"Discover What It's Like to be Fat and Roll Everywhere."
by Lisa Foiles

My guess is that it was right around the time I was muttering clever yet nonsensical swear words and readying myself to shove my DS stylus into the sunless cavities of the nearest living thing, doubtlessly due to my 100th reentry into that damn timed castle/ruins/place thing in Zelda: Phantom Hourglass to do the SAME PUZZLE that I’d already done A BUTTMILLION TIMES, when Joel, my life co-star, realized that he was the nearest living thing and got quite nervous. “Why don’t you try this LocoRoco game instead?” he suggested, trying to convince the cat to walk the game over to me so he could stay a safe distance away.

My initial reactions to LocoRoco were as follows:

“What is this tomfoolery?”
“Wha- why am I a giant fat blob? I bet this thing can’t jump!”
“Oh, geez, the blobs are yelling. A lot of yelling going on.”
“Who is this ‘Roy’ guy and why do 5-year-olds keep shouting his name?!”

I played through the first few levels giggling to myself about how ridiculous it was, spewing sarcastic remarks, and having no motivation to get points or find secret areas. Then I finished the game – and realized I couldn’t live without it. I needed more. MORE.

The story of LocoRoco 2 is very similar to that of the first installment: You are a blob who eats other blobs (your friends, who somehow don’t mind being eaten) in order to grow into a big-ass blob of happy, shouting, colorful delight. You roll around your blob world eating pink bugs and red flowers while singing mirthful songs of complete incoherent gibberish. Oh yeah, and there are these evil dudes called Moja that try to infiltrate your colorful world with black clouds of…evil? So you tell them to get bent and save everyone. Then everyone sings. And all is frolicsome.

The controls for this game are the simplest I’ve ever seen for a PSP game. You roll your happy blob around by literally tilting the world, using the right trigger/bumper button to tilt the world to the right and same with the left. To jump, you press and hold both trigger buttons and release them when you want your LocoRoco to jump, the height of your jump being in direct proportion to the amount of time you hold down the buttons. That’s about it.

One major addition to LocoRoco 2 is that you can now swim underwater. And it’s a BITCH. I usually hate swimming in games *COUGH* MARIO *COUGH* but LocoRoco 2 takes that hate to a whole new level. On dry land, you have the option of going as fast or slow as you’d like, taking time to find secret areas or just whizzing by everything as fast you can while sticking out your tongue and holding out your middle fingers (not really). Under water, everything is SO. EFFING. SLOW. Your blob becomes extremely difficult to maneuver and you find yourself floating right onto enemies with no way of getting the hell out of the way. I’d compare it to being the passenger in a Hummer being driven by your half-blind grandmother going 10 mph on a 60 mph road, and being able to do nothing but wince as she slowly drifts into a ditch full of lava. Still with me? Okay, good.

Another inevitable frustration you will have when first playing LocoRoco 2 are the mysterious branches. You have the ability to jump and hold onto these random branches, but you have no idea what to do once you’re there. Your blob just shows a big “?”. This goes on for a LONG TIME. After a while you just get annoyed that your game seems to be just as clueless as you are about these stupid branches. And if you don’t know, and the game doesn’t know, then WHY THE DILL ARE THEY THERE?!

(P.S. YouDoFindOutEventuallytButSeriouslyWTF)

One of my favorite things about the LocoRoco games is that they live up to my jumping standards. If you know me or have read any of my other reviews, you know that I am not satisfied with the height of my characters’ jumps unless I find them sipping lattes and eating grits on a space station after just a feather tap on the jump button. Jumping is not a problem in LocoRoco. And that makes me smile. Another enjoyable aspect is the music. You will find the songs, the ones that sound like babbling pre-schoolers, either vomit-inducingly cute or painfully irritating. It really depends on who you are, but I personally will go with ‘cute.’

The game isn’t LittleBigPlanet-charming, but close. You don’t NEED to play the first LocoRoco before picking up the sequel because there really isn’t a continuing story, but do it anyway. So, in conclusion, PUT DOWN YOUR FPS’S AND GAY RPG’S AND HAVE SOME EASY, ADORABLE, MINDLESS FUN, DAMMIT! (And I promise I won’t make fun of you when you start to tilt your head every time you tilt the LocoRoco world.) (Maybe.)

Overall Rating: 8.5 out of 10