One of the interesting features of the PSP Go when it was a rumor, was that it would be able to play a simple game like LocoRoco when it was closed. So it was not a surprise to see the release of a new game in the series a short time after the Go launched last month. LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival is the first true digital download iteration with a bigger emphasis on co-op, leaderboards, and a quicker pacing that makes it even more fitting for a portable than its predecessors.

Midnight Carnival doesn’t really feature a plot to why the Bui Bui are gathering. It seems more like this is something of a series of holiday-themed events, though it’s more like you’re visiting snow or night levels rather than Christmas or Halloween levels. The levels are set-up in such a way that they are supposed to be replayed to master a level by beating the target time, gathering all of the Pickories, eating all of the LocoRoco fruit, and the other factors that can help you get a better score that you can post on the online leaderboards. Each of these levels can be played with up to three friends so that you can race each other or work together to get through levels, which is a nice feature to have if you have PSP-owning friends. As you progress through the game, there are times where it randomly throws you into bonus minigames where you just collect as many Pickories as possible, which act as currency here to allow you to buy hats for your character, useful items in and out-of-game, and even buy the chance to start at a checkpoint if you lose all of your lives.

The biggest gameplay addition to Midnight Carnival is the Boing move, which is a super bounce that helps give you more of a traditional platforming jump. You just press the left and right shoulder buttons simultaneously and your LocoRoco will jump with a streak behind him, which gives you good control over your jumping ability, adds speed when sliding around, and can be used to wall jump when needed, too. An added bonus is that if you can get the timing right, you can get through whole levels just Boinging around that also adds to your score with a multiplier as your jumping streak continues.

Of course, as you progress through Midnight Carnival’s levels, the difficulty ramps up, as indicated by the star rankings in the menu, and there is definitely a brick wall about two-thirds through the game where your mastery of the controls is put to the test if you wish continue on and beat the game. These two levels in particular required good control over spinning platforms and another that features collapsing platforms that requires quick platforming, which do require more skill than perseverance that could get your through most of the levels before it.

There are two minigames in Midnight Carnival, LocoBall and BuiBui Crane. LocoBall is a pinball-style game where you launch LocoRoco into the board towards a variety of different obstacles in the hopes of hitting it big for a big reward of Pickories. BuiBui Crane is more of a puzzle game where you drop colored LocoRoco and try to connect like-colored LocoRoco for points to aim for the highest tier of rewards you can earn. Each of these mini-games requires payment before you play them, so it kind of feeds into this economy of playing levels or bonus levels to earn as many Pickories as possible to pay for items, lives, or turns in the mini-game that is kind of new for this series.

LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival definitely doesn’t tread new grounds for the series in terms of new locations or improved visuals. As far as we can really tell, this looks pretty much the same as the last two LocoRocos, which still looks nice despite not being that original anymore. The backdrops are very much recycled from previous night and snow levels you’ve seen before, though the levels themselves are new with some small additions to take advantage of the new abilities. The music is still the same music you’ve heard in the two previous games.

LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival does bring some new things to the table, but it’s hard to recommend this since this is still largely the same game as its predecessors. Unless you’ve played the first two games to death, this would be a nice way to get some more LocoRoco action for $14.99. If you’re new and depending on whether you have a PSP Go or not, you may have cheaper options for either of the first two games on UMD while for $5 more, you could get a more content-filled game that comes at the price of using nearly 10 times more space due to its huge file size. It may be best to just check out the demo for Midnight Carnival to see if you’re interested in plucking down any money on a LocoRoco game and then going from there since any of the three games offer a good time.

Final Score: 7.6 | Recommendation: Demo It

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About This Author: Chris Selogy

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