Review – LocoRoco 2 (PSP)

LocoRoco is a bouncy and bubbly platformer, a subdued rainbow of pastel colours and an erratic orchestra of “MuiMui”s and other unintelligible yelps.

The game is inherently simple to pick up and play; the gelatinous Loco blobs slide around the environment, tipped and shook by the player, all while collecting an entire assortment of useless knick-knacks, calorific fruits and blue Play-Doh figures.

But the world’s organic feel and liberated control means that the seemingly-uncontrollable space hoppers can be moved and thrown with an impeccable degree of direction and finesse. New players will giggle at the Loco’s bouncy, rambunctious nature, while Roco savants can spring a gluttonous blob with pinpoint accuracy.

LocoRoco 2 improves on its predecessor by providing those LocoRoco veterans with just a pinch more difficulty, sophistication and interaction. Most levels have a clever gimmick or a fresh new idea, judiciously taught and presented, and never overstaying its welcome. The musical interludes of the first are also injected with gameplay, offering a simple button-tapping rhythm game to offer an additional level of involvement, but not tricky enough to alienate.

LocoRoco manages to be cute without being nauseatingly saccharine; artist Keigo Tsuchiya somehow makes yellow blobs with googly eyes more Picasso than playschool, a mix of intrinsically Japanese and faintly European design, all to the warbling soundtrack of genre-transcending spoofs.

But, while the game offers plenty of new content and ideas, LocoRoco 2 doesn’t fall far from the smiley, Technicolor tree. The original won awards, and gamers’ hearts, with its unique ideas and original designs, but LocoRoco 2 is more of the same – supplementary joy, but far from essential. Loco 3 will perhaps need the oft-requested motion sensor to truly make headlines.

Still; cheep, cheerful, and delivered in bite-size chunks, LocoRoco 2 is joyful exuberance on a UMD and only the curmudgeonliest will disagree.