I had read earlier in the week that a new LocoRoco game was headed to the PlayStation Store. If I had a PSP, LocoRoco would definitely had been a purchase, so I was more than a little interested in a downloadable semi-sequel on the PS3.
("would definitely had been"?)
Kotaku initially referred to the game as a screensaver (based on some asinine report from Who Cares Print It IGN), then discovered that it wasn't, but still pretty much hated it... but I was hungry enough to drop a couple dollars on it.
Of course, I completely forgot that today was Thursday - PlayStation Store Re-Stock Day, for some reason - so I was still looking forward to grabbing LocoRoco Cocoreccho sometime later in the week. Until I check Kotaku as Clark was falling asleep and realized that it was in fact Thursday. PlayStation Store Re-Stock Day.
And I just played it for two hours without even realizing that much time had gone by. So I'm calling my $7 well spent. The game is completely nucking futs.
The thing is, I THINK it's not at all like the PSP original, which may be throwing people off. This Cocoreccho edition is more like Lemmings, except with visuals that don't include some retarded Fraggle that an idiot decided to call a lemming. You start out with one LocoRoco or whatever the hell the little blob guy is called, and you have to maneuver him to touch other LocoRocos so they will join your marching band. Rather than using the SIXAXIS tilt controls (in the PSP game you tilted the gameworld with the shoulder buttons) to flush the guys around, you direct them with a mouse pointer butterfly... which would have worked great as a Wii game.
Once you have gathered some blobs, you sort-of guide them through the level, which is one big Rube Goldberg contraption with plenty of Line Rider-esque loops and double-backs. Some areas are blocked off until you have amassed X blobs, there are some hidden mini-game areas, and the whole thing ends in a Sabotage style cannon fight against the enemy boss blob. But the challenge is figuring out how to awaken the maximum number of sleeping dudes, because they are scattered throughout the world on platforms just out of reach until you do just the right thing to get to them.
I played for a good 40 minutes - with increasing frustration - until I discovered that you can wake up the sleepers hanging from tree branches simply by shaking the SIXAXIS.
Perhaps the cutest bit (of a very cute game) is that fact that the blobs are all singing to you, along with the happy instrumental background music. The different colors of blobs have different voices, so if you have primarily red ones on the screen, you'll hear a slightly different version of the song as they add their personal a capella to the mix, compared to if you have mostly yellow guys. It's cool to notice one of them catching a solo; their little mouths move.
Take a listen. It's hypnotic.
ADDITIONAL: Apparently all Store purchases vanish from the shopping browser when you buy them. OK. Isn't that weird though? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the item listed in the store but marked as bought? Odd.