LocoRoco updated hands-on

This was followed by the third stage, a long drop through a hollow tree full of huge hidden areas, tilting platforms and weird palm-frond things that slowed the LocoRocos' descent. This is also the first place you'll meet the Moja, who come on really creepy (making obscene lip-smacking noises while your LocoRoco shriek "Moja! Moja!"), but are easy to dispatch with a jumping slam from your blobs.

Toward the end of the stage, we ran into the first Mui Mui who apparently didn't want to be collected - we had to sing him out of the cave where he was sleeping, which appeared to irritate the hell out of him, but he came along anyway after jumping up and down and shaking his tiny fist.

It gets off to a slow start, but LocoRoco is nothing if not imaginative, and the later levels promise all kinds of weird little innovations to keep players on their toes. It's also a lot of fun, and even without the manic urgency of the demo level, it's still one of the most fascinating things we've yet seen on Sony's handheld.

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Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.