Loco Roco (PSP) Quick Review
In attempt to set itself apart from other PSP titles at the time, LocoRoco brings you a platformer that does exactly what it promises. It's different, not only from other titles on the handheld console, but from other platformers as well.You play in a world being attacked by the Moja Troop, controlling a LocoRoco who's tasked with saving others of its species from the brutal attack by tilting the world and rolling your way to escape. So let's peek at this one and find out if being different is a good thing
What's Good
- Unique Control Method. Just about every platforming game involves you controlling the character directly. In LocoRoco, that's not the way it works. Instead of moving the character, you control the world itself that it is on. By tilting the world one way or another with the Left and Right shoulder buttons, your character rolls whichever way the hill tilts down. Along the way you'll run into gaps you need to get over, or hills that are too steep to just roll up, which requires you to bounce by holding the two shoulder buttons together and releasing them. The longer you hold them before releasing, the higher your jump will be. It's definitely a different approach to the style of gameplay, and one that will instantly have you intrigued upon booting this game up.
- Colorful World and Enjoyable Soundtrack. This game doesn't even try to present itself as "realistic" in any degree. The creatures and the environments are very cartoony, but they always have something going on whether it's in the fore or background. It adds a certain element of depth to the game, giving the world around you some life instead of it just feeling like rolling across a piece of paper. What helps the background movements pop out even more is the music. It's upbeat, it's enjoyable, and everything moves to it. So while it's easy to space out a bit while playing, you'll eventually space out to the beat of the music, which will make you notice everything that's going on.
What's Bad
- Not All That Challenging. This is my only downside to this game, but it covers a couple of areas. The levels themselves don't really provide much difficulty because they are quite simple and straightforward. All you ever have to do is get to the end, and to do so you have to follow the one path. There's no trickery, no secret dead end pathways, just travel from Point A to Point B. The other thing that doesn't help is your "mission" itself isn't really that difficult either. You have such a limit of "moves" you can do that each obstacle you need to get around is usually solved before you even completely get to it. In each level, there are 20 berries you can collect, which are the creatures you're trying to save. By collecting it you absorb it and essentially grow in number, so each berry adds a single LocoRoco to your blob. There is no requirement for a minimum number you need to save to complete the level, the only thing that matters is your time. So you can gather a single berry, then speed run leaving the others to fend for themselves against the Moja Troop, and you still get a job well done.
Is it Worth It?
While this game is fun, it's not a promising addition to your library. If you're going somewhere that you might have to sit and wait for a few minutes, sure, bring this one along and chunk out a few levels. But the lack of driving force for your "mission" never leaves an opportunity for "failure". There's no urgency to do better, all you have is just a passing desire to do. As far as value goes, you can find this game loose, complete, or sealed for barely more than $5, and that's about the most value you'll get out of LocoRoco in my opinion. It's fun, it's cute, and the music is great (honestly probably the best feature of the entire game), but LocoRoco does nothing to pull you in, or to make you want to stay except give you a new approach to how to control and play a platformer, and even that wears thin after a few levels. I truly feel that this is a game that was made too soon. The world-tilting feature would have been much better suited on the Vita with it's motion technology. In this case, the system itself could be your main source of movement leaving many options open for other control features, which could have then led to more gameplay elements to pull the player in.
Recommended For : Fans of platformers that are just a screech outside "the norm", gamers with minutes of time to throw away in a sitting.
I haven't completed this one, and as you can probably guess from my ending verdict, I probably never will. I played through the first couple of worlds despite my interest in this game going away after the first three or four worlds. Maybe eventually I'll come to the end of this journey but I don't see it in the forseeable future. However, this game did spawn a sequel that's on the same handheld so...maybe things get better?
What's Good
- Unique Control Method. Just about every platforming game involves you controlling the character directly. In LocoRoco, that's not the way it works. Instead of moving the character, you control the world itself that it is on. By tilting the world one way or another with the Left and Right shoulder buttons, your character rolls whichever way the hill tilts down. Along the way you'll run into gaps you need to get over, or hills that are too steep to just roll up, which requires you to bounce by holding the two shoulder buttons together and releasing them. The longer you hold them before releasing, the higher your jump will be. It's definitely a different approach to the style of gameplay, and one that will instantly have you intrigued upon booting this game up.
- Colorful World and Enjoyable Soundtrack. This game doesn't even try to present itself as "realistic" in any degree. The creatures and the environments are very cartoony, but they always have something going on whether it's in the fore or background. It adds a certain element of depth to the game, giving the world around you some life instead of it just feeling like rolling across a piece of paper. What helps the background movements pop out even more is the music. It's upbeat, it's enjoyable, and everything moves to it. So while it's easy to space out a bit while playing, you'll eventually space out to the beat of the music, which will make you notice everything that's going on.
What's Bad
- Not All That Challenging. This is my only downside to this game, but it covers a couple of areas. The levels themselves don't really provide much difficulty because they are quite simple and straightforward. All you ever have to do is get to the end, and to do so you have to follow the one path. There's no trickery, no secret dead end pathways, just travel from Point A to Point B. The other thing that doesn't help is your "mission" itself isn't really that difficult either. You have such a limit of "moves" you can do that each obstacle you need to get around is usually solved before you even completely get to it. In each level, there are 20 berries you can collect, which are the creatures you're trying to save. By collecting it you absorb it and essentially grow in number, so each berry adds a single LocoRoco to your blob. There is no requirement for a minimum number you need to save to complete the level, the only thing that matters is your time. So you can gather a single berry, then speed run leaving the others to fend for themselves against the Moja Troop, and you still get a job well done.
Is it Worth It?
While this game is fun, it's not a promising addition to your library. If you're going somewhere that you might have to sit and wait for a few minutes, sure, bring this one along and chunk out a few levels. But the lack of driving force for your "mission" never leaves an opportunity for "failure". There's no urgency to do better, all you have is just a passing desire to do. As far as value goes, you can find this game loose, complete, or sealed for barely more than $5, and that's about the most value you'll get out of LocoRoco in my opinion. It's fun, it's cute, and the music is great (honestly probably the best feature of the entire game), but LocoRoco does nothing to pull you in, or to make you want to stay except give you a new approach to how to control and play a platformer, and even that wears thin after a few levels. I truly feel that this is a game that was made too soon. The world-tilting feature would have been much better suited on the Vita with it's motion technology. In this case, the system itself could be your main source of movement leaving many options open for other control features, which could have then led to more gameplay elements to pull the player in.
Recommended For : Fans of platformers that are just a screech outside "the norm", gamers with minutes of time to throw away in a sitting.
I haven't completed this one, and as you can probably guess from my ending verdict, I probably never will. I played through the first couple of worlds despite my interest in this game going away after the first three or four worlds. Maybe eventually I'll come to the end of this journey but I don't see it in the forseeable future. However, this game did spawn a sequel that's on the same handheld so...maybe things get better?
