Loco Roco (PSP)

I just finished the last level of Loco Roco for the PSP, and I'm pretty sure I'm done with it, so all you readers out there can get the benefit of a post-mortem.

Loco Roco is another of those quirky Japanese games that we seem to be blessed with so many of lately. It used to be that stuff like this was jealously kept from us gaijin by the gaming powers that be, but the combination of a dawning region-free sensibility plus a shortage of competition in the handheld game market have led to more and more of this "only in Japan" craziness making the crossing and landing in our living rooms.

The premise is something a little like a cross between Katamari Damacy and Marble Madness, set in a 2D scrolling landscape. You take control of a Loco Roco, a little blob-like thing that speaks a Simlish-style gibberish. It transpires that the worlds of the Loco Rocos have been invaded by menacing black blobby-things called Mojas, and it's up to you to guide the Loco Rocos through a range of hallucinogenic landscapes, and help them to survive, explore, ... er... breed... and... um... sing. Breeding and singing are a big part of the game, seriously.

The worlds of the Loco Rocos consist of a fair range of scenery. The game starts in some fairly generic grassy hills, reminiscent of first levels of platformers everywhere, but quickly moves on to some significantly more original achievements. Jungles offer fast-flowing rivers that carry your Locos around, vines to swing on, and sticky leaf-layers to hang from like monkeys. The obligatory ice levels are filled with slippery floors and frozen chutes that let your Locos build up amazing speed. And several levels are set inside giant animals, where you must navigate from the creature's mouth, to its... er... lower exit, contending with giant hanging tonsils, spongy internal organs that happen to make fantastic trampolines, and the myriad dangers of peristalsis.

The landscapes have a fantastic organic quality, vibrating and shaking in time to your Loco Roco's motions with the qualities of authentic physics. The "inside the monster" levels are the best example of this, and are fantastic to play. Never have I been more convinced I was in the lower intestine of a ninety-foot penguin.

You don't get to directly control your Loco Roco. Rather than command the blobby protagonists to move, you instead get to tilt the entire world and roll them places. Holding the left shoulder button of the PSP tilts the world left, up to a maximum of about 60 degrees, and likewise the right shoulder tilts it right. This will usually induce your Loco Roco to roll "downhill", which is hopefully the way you want it to go. If this fails, your Loco Roco will usually get the hint anyway in a second or two and try and go in the direction you're indicating.

You can also press both shoulder buttons at the same time to shake the world (which basically makes your Loco Roco jump). Finally, you can press the circle button to split the Loco Roco up into a bunch of smaller versions of itself, to fit through tight gaps and solve other problems. In this state you're vulnerable to leaving some of yourself behind, but luckily you can quickly form up any Locos within sight and reach by holding down the circle button again.

Loco Roco sports some 40-ish levels. Finishing the levels is very easy - in fact, my PSP says I took about seven hours to do it, and that's including a couple of hours I spent messing around with the minigames and the Loco House (more of which later). Getting to the end of the game is never at any stage a real challenge, and feels more like an enjoyable sightseeing tour. It's almost ideal for children, first-time gamers, or those who like their platformers unthreatening (like myself).

However, for those who want to be challenged, the real meat of the game is in finding the bonus items. On each level, you are scored on how many Loco Roco you manage to find (for a perfect score of 20 per level), how many Loco House parts you find, and various other factors including time. Of note is that each level features three tiny golem-like creatures called Mui Mui, who are apparently friends of the Locos. Most of the game's unlockables (such as the minigames and the Loco Houses) are keyed off how many Mui Muis you've found in total, so there's a reasonable incentive to catch these things. You can, of course, repeat the levels as often as you like, and once a Mui Mui is found they stay found, no matter how often you re-try the stage.

I should note that the placement of the secrets themselves is fantastic - you have the clear sense that the level design is by a single mind. Placements of hidden items are fair, reasonably intuitive, and never ask you to, say, jump to what appears to be your doom in order to find them. You'll never be disappointed by the level layout - it's a minor masterpiece. When you discover a breakable wall or a hidden passageway, you never need to wonder whether to go through it - it'll always be worth your while, and if there's hazards along the hidden path, you'll find a handy teleporter-ish thing at the end so you don't have to jump them going back as well.

The art style is adorably simple and cute, making stong use of clean lines, bold primary colours, and a minimum of clutter in the backgrounds. It's distinctive, and perfectly suited to the feel and theme of the game.

But the real star of Loco Roco is the sound. Your Loco Roco is a chatty little creature, and will mutter to itself as it rolls along to inform you of its surroundings. The presence of dangerous spikes on the screen elicits a scared little whimper; nearby enemies cause your Loco to exclaim "Moja!", and when your Loco knows there's one of those little golem things nearby you'll hear a joyful cry of "Mui Mui!".

What's more, your Loco interacts with the soundtrack. Each level features one of a wide range of catchy tunes (think We Love Katamari), which are great all by themselves. What makes them better, however, is that the vocal track is actually sung by your Loco. Each of the different types of Loco Roco (six in all) has a different vocal styling, ranging from child's song, to opera, to the black Loco's deep soul funk voice. As you meander through the level, they'll sing the vocals to the level's music. Split into the multiple mini-locos, and suddenly your vocals are being performed by a choir. It's fantastic to hear, and adds a whole layer of charm and character to the game.

Loco Roco also features several mini-games. The most notable is the Loco House, where you can use "parts" you've unlocked throughout the main game to build a playground for the Locos. It works much in the style of The Incredible Machine, where you're creating elaborate setups to move the frustratingly inane Locos around the screen and collect further unlockables, which are often floating in midair or other such inaccessible locales. It's kind of fun, and the focus of much of the bonus content is on acquiring bigger houses and more parts. Unfortunately, the parts are so useful and the space to build in so small and uninteresting that it doesn't take long before you can do pretty much any task it sets you using the same three or four pieces. It would have been great if this aspect of the game had been fleshed out a lot more.

Myself, I'm not going back to find all the Mui Muis and so forth. Part of the reason is that I'm not really that enthused by what they unlock, but the main reason is jumping puzzles. Superman has Lex Luthor, the Batman has the Joker; I have jumping puzzles. I hates them, as anyone who read my experience with Mega Man: Powered Up already knows. And while you can complete each and every level with nary a tricky jump to be seen, the process of finding the secrets is littered with some of the most frustrating, annoying, maddening jumps I've ever seen in a platformer.

To their credit, they don't kill you if you stuff them up (mostly). But the game's jumping controls are more than a little squirrely, the tilt-based gameplay is disorienting, and squishy surfaces, tilting platforms, and a character that's prone to roll off anything smaller than your thumb go together in a combination that on the later levels will have you wanting to throw your PSP at the wall.

This is a great game; it's original, it's fun, it's charming, and it's fantastic that things like this are being released. But you'll be charged the full premium price for it, and completing the levels won't take you very long at all, so if you're going to buy it, just be sure that you're happy with getting a quality experience instead of an epically long one, or be ready to face some fiendish jumping madness.

This review has been edited from one previously posted at The Dust Forms Words on 31/07/2006.

Score: 15 out of 20 (A great game, but not exceptional)


Release date: June 2006
Developed by: Japan Studio
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment