This review was written by member Libea Bramburti – thanks Libea!

Deja-vu. This sums up Loco Roco 2 in a nice neat phrase really. Some of you may remember (if you could bear to read the drivel I wrote) that the last game I reviewed was Motorstorm Pacific Rift, where I applauded the makers for not calling it ‘2’ as it wasn’t really a new game. Well, this time, I can only really slam the developers of Loco Roco 2 as a new game this is most definitely not.

How excited I was when I heard that Sony’s big blubbery balls were getting another outing! The original was, well, original and lots of simple, stylish fun. It played superbly on the PSP and was cute, ingenious with cool set pieces and fantastic level design. So what’s going on in the new game?
The Moja’s have once again invaded the happy world of the Loco Roco and can now drain the life out of just about anything using the median of music. You come to the rescue, fighting to drive the Moja’s from your home land using your own song. Or something. This may be what the designers came up with several hours in to a post-development pub crawl.

The story is played out using short cut scenes which make absolutely no sense. By clearing levels and searching the myriad of secret rooms and areas you are rewarded with little films of Loco Rocos (playing hide and seek and shooting up with crack or whatever) and new parts for your Roco house (a kind of vaguely interactive dolly house). This doesn’t make it feel like the game is worth bothering to play to its conclusion. Certainly if you played the last game, there is nothing new to see here as the level themes are also recycled from there.



The controls are carried over from the last game (which was pretty good anyway). You use the left and right shoulder buttons to tilt the landscape left and right and thus make your Loco roll in that direction. Pressing and releasing both buttons at once makes him jump. You can split your Loco into little Locos by hitting the O button and mould them together into one big Loco by holding the O button for several seconds. The other buttons are left dormant which makes it an easy game to pick up and play.

The good news is that nothing about that formula has changed too much for the worst. The bad news is that nothing much at all has changed.

It would appear that the development meeting went something like this;

Developer no.1 "Hey, you remember that great little game we produced back in 2006? Well let’s make another one."

Developer no. 2 "Sounds like a lot of work though doesn’t it!"

Developer no. 1 "I’ve had an idea about that. We’ll just use the same levels, graphics, music, characters, goals and code."

Developer no. 2 "That’s genius that is! We can just stick the number 2 at the arse end of the title as well and make it sound like a new game."

Developer no. 1 "Precisely no. 2, thus saving money, effort and time! Job done! Fancy a pint?"

Developer no. 2 "After all that thinking, I should say so!"



This may sound like an exaggeration, but it really isn’t. Everything from the top down is exactly the same. I had to check to see if I had the right UMD in the drive as they hadn’t bothered to change the XMB menu thumbnail picture or sound from the last game. I am not kidding.

There have been some slight alterations. The first is the inclusion of an interactive creature waking system. Let me explain this a little. Some times, your path is blocked by a sleeping friendly giant creature. To wake them, you have to have enough Loco Rocos in your blob to make a suitably loud choir to wake them. In the first game, you would be treated to an endearing little ditty of your Locos singing their hearts out. In Loco Roco 2, you have to add percussion to the singing (a bit like Patapon) by tapping the O button when a moving muscal symbol enters static symbols on the screen. This sounds ok in principal, but so ham-fisted is the inclusion it just makes the whole thing frustrating. Getting the percussion right is difficult as the timing is so off and hitting the button spot on often results in a miss. Also, the percussion seemingly bears no relation to the song. As the final insult, getting it totally wrong doesn’t stop the creature from waking and serves to give you more or less collectable musical symbols. It’s such a pointless and tacked-on system it beggars belief that it made it through beta testing stage. And you miss the little singing animation which is the best thing about it.



There's another change that is more successful. If your blob is in water, holding the O button now makes him dive beneath the water. This opens up some quite good underwater parts (such as exploring a small ship wreck). It doesn’t add much, but least it’s something new.

There would appear to be fewer levels than last time round. If memory serves, there are about 25 in total. What’s there again apes its predecessor with varying results. The design of the levels is ok albeit familiar but some parts are needlessly frustrating. At one point, there’s a little cyclone that comes across the screen and breaks up your big Loco into its component mini Locos and blows them back to the start. It does this on a timer repeat which is set so as to allow you to jump over little humps and hide below the cyclone before jumping the next hump and hiding again. This would be fine, but the last hump is bigger giving you a window of a fraction of a second to clear it. You end up getting blown back at least ten times before you finally get lucky. Or throw your PSP across the room.

So what’s the conclusion? The original Loco Roco is probably in my top ten favourite games of all time. It really did blow me away such was it’s difference to anything else on the market. Nothing has changed so it’s still brilliant right? Well you’ve probably guessed from my rant that this is bollocks. I’m incensed that a software house would put so little effort into a game that could had such a promising future. This is blatant cashing in which makes me dislike the product despite how it plays. The fact that the changes they could be bothered with have largely made the game worse, just nails the coffin lid down.

On the flip side however, if you haven’t played the first game, you’ll probably think this is bordering on great.

For that reason I have to balance up the final score.

8-D
Level design is still quite good.
New mini games are addictive for a short while.

>:-(
They have recycled EVERYTHING! Nothing new to offer fans.
Some needlessly frustrating sections.
Crap Patapong rip off should have been axed.
Bobbins storyline.
Ropey collision detection.
Complete cash cow.

60%