The gaming equivalent of putting on rainbow-striped overalls and top hat and eating a big bowl of candy.
Yes, this has somehow been transformed into a video game. You basically control a round blob and bounce your way through colourful level after colourful level. That's about all there really is to the game, and yet somehow it works pretty well. In fact I fell in love with the premise as I'm sure a lot of gamers did - for the firs couple of hours. Unfortunately you do soon come to realise that there isn't a whole lot more to the experience.
Props to the developers for keeping this title so old-school that there are only really three buttons used in the entire game. This is at once one of the game's biggest pluses as well as the reason you'll be looking to play something else before it's over. The innovation has to be applauded, given that you are not actually controlling the on-screen character itself, but simply using the shoulder buttons seperately to rotate the landscape, which of course results in your blob rolling in either direction.
Well, apart from the rolling and bouncing (using the L and R shoulder buttons together) there is also the 'squeezing through tight cracks' segment (not nearly as pornographic as it sounds). This involves a press of a face PSP face button (the others are useless) which will divide your liquidy friend into several smaller liquidy friends. When in the form of a singular blob, your blob will be larger the greater number of these friends that you find during your bouncy, squeezy misssions.
The music in LocoRoco deserves special mention. Here you will find, according to which colored blob you decide to play as, some the catchiest tunes ever to be found in a hand-held title, albeit often sung by what sounds like toddlers. The are sung in completely nonsensical languages and have no meaning whatsoever, yet the discerning listener will notice the resemblance to several actual languages, such as French and Spanish in some of the songs. Unfortunately, some of these tracks become quite annoying after a few listens, just like hearing primary school first graders singing the national anthem is cute once, but if forced to hear it repeatedly, you'd opt for ear-removal surgery.
Basically I was left with the feeling thatthis could have been a classic but isn't. Innovation can be a bee-atch. Not to mention that the extras on offer here bite. A house for you LocoRocos to play in? Honestly? That's our incentive to come back for more? Well.. thanks. That feels like recieving my 7th pair of socks in the one Christmas. I'll have warm feet but.. they're socks.
GRAPHICS: 9
SOUND: 8
GAMEPLAY: 7.5
LASTABILITY: 6.5
OVERALL: 7.5
Haven't played the sequels at the time of writing. Look forward to more variety in the gameplay department.