LocoRoco updated hands-on

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Hands-on with three levels of bizarre, bouncing blob opera

We hear LocoRoco, the aggressively weird action game about singing blobs, is all but tanking after its release in Europe and Japan. Having finally spent some time with the full game, however, we honestly can't understand why; unless something drastic changes before its release next month, it's going to be brilliant.

Compared with the high-energyfree demo, which packs in a ton of cool stuff right from the get-go, the complete LocoRoco dials it down a bit, parceling out its goodies a little more slowly.

You still play as the planet - rather than the musical LocoRocos themselves - and your input is still limited to making them jump, telling them to split or join up and tilting the landscape to roll them around. The soundtrack is still provided by the LocoRocos themselves, who sing nonsense lyrics to catchy pop tunes. But the levels are bigger, much more diverse and packed with a lot fewer enemies - at least at first.

The first, bright-orange stage, for example, is a straightforward run from points A to B, with lots of "pickories" - little floating bug-berry things - scattered around for you to collect. It's also really generous with its berries, the eating of which make your LocoRoco grow in size and allow it to split into multiple little blobs that sing in harmony. The LocoRoco-eating Moja - nasty black tarantula-things that float around and grumble - didn't make an appearance, either.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.