LocoRoco
- September 05, 2006 14:51 PM PST
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LocoRoco belongs to the growing genre of games that experiment with physics. It's a platformer of sorts like Katamari Damacy, but this one explores the properties of gel blobs and gravity. It would be an interesting centerpiece for a programming lecture and it probably belongs in an art museum, but as a $40 video game, it's a little thin.
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Locos come in all shapes and sizes.
My Life as a Blob
A "LocoRoco" is a bouncy blob, which eats fruit to grow into a bigger blob, splits up into smaller blobs as the situation demands, and endeavors to slide from one end of the world to the other. The trick is you don't control the blob directly. You control the planet, tipping the ground one way or the other, letting gravity pull the Locos in whichever direction. The shoulder buttons are the only controls -- left or right to tilt the background and both to toss the blobs in the air.
For a while it's fun to simply watch the physics in action. Some smart programming went into how the blobs behave, both mechanically and visually -- their outlines accurately ooze and shift, conforming to the surfaces around them. It's a lovely piece of art direction, too, done up in soft colors and curvy shapes like a children's picture book, plus a catchy soundtrack of eclectic rhythms and goofy nonsense lyrics. Watching the little Locos sing along with the background music is almost impossibly cute.
Ten! Ten little LocoRocos, ha ha ha!
Careening Downhill
Get past the neat graphics and tech-demo appeal, though, and where is the fun after that? Unusual controls aside, this is a simple platform game. While the levels have a fair amount of superficial complexity, their challenges largely boil down to a series of exacting jumps, followed by poking through every available nook for hidden areas and items.
Often there's only one chance at those nooks, and missing the critical jump means restarting the level for another attempt. Late in the game, when the levels are very large (and often made of layout ideas recycled from earlier stages), why should anyone but the obsessive care so much?
Snagging every item in each level is the real challenge -- just escaping a stage is easy enough -- but there's not much reward for that extra effort. Perfecting the levels unlocks a few mini-games and features inside the "Loco House," a sandbox for building Rube Goldberg machines from an expanding array of parts. Cute enough, but it's nowhere near the depth of a full-blown level editor.
It's too bad, because real talent produced this technology and artwork. So much of LocoRoco is so clever and original that it's almost perplexing when it stops being any fun. The fun does run out, though, long before the game is over -- in that sense, the experiment has to be called a failure.
Build up escape velocity in this ice level's half-pipe.
