LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival Review (PSP)

It's outrageously good value for money too.

LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival is still as boisterous as you might expect. The dastardly BuiBui from the previous two games have returned and kidnapped the sleeping LocoRoco. If they can escape the hazardous Midnight Carnival unscathed, then the BuiBui will grant them permission to go back to sleep.

This isn't the usual happy-go-lucky experience you'd expect from LocoRoco. Midnight Carnival is substantially tougher. The gameplay relies much heavier on genuine platforming, as you'll be tasked with tricky jumps, deadly drops and more frequent enemies. It's all rather melancholy when your singing blob drops to his death.

Midnight Carnival has a strong emphasis on time. Beat a level too slowly and you'll have your score halved. You can compare times via online leaderboards too, so there's big incentive to be as quick as possible, aswell as accurately collecting the plants and pickories from traditional LocoRoco games.

What's key about LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival is the Boinging mechanic - essentially a chain that links all your jumps together and encourages you to continue a points multiplier. Chained Boings also increase the height of your jump, so it becomes essential for some of Midnight Carnival's more difficult leaps.

Difficult leaps there are plenty aswell. This is a more challenging game of LocoRoco than you might have experienced before. And that leads to problems. The zoomed-in camera can sometimes mean you fall down a ditch you weren't really expecting, leading to massive frustration at a "mistake" you don't necessarily feel responsible for. Likewise, it can be very easy to undercook or overcook a jump, as tilting the stage is not the most reliable mechanic for platform game  control.

With all that said though, LocoRoco: Midnight Carnival really is a bargain packed with fun. Sure there's less content than you might expect from the average LocoRoco game; but there are plenty of stages and even a couple of minigames to boot. There's enough here to represent value for money.