LocoRoco
You must buy this game. The power of LocoRoco compels you!
Published: September 21, 2006
Oh dear, sweet lordy, I've been cuted-out. Seriously, it's almost painful, and I can't get this goddamn song out of my head. I close my eyes, and I see a gently rotating world with a little blob of happiness lip synching along to the music in my brain and all I want to do is guide the little guy into that wall because it looks like there's probably a secret passageway there. Not since Lumines has a game managed to stick with me after I've played it.
And it's not like LocoRoco is all that different from the game that I played half a year ago. That demo level (which then became the downloadable demo a few weeks later), is, more or less, the first level of the game, and the very same bits of gameplay there are carried out to varying degrees in the rest of the game. The objective? Eat berries and get your ass to Mars--er, the end of the level, sorry.
It's an insanely simple concept, too, utilizing only three buttons: the L and R shoulders and the Circle button. That's it. Seriously. Tapping either L or R rotates the whole world, sending the LocoRoco down the Sam-made incline, and holding both shoulders down and releasing will let your little guy jump. This is also how he attacks enemies by just bumping into them. Tapping Circle zaps him into as many pieces as berries you've scarfed down to make him pleasantly plump. Holding the Circle Button will bring him back together.
I know this is the same stuff I've mentioned in our preview a while back, but this review is going to end up awfully short if I don't at least try to explain some of the basics again. Okay, here's a new one: if you happen to have enough berries and thus little singing LocoRoco, you can wake up random things in the level. Usually this means one of the little MuiMui of which there are three in every level, and which give you more tunes in the Loco House (more on that in a second), but there are random times that you'll awaken one of the planetary denizens long enough for them to feed you a piece for -- you guessed it -- the Loco House.
That house is basically just a playground for the LocoRoco AI, allowing you to place tons of little objects all over the place and them watch them play. Or at least that was all I got out of it. If there's more, it's never explained in-game. You can speed up the delivery of parts by playing a handful of mini-games from the main menu using the berries you pick up regularly during the main game, but again, it all sort of comes back to the Loco House if you don't want to play through the main game. You can unlock the ability to make your own levels, but like the Loco House, I never really found it all that interesting.
Which also means that you're really only working toward one goal, and that's either perfection of the levels, meaning all "money" berries, MuiMui, all 20 LocoRoco-growing berries and just beating the time trials... or just finishing the game, which is over quickly. If you do go the former route, there's actually quite a bit of puzzling and finesse to some of the levels, since you can very easily whittle away half of your little LocoRoco bits by just bumping into some spikes or having them gobbled up by a Roja, the main antagonists of the game.
So it's a simple concept, that much I've probably hammered home by now. It's also impossibly, undeniably adorable. From the way all the little LocoRoco sing different parts of the background music, or the way they all sort of just yell as they merge back together, with one of them inevitably singing out in a little solo or the way they all try to stack when they're separated, the animation and behavior of the little critters is just "awww"-inducing.
And it helps that the game runs creamy smoothly and with the kind of won't-cut a ballon vector-like graphics of a hi-res Flash presentation. It's all just so damned colorful and innocent and pure. Even the "bad" guys are non-threatening, and best of all it loads up in a little over a second most of the time. So much for the PSP having crap load times, eh?
The audio is the same way: bright, cheerful, filled with innocent, pure fun. And though it's no doubt a byproduct of the fact that you'll hear them repeated so much, the actual tunes themselves just embed themselves in your subconscious, leaking out while you sleep or let your thoughts wander. Seriously, the entire time I've been writing this review, the songs have been cycling through my brain. So too have the effects, which are really just the occasional sliding sound or a light pop or maybe the lighting-fast "MuiMui" of the MuiMui (hey, it's all they know how to say, give 'em a break). I never thought gibberish songs would be so... catchy.
But that just describes the whole LocoRoco experience. It's catchy, it's non-threatening, it's just... cute, which I suppose was the idea. It's sadly a little too short to be a really meaty experience, but while it lasts -- and for us non-perfectionist sorts, the first dozen or so levels that you try to get across-the-board perfects on -- it's so charming that you won't want it to end.
Luckily, I get the feeling that it does manage to duck out right before all the simple concepts introduced at the beginning of the game and carried through to the end star to wear thin. Like all cute things, LocoRoco doesn't wear out its welcome.
And it's not like LocoRoco is all that different from the game that I played half a year ago. That demo level (which then became the downloadable demo a few weeks later), is, more or less, the first level of the game, and the very same bits of gameplay there are carried out to varying degrees in the rest of the game. The objective? Eat berries and get your ass to Mars--er, the end of the level, sorry.
It's an insanely simple concept, too, utilizing only three buttons: the L and R shoulders and the Circle button. That's it. Seriously. Tapping either L or R rotates the whole world, sending the LocoRoco down the Sam-made incline, and holding both shoulders down and releasing will let your little guy jump. This is also how he attacks enemies by just bumping into them. Tapping Circle zaps him into as many pieces as berries you've scarfed down to make him pleasantly plump. Holding the Circle Button will bring him back together.
I know this is the same stuff I've mentioned in our preview a while back, but this review is going to end up awfully short if I don't at least try to explain some of the basics again. Okay, here's a new one: if you happen to have enough berries and thus little singing LocoRoco, you can wake up random things in the level. Usually this means one of the little MuiMui of which there are three in every level, and which give you more tunes in the Loco House (more on that in a second), but there are random times that you'll awaken one of the planetary denizens long enough for them to feed you a piece for -- you guessed it -- the Loco House.
That house is basically just a playground for the LocoRoco AI, allowing you to place tons of little objects all over the place and them watch them play. Or at least that was all I got out of it. If there's more, it's never explained in-game. You can speed up the delivery of parts by playing a handful of mini-games from the main menu using the berries you pick up regularly during the main game, but again, it all sort of comes back to the Loco House if you don't want to play through the main game. You can unlock the ability to make your own levels, but like the Loco House, I never really found it all that interesting.
Which also means that you're really only working toward one goal, and that's either perfection of the levels, meaning all "money" berries, MuiMui, all 20 LocoRoco-growing berries and just beating the time trials... or just finishing the game, which is over quickly. If you do go the former route, there's actually quite a bit of puzzling and finesse to some of the levels, since you can very easily whittle away half of your little LocoRoco bits by just bumping into some spikes or having them gobbled up by a Roja, the main antagonists of the game.
So it's a simple concept, that much I've probably hammered home by now. It's also impossibly, undeniably adorable. From the way all the little LocoRoco sing different parts of the background music, or the way they all sort of just yell as they merge back together, with one of them inevitably singing out in a little solo or the way they all try to stack when they're separated, the animation and behavior of the little critters is just "awww"-inducing.
And it helps that the game runs creamy smoothly and with the kind of won't-cut a ballon vector-like graphics of a hi-res Flash presentation. It's all just so damned colorful and innocent and pure. Even the "bad" guys are non-threatening, and best of all it loads up in a little over a second most of the time. So much for the PSP having crap load times, eh?
The audio is the same way: bright, cheerful, filled with innocent, pure fun. And though it's no doubt a byproduct of the fact that you'll hear them repeated so much, the actual tunes themselves just embed themselves in your subconscious, leaking out while you sleep or let your thoughts wander. Seriously, the entire time I've been writing this review, the songs have been cycling through my brain. So too have the effects, which are really just the occasional sliding sound or a light pop or maybe the lighting-fast "MuiMui" of the MuiMui (hey, it's all they know how to say, give 'em a break). I never thought gibberish songs would be so... catchy.
But that just describes the whole LocoRoco experience. It's catchy, it's non-threatening, it's just... cute, which I suppose was the idea. It's sadly a little too short to be a really meaty experience, but while it lasts -- and for us non-perfectionist sorts, the first dozen or so levels that you try to get across-the-board perfects on -- it's so charming that you won't want it to end.
Luckily, I get the feeling that it does manage to duck out right before all the simple concepts introduced at the beginning of the game and carried through to the end star to wear thin. Like all cute things, LocoRoco doesn't wear out its welcome.