big green blob, small pink ones

Well, then, LocoRoco... where do you begin? Sony have at last come up with a game tailored for simple portable fun; something they can finally, maybe, hopefully lord it over Nintendo with. It's a bloody good stab at it too. Out go streetgangs, lazily-coded ports, and duff control schemes and in comes simplicity and an attachment to squealing emotive little singing blobs of colour. Are we on for a win here? It certainly seems that way. Reading the video game forums out there (not recommended), you'd think this was the second coming.

The dirty great gouging hook here is the wonderfully fluid 2D vector animation. I can think of nothing as distinct or startlingly well implemented since the rotoscoping of Another World, it is that striking. The whole of LocoRoco's world pulsates with silky smooth, flat shaded 2D vector lovelies. Your LocoRoco pebbles bob around singing away, never idle, occupying an organic world of bopping flowers, wide eyed bugs and evil dreadlocked spider things. A comfort cocoon of wibbling two dimensional swish.

Too comforting, unfortunately. The design is so restrained; so incredibly, boringly, single-bloody-mindedly god damned safe, you can smell the focus group furrowed-brow discussions that led to it. Opulent animation is no consolation for something that so quickly becomes so dull. Not to say that the charm ever really wears off, but something as visually striking should not become so instantly predictable.

did that thing just say mooey?

So that's the visual design; is there any more to the game than that? For the sake of this review, lets assume that there is. Back to the controls: you use shoulder buttons for navigation and nothing more. You tilt the world, not your pebble-blobs, Monkey Ball style, and it works reasonably well. Being digital, of course, control is pretty restrained. Want to quickly switch directions, or directly control the speed of tilt? You can't. Totally intentional though, not a problem, but it does impose a very sedate pace on the whole thing.

Jumps are controlled by tapping both shoulders at once, with a small time charge determining height. The tilt also has an effect here, determining the direction of the jump. Once you begin charging the jump, tilt is locked (you are holding both direction buttons down), so jump-navigation is - again - fairly sedate, and needs a little pre-planning. This is the game's biggest strength and weakness, in terms of simple enjoyment. There is fun to be had experimenting with the effect of tilt on jumps, once off-ground you are then free to tilt (at fixed rate) to land your blobbings. Nearly all of the exploration is done with the same two or three jump-tilt tricks though, and this, coupled with the slow pace, can be something of a chore.

inspirational orange spiral

Choresome mainly down to the choice of classic invisible pathways leading to hidden areas. To 'clock' this game, you basically need to bounce off every available wall, floor and ceiling to search for hidden crap. There are variations on this with breakable walls, switches, tilting doors, yadda, yadda, yadda, but they are all discovered by brainlessly bumping around the scenery. There are also plenty of one-shot moments, after which going back becomes impossible, making this process all the more time consuming. Only the most obsessive collect-o-trons will bother with this supremely boring task.

The essential goal is progression, but collection forms the bulk of gameplay. As you travel, the LocoRoco dude you start with can eat flower buds in order to multiply from 1 to 20. These 20 blobbers can combine, or be split up, but as control is indirect you spend more time than would have been interesting combined. The mechanic is not very well used, it basically comes down to very obvious areas where you need to split the LocoRoco to navigate tight spaces, perhaps three times per level. No real skill is involved in this.

We could discuss level design more, but you'd be better off downloading the demo. I think you know where this is going - level design is very, very samey, not much changes as you progress, and overall the whole thing is very, very easy.

jump thud hidden stuff

Being very, very easy is, of course, no fatality, but there is just no skill involved; nothing to engage the gamer beyond passive design elements. It is also clearly inspired by Donkey Konga but without, you know, things like progressive level design, more than one idea, skill requirement, and a difficulty curve.

What else...? Sound design forms part of the overall slicker-than-slick design package. The songs go hand in hand with the animation, and would have been discussed earlier had I wanted to get bogged down with the whole ’style over substance’ debate this game raises. The LocoRoco blobbings are perfectly lip-synced to jibberish lyrics that feature in every song, and even change to harmonies or solos when split up or combined. Each race of LocoRoco also has their own singing voice, which will charm, and racial stereotype, which may not. There are not enough songs though, and after a time they all grate. Should your OCD get the better of you, go on a hidden area hunt and the soundtrack will eventually lead men to kill.

So we are left with wilfully conservative level design that never gets going, tedious hidden stuff, and mini games barely worth a mention. Depending on how cynical you are, this is either a triumph of charming visual design, or a squalid empty shell of a non-game. I'm a cynic, so this is non-game, and you are best off avoiding it. A very deliberate ploy by Sony to reassure lifestyle subscribers that they aren't missing out on all that cool DS stuff, in my opinion. Either way, the PSP now has a worthy mascot.