What I've Been Playing: Loco Roco 2

I had to have something more casual after the grind fest that was Final Fantasy 3, so I popped in Loco Roco 2. I really enjoyed the first game. It was fun, quirky, and very entertaining. If you aren't familiar with the basic concept, you control the screen by tilting it left or right with the L and R shoulder buttons, hitting both together to flick the screen and make your guy jump. You roll your little blob around the world, looking for orange plants to eat and become bigger. At any time you can hit the circle button to break up into individual blobs. Try to find all 20 of the plants in each level, and progress through the levels to the end of the game, that's about it.

Both games stick to that formula, but there's more thrown in throughout levels to spice it up. So far I've experienced many objects that I can crawl into and then roll around in. You can also hold the circle button in the water to sink down and explore the depths. I'm glad that the game added new abilities like this to help break up the game play, but the implementation annoys me.

In order to get most of these new abilities, you have to reach a certain level where you are greeted by a guy who shows you how to do them. Doing it this way quickly makes it into a Zelda type scenario where you can see areas the first time through the level that you can't reach and you know you'll have to come back later with some new ability in order to get there. I'm one of those people that play games obsessively, meaning with the first Loco Roco I would often play through a level over and over until I got all 20 plants, and then move on, so creating this artificial barrier to me completing the level 100% is frustrating.

The game as a whole can be super annoying. You will inevitably hit some spike or something right before the end of the level, and have to do the whole thing over again in order to complete it with all 20. Even so, it always compels me to keep turning on the game and try levels again.

The game can quite easily jump the line between quirky and kiddy though. It's not really fun to collect stamps in the levels and then put them onto stamp cards to get new items, it just seems like a kids game in moments like that. Then there's oddly adult themes. I'm not the only one who notice the boy roco and the girl roco's little... uh, appendages would seem to fit together perfectly am I? I'll leave you with some pictures so you can decide for yourself.

If the yellow and pink ones go together, who takes the others?

Is this phallic?

These have got to be phallic, right?