LocoRoco Midnight Carnival is a fantastic addition to the ever increasing PSP library.
The new super bounce move is a brilliant idea.Well priced, and far bigger than the press releases would have you believe.
Built for the PSPgo – it’s entirely playable (minigames aside) with just the triggers.
It’s more LocoRoco – one of my favourite series on the PSP.It’s practically faultless, packed with charm and character and an absolute joy to play, especially on a shiny new PSPgo (although obviously the game works on any PSP). Midnight Carnival is a completist’s dream – each level of the World Map shows you which MuiMui you’ve found, your current best record, the time to beat and which medals you’ve picked up – and whilst it’s true that sixteen levels is much less than the other ‘proper’ Locoroco games in my opinion there’s just as much here to enjoy than ever before, especially given the £11.99 price bracket. There’s also a couple of minigames – BuiBui Crane is the fairground crane game, and LocoBall is a simple pachinko simulator. In here you can buy various items for your LocoRoco and lots of different things for the game itself, with successful playing of the main game unlocking additional items such as a camera (so you can take screenshots) and a practice level, great for honing your flick chain skills before opting to take on the world at a Time attack. Replays are only allowed once you’d purchased the Replay Player in the BuiBui Shop, a little diversion sat at the far left of the World Map. Other network features include the ability to share replays of levels you’re rightly proud of, and there’s online infrastructure rankings for both Score and Time attacks, giving the game almost endless replayability if you’re competitively natured. If this is your first time with the controls, the L and R triggers are used to ‘tip’ the level, and tapping both together ‘flicks’ it, essentially causing your Locoroco to jump.Įach of the levels can also be attempted in multiplayer – Midnight Carnival supports four player ad-hoc multiplayer so make sure you test out the game with friends nearby as the local interaction between players is a really nice touch, especially when you’re playing cooperatively. Sixteen levels might not seem like a huge amount, and to be fair a lot of them are actually quite short, but this time around a fair bit of work has been done upping the difficulty level and translating the addictive, intuitive two button controls into more of a platformer than anything we’ve seen before in the Locoroco world – jumpable chasms that cause death being a particular shock early in the game. Branded to coincide with Halloween, Midnight Carnival is actually much more than a spooky subset of levels, the sixteen main sections of the World Map actually span a few different themes and each brings with it its own sense of character – the Winter levels have huge friction-free icy half pipes, for example. The best games sneak up on you like Christmas, and the Gamescom reveal of the new Locoroco game couldn’t have been better timed – it’s only been a matter of a few short months since we first heard about the new adventures of Kulche and friends – and it’s out tomorrow.