LocoRoco 2 Review

The game is gorgeous, really showing off the quality of the PSP screen.

Seeking out berries is never a chore because the levels are designed to make the player always feel they're within reach. The more you play the better you get at recognising the game's signposting of secret areas. You pass one by and stick a mental post-it note on your brain, a reminder for repeat attempts. You fly by areas as the environment takes the LocoRoco on a whirlwind tour, perhaps on a gush of wind, and you think, 'there's obviously something up there, but how do I get it?'. You poke and probe the surrounding area and, eventually, find a stray vine that allows the LocoRoco to swing up and away, or a plant that sucks them up and spits them out somewhere else. You come across friendly, sleeping animals that can be awoken with song if you've found enough LocoRoco. If you haven't, you can't help but actively search out more in order to see what the animal does. Brilliantly, LocoRoco 2, like its predecessor, achieves that magical goal of not being too easy, and not being hard.

And it's also a lot of fun, and often spectacular to look at, despite how simple the graphics appear to be. There are characters you meet in certain levels that prevent the gameplay from getting too repetitive. Take Afro Nyokki, for example, who lends his Afro to the LocoRoco in one level so that they can break through obstacles. At one point, the LocoRoco climb into a brick and take it for a ride, rolling it into square gaps in the environment and opening up new areas. The environment will also, every now and again, take the LocoRoco on roller coaster rides, as it did in the first game. We've already mentioned riding on gushes of wind, but the LocoRoco will also find themselves hurtling through tiny gaps that twist and turn at breakneck speed, before being spat out on the other side of the level. One level, set inside the bowels of a giant penguin, sees the LocoRoco attach themselves to what can only be polyps as they travel through its squishy innards. You will even cause the penguin to jolt and change position, which in turn alters the orientation of the level. Brilliant.

Beyond the collection of berries, replayability is added through the collection of everything else you could possibly imagine and more. There are stamps to find, which are then used to fill stamp cards, then there are loads of different materials to find, used to build furniture in the Mui Mui House. There are also a couple of disappointing mini-games - one is a whack-a-mole style quick time event, the other sees you guessing which LocoRoco will win a race. Both are pretty pointless.

It's similar to the first game, but still worth a purchase.

As before, everything you do in the game is linked to music, from the singing mouths of LocoRoco to the occasional rhythm action sections that trigger when you need to wake up a sleeping creature. Apart from the main LocoRoco tune, which, I'm sorry, is just bloody annoying, the rest of the music is actually really good. I found myself somehow wishing I could put the acoustic guitar song that plays when you're fiddling about in the Mui Mui House on my iPod, as well as the track that plays when you highlight Viole, the purple confident tomboy LocoRoco, on the character select screen, so that I might brighten up my gloomy commute. Yes it's all sung in a made up language that amounts to little more than gibberish, but it's better than a lot of the crap that currently infects the charts. Fingers crossed Sony Computer Entertainment Europe decides to release the game's soundtrack on these shores.

Speaking of commutes, LocoRoco 2 is designed so that it can be played, and enjoyed, on the go. It won't take you any longer than around ten minutes to complete each of the 40 levels, unless of course you're poring through every detail, hunting down that last, hidden berry. This staccato structure makes the game great for regular short journeys and for those PSP owners who only play their hand held when travelling.

Negatives? Some will think the game too short, the gameplay repetitive and the experience too similar to the original to warrant forking out another £20, but those people are heartless grouches who no doubt spend their time scaring children and trampling on daisies. For everyone else, LocoRoco 2 is the most uplifting game available, not only on the title-shy PSP, but on any platform.