads us to We Love Katamari. The crux of the game involves you rolling a ball around. The idea is that you roll the ball over objects, which then become stuck to it and make the ball bigger as a result. At first, only small items will become attached, but as the size of your ball builds up, larger and larger items can then be added to it. And believe us, that ball will - if you play the game right through - be huge by the time you're done with it, and capable of picking up some frankly gigantic objects (right up to the sun itself...).

It's a stunningly simple gameplay concept and yet a compelling one. Over time you'll be tested as to how big you can make the ball, how quickly you can get the ball to a certain size and how big the items you can attract are. There are also opponents you'll need to defeat. Yet - thanks to a simple control system and an able tutorial - it's all devilishly easy to get to grips with and delightfully good fun.

It's backed up by a plot that could politely be described as unique, and which we won't dig into here. But let's just say it's something you can enjoy with a great big grin on your face. In fact that goes for the game as a whole. With its very stylised graphics, its hauntingly brilliant soundtrack and sublime gameplay, We Love Katamari really is a very major treat.

It's not without problems, with some levels getting a little bit annoying and the whole style likely to isolate some people. But for those who get it, for those who become immersed in the single player experience, and for those who dare to hand over their life to the multiplayer options, this is brilliant. It dares to be different, it bothers to try new things and it's as far removed from FIFA 2006 as you can get.

Perhaps that's why not enough people are buying it.

Daringly original yet incredibly simple, you won't see anything like We Love Katamari again all year. Don't miss out.