New PSP Game: Locoroco

September 10, 2006 | General | By: Mark VandeWettering

Carmen bought me a new game for my PSP today: Locoroco

I must admit, despite the fact that PSP hardware rocks all over the DS hardware, I spend way more time playing with my Nintendo DS than I do with the PSP. The simple fact is that there are more games I feel like playing on the DS than on the PSP. Mario Kart. Metroid Prime. Mario & Luigi, Partners in Time. Princess Peach. Starfox DS.

The only games that I really liked for the PSP was Me and My Katamari, which had the quirky gameplay that made me really like the PS2 version. So, it was with some trepidation that Carmen decided to give me Locoroco.

And, it’s very good.

The basic premise: you are a little blobby thing. When you eat orange fruity things, you clone. You can merge your clones into a big ball, or you can break yourself up into individual little guys. You try to navigate a world, and make as many clones of yourself as you can. The controls are very, very simple. You hit the L button to rotate the world left. You hit the R button to rotate the world right. You hit both of them to jump. The circle button either breaks you apart, or joins you back together. That’s it.

Unlike previous games which literally crippled my hands, this one was quite fun and relaxing, and after a couple of hours dorking around with it, I still can type. It’s a very “zen” sort of game. It’s hard to totally die, but it is also hard to maximize your points in a given level. While some of the levels seem a bit repetitive, overall, it is really quite fun. I suspect it will mean that I’ll get a bit more use out of my PSP over the next few weeks.

It’s also got a nice screencapture facility, so here are a couple of random screengrabs from the game in progress.

Locoroco Gameplay
Locoroco Gameplay

If you’re into kind of cutesy games with novel gameplay, cute graphics, and infectious theme music, consider picking this one up.

[tags]PSP,Game Review,Locoroco[/tags]

Addendum: Videocrab has some of the music from Locoroco as an mp3 download. I was hoping that the Sony website would have these available for download, but apparently you need Flash to work to do anything useful on their website. Sigh.

Comments

Comment from Josh Bancroft
Time 9/10/2006 at 5:45 pm

I swear we are twins separated at birth, or something. 🙂

I got Loco Roco yesterday, too. I’ve been looking forward to it – simple, fun gameplay, weird like Katamari, etc.

I played it for a couple of hours yesterday, and a couple of hours today, and I’ve already finished it. I died exactly one time. I’m nothing special, so I guess that means the game is pretty easy. But to tell the truth, I like that about it, too. It will be a good friv game to introduce my 3 year old daughter to (I’ve been trying to get her to play more videogames ;-).

Have fun!

Comment from Mark
Time 9/11/2006 at 9:31 am

Heh. I also finished it. I guess I’m not as good as you, because I died more than once (but probably not more than five times) and it took me two days. I have only gotten all 20 of the little guys twice though, so there is lots of room for bettering my score.

I find it rather pleasant to play. I’m finding it a nice contrast to Starfox DS, which I like, but I’m on a level which requires me to shoot down enemy missiles, and if you miss them, you have to restart the level. That’s faintly annoying.