Video game review by ERIK LEIJON

There’s no beating around the bush, the Sony PSP has had a terrible year. It has continued to sell fairly well, but as Nintendo’s DS has garnered the accolades and successful titles, the PlayStation Portable’s library has languished. There simply haven’t been enough good games released for the portable, and the UMD format hasn’t caught fire like in Ken Kutaragi’s dreams. Perhaps coming in under the radar is LocoRoco (PSP/SCEA, SCEJ), an original platformer that is deceptively simple and a joyous roly-poly romp.

LocoRoco on the surface is comparable to the Katamari series insofar that it borrows the same crazy, possibly drugged-out Japanese art style. Everything is intentionally nauseatingly cute. You play as a little smiley-faced blob incapable of moving on its own. To move him, you must use the L and R buttons to cause the screen to tilt in either direction, while pressing them at the same time causes him to jump.

That’s it. Yet there’s actually a lot the little ball protagonists can do, even though the stage design looks like somebody’s intestinal tract, the characters are no more than doodles and the level design (and gameplay physics to an extent) is reminiscent of N, a flash game from 2005.

Like any platformer, the purpose of the game is to get from one end of the level to the other, all while avoiding bad guys and picking up a laundry list of items. The LocoRocos can grow in size by eating berries, and can split into smaller Rocos to get through tight areas. The levels are easy to beat (and it only took four-and-a-half hours to finish the game), but finding all of the items and Mui Muis (little blue creatures) is very difficult, and only when trying to find the extras does the massiveness of the levels become apparent. Platformers live and die by level design, and LocoRoco’s worlds are ingenious at times.

That being said, the gameplay doesn’t deviate all that much from beginning to end. The developers eventually run out of new surfaces for Roco to tumble down, and there are only three or four different kinds of enemies. The major disappointment of the game is the lack of bosses, which seems rather lazy. Also, if you aren’t the type of gamer who intends on going back to get 100 per cent ratings on all the levels, you’ll find the game short, simplistic and not particularly challenging.

There is a LocoHouse mode (sounds like a fraternity house I once partied in) where items and characters can be inserted onto a single screen page, but the mode itself is merely an afterthought.

LocoRoco is a tumbling, rolling and bouncing good time for a PSP contingent starving for something to play. It has a unique art style, but the gameplay is where it feels original and is perfectly suited for Sony’s portable. Even more important, LocoRoco isn’t some half-assed PS1/PS2 port, and that alone should have you bouncing.

HMV = On the ball

My interpretation of how HMV’s recent decision to start selling games went down:

HMV management: Because music is again proving to be an antiquated dinosaur, let’s start selling video games.

Middling employee: Why now? Why not five years ago?

Management: You see this (points to picture of John Madden eating chili)? This game made $100-million last week. Imagine the profit.

Employee: You do know that no one knows we sell games, and most gamers already have places they go regularly to buy them.

Management: Gas is expensive. How about we package tanks of regular unleaded with FutureSex/LoveSounds?