PS3 Fanboy

Expect more LittleBigPlanet DLC to come in every week. Some of it is free, and some of it is not. This week's free LittleBigPlanet DLC is a costume designed by fan "nebu1ou5" for the "LittleBigChallenge 003- Official in-game SackBoy Costume Contest" held on the official LBP website. It's a Sackboy with a very outdated television set over his head and a remote in his hand. See that after the break.

As for the content which you'll have to shell out some dough for, there are some weird looking LocoRoco costumes to grab. You can see all five LocoRoco-themed costumes posted above. All five come bundled together for $2.99. For us, these costumes are slightly disappointing seeing as there's only a mild resemblance to the lovable LocoRoco blobs, but we suppose those hand accessories (or LocoRoco bracelets?) make up for it.

While Andrew has already given us his hands-on impressions of LocoRoco Cocoreccho (try saying that fast three times!), everyone knows a pictures is worth a thousand words, and by my calculations, a video is worth four hundred billion eleventy thousand.

Unfortunately, Andrew was rather disappointed with the interactive screensaver, blaming inconsistent and overly complicated controls, which makes the game lose much of what we loved about the first - simplicity.

The game hits the PlayStation Store this week, so how about you try it out and let us know what you think.

LocoRoco Cocoreccho will arrive on the PlayStation Store this week, and we were able to get some time with it at Sony's pre-TGS media event. We're sad to say that this brand new PS3 sequel loses one of the most important aspects of the original: simplicity. LocoRoco on the PSP charmed gamers with its simple and intuitive play mechanic that could be understood from the moment one picks up the system.

One cannot say the same for Cocoreccho, the supposed "screensaver" game for PS3. There are too many different control mechanisms at play, creating a generally disparate experience. For example, the ability to tilt the world is surprisingly inconsistent: it can only occur during specific parts of each level. Players will have to rock the controller, pump it up and down, sway it left and right throughout each level -- in addition to having to move the analog stick to control the floating butterflies that motivate the LocoRocos to move along. The lengthy tutorial that's included with our demo worries us that the game is much too complicated for its own good.

Obviously, we need to spend more time with the title to fully understand the nuances of the "game" -- perhaps when slowly introduced to the experience, it becomes much more endearing. But in the very little we've seen, we were dismayed by the surprising complexity of this LocoRoco follow-up.

Finally, Sony has come out of its shell and decided to clarify all the hubbub surrounding the new LocoRoco game for the PS3. Is it a game? Is it a screensaver? It is both? Is it ... neither? It's an interactive screensaver with over 200 Loco Rocos to play with, using the Sixaxis. All these bubbling blobs of bliss sit on-screen at once and your objective is to collect as many as possible and lead them to the goal.

As you journey, you'll play three mini-games to multiply the number of blobs in your possession. Also, online leaderboards will make an entrance to see how your fellow screen-saver-playing buddies are doing, including a time attack option. Japan is getting the title on September 21st, but there's no word yet on a US or European release. It'll cost the Japanese about 800 yen and set them back nearly 190 MB, as explained on the Japanese website for the game. If you're using Firefox, it seems to disable tabbing, so open a new window just to be safe.

[Update: Yeah, LocoRoco PS3 actually is a full game. The whole screensaver mumbo jumbo serves as one of those rumors that just won't let go, so to speak.]

While the LocoRoco we're looking at isn't exactly a full-blown sequel to the PSP classic, it's an "interactive screensaver" which, to us, means it's just a one-screen level. From the gallery below, you can see there's more than you'd expect from a mere screensaver, so we're going to go ahead and call this a pseudo-sequel. A teaser, if we may, of what's to come in the future of LocoRoco land. If you can't derive enjoyment from sloshing a yellow blob around your television screen, you've obviously gone through life a little too seriously. We're looking forward to relaxing a bit with this title -- relieve some of that Warhawk-related stress. Check out the gallery and leave us your impressions!

The PlayStation 3 version of the the PSP hit Loco Roco has gotten a confirmed release date for Japan. Loco Roco: Boo Boo Cocoreccho will be hitting the PlayStation Store in less than a month, on September 21st -- no price has been announced yet. Also IGN has confirmed what we figured out last week, that you don't actually control the Loco Rocos at all, instead you control a little butterfly that leads the Rocos around the level.

The title is being billed as an action title with full online leaderboards by Famitsu so hopefully the early rumors of it being an interactive screensaver will turn out to be false. It's still a shame that they've chosen such a radical departure from the gameplay of the PSP version, but at least it's good to know that they're releasing an actual game. No American or European release dates have been announced yet.

The first direct feed trailer of Loco Roco: Buu Buu Cococrecho shows off way more detail than the earlier leaked cam footage, and the results are ... interesting. While you couldn't really tell in the first trailer, the gameplay for Loco Roco on the PS3 has changed drastically since it's PSP incarnation.

First off, you don't tilt the world to move your guy around -- one of the defining aspects of the PSP game. Also, you don't directly control the Loco Rocos, instead you control what appears to be one of the flying fruit bugs from the first game and use it as a cursor to direct where you want your Rocos to go. In addition, it appears to be based more on moving around batches of Rocos instead of absorbing them into one giant Loco Roco.

With completely different gameplay, it's going to be interesting to see if Loco Roco can achieve the same following as the PSP one. We should find out soon though, as the game is rumored to be coming out in the next couple months. Any hardcore Loco Roco fanatics out there? If so, what do you think of this footage?

The LocoRoco sequel has been humming along at a great pace. At the Develop conference, first footage of the PS3 downloadable title was showcased, as evidenced by this off-screen video. There's up to 200 LocoRocos on the screen -- impressive! If this has even half the charm of the PSP original, we're bound for a serious treat.

[Thanks, Joe!]

The PlayStation Premiere event in Tokyo has seen a veritable cornacopia of announcements so far today (with more to come, no doubt). One such announcement is that the PS3 version of Loco Roco, entitled Buu Buu Cocoreccho!, is 95% complete and so will be available, no doubt, before the end of the year.

A downloadable title that promises to be "playing, even when you aren't", Buu Buu Cocoreccho! will feature 200 Loco Roco characters as well as full SIXAXIS control support. There's not much more information that that (as seems to be a theme with these PlayStation Premiere announcements), but now that the word is out there's no doubt we'll be hearing lots more about it up until its release.

French gaming mega-site PlayFrance has posted a list of Sony titles coming out in Europe between now and this October and they've revealed a bunch of unheard of titles. Not only do they confirm that both Loco Roco PSN and GT 5 Prologue are coming out in the next couple months, they also listed three previously unheard of games:

• EyeToy Play Factory 1
• EyeToy Play Factory 2
• Chills

No other information was given about these, though they also confirmed Loco Roco 2 coming out for the PSP this year. So what's the possibility of this list being real? Well, PlayFrance is a very reputable site, but it seems a little iffy that Sony would announce 5 new PSN titles in such a way. Did somebody accidentally spill the beans on some of the 'surprises' that Jack Tretton hinted at a week ago? It's hard to tell at this point, but we've contacted Sony and are awaiting a response about the validity of this list.

Update:
When we asked Sony about the validity of the list, Dave Karraker had the following to say:

"I checked on this with our people in France. They have no idea where this information is from and say it is wholly inaccurate. The only games they have announced in that territory are Warhawk, Super Stardust and Snakeball."

So until we get more info, consider this rumor to debunked.

Update 2:
PlayFrance has taken the page down. Consider the rumor to be thoroughly debunked now.

At the Nordic Game conference in Sweden last week, LocoRoco creator Tsutomu Kouno expressed indifference on motion sensing controllers. When asked on potentially creating a title for the Wii, he "didn't have much interest." Kouno-san seemed far more impressed with the technological possibilities of a peripheral like the PlayStation Eye, conjuring its controller possibilities. Harkening Minority Report similarities, he imagines playing a game "using hands, without even touching the controller." Sounds like someone read our earlier report on the 3-D mapping capabilities of the PlayStation Eye and may be cooking up something special for the PS3 audience. The PlayStation Eye is gearing up for a July release so stay tuned for more updates on new and unique uses for this peripheral.

Thank you, babelfish and your ability to translate Jeux-France for those of us who took 11 years of Spanish through their school-lives. Anyway, the latest issue of EGM had an advertisement for PSM3, the British monthly magazine, stating there was an article devoted to Loco Roco on PlayStation 3.

What they didn't say was whether or not this was going to be a PS-Store port of the PSP title, a PS3 re-imagining of the PSP title, or a sequel to the original, making full use of the SIXAXIS. In any case, we'll soon have news about more cutesy blob-moving action akin to all those weird lava-lamp-like devices that were such a big deal ten years ago. Keep your eyes open when you snag that PSM3, Europe, and let us know what's inside!