Loco Roco

(Sony for PSP)
by Mike Delano

Forget the Wii and its motion-sensor remote. If you want a see someone jerk their limbs left and right, tilt their entire body from side to side and generally look like they’ve lost control of their mind-body coordination, just give a non-gamer a PSP and a copy of Loco Roco. Marvel as the person becomes so committed to guiding a group of little yellow blobs from point A to point B that they sacrifice their body (and pride) to ensure the completion of their blob odyssey.

Hardcore gamers, weathered as they are, may not make the same exaggerated movements, but they’ll be just as entranced. Simply (what this game does best), it’s a highly stylized puzzler, with the player using the left and right shoulder buttons to tilt the big pastel worlds so as to roll a smiling, round character to the finish line. The magic is in the execution. Using the shoulder buttons almost exclusively pulls you in to the experience in a way the directional pad or the analog stick never could, and thus makes it far more accessible. And accessible it should be, because this is a game that wants to entrance everyone. Its exuberant color schemes, happy smiling balls, and music that needs to be heard to believed, all conspiring to create what has been rightly described as “the happiest game ever made.” With a barrage of cuteness this determined, any criticism beyond that is destined to disappear in the ether. Resistance is futile.
(www.locoroco.com)