Parent's Guide: LocoRoco Remastered - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is LocoRoco Remastered?

LocoRoco Remastered is a quirky, colourful, sing-song adventure jam-packed full of collectibles and secrets to discover. A graphically-enhanced update of the 2010 PSP game, LocoRoco follows a group of brightly-coloured blobs as they roll, bounce and eat their way towards reclaiming their home planet from a rival group of not-so-nice blobs, the Mojas. Rather than controlling the LocoRoco directly, you'll instead be tilting the world from side to side, as you roll your LocoRoco past each level's tricky obstacles, with a bit of platforming, puzzle-solving and enemy-bashing thrown in for good measure along the way.

How do you play LocoRoco Remastered?

In a nutshell, each stage sees you guiding you LocoRoco through what is essentially a brightly-coloured obstacle course, collecting as many extra LocoRoco, edible Pickories and hidden MuiMui characters as you can along the way. Having to build up momentum to make big jumps, or split your big LocoRoco into a bunch of smaller ones to fit through tiny gaps, there's a lot of unique ideas here, and plenty of fun to be had. As a pro-tip from us, you're probably best to stay as just one blob while you can when traversing the levels, though, as it's an easy way to ensure no LocoRoco get left behind, as you swing from vine to vine, bounce across mushrooms and serenade sleeping suns to save your home from the scourge of the Mojas.

How easy is LocoRoco Remastered to pick up and play?

In all, LocoRoco is a pretty easy game to get into, with simple, intuitive controls that see you simply tilting the world left and right, making your blob jump, and splitting it up/joining the gang back together again. A trail of bright pink Pickories - an edible flying insect-come-berry - points you in the direction you need to head (although there's often secrets hidden off the beaten track too), while generally speaking, any puzzles you encounter along the way are relatively simplistic. A doorway operated by a nearby button, a few well-placed platforms above a ravine, or a friendly rectangle that'll let you use his head as a lift is as complex as it gets - nothing especially taxing.

With the game rewarding you for reaching the end of each level with a full compliment of 20 LocoRoco, getting the whole gang to the end unscathed is something you'll always want to try for - but as you play through the game's five worlds, getting to the end of each stage without losing any does get more challenging, as more and more deadly enemies and tricky obstacles start to crop up. Each of your LocoRoco technically counts as a 'life', and losing them all (whether by getting attacked by one of the game's enemies, or having them fall off a cliff and stay off screen for too long) will give you a game over, forcing you to restart the level - but providing you track down a decent number of extra LocoRoco along the way, actually failing out of a level is relatively rare.

For the youngest of players, LocoRoco does have a little reading involved, mostly in the form of tutorials and a few bare-bones story segments. However, none of it is especially necessary once you've got to grips with the basics, meaning you should be able to get through the game with minimum reading ability if need be.

Sample Sentences:

• "I am MuiMui. LocoRoco's friend! Collect [fruit] to make LocoRoco grow. Find them all and lead them to the goal!"
• "Give the O button a quick press!"
• "Find my friends, MuiMuis, and something nice will happen!"

LocoRoco Remastered is a cute and colourful platformer that has nothing untoward whatsoever - there's no bloody violence, no bad language and no sex scenes to speak of. About as violent as it gets is jumping your blob into enemy blobs to headbutt them out of the way, in a decidedly slapstick manner, with defeated bad guys simply fading away in a puff of smoke afterwards. The Mojas - the bad guys who chase down your LocoRoco, latch on to you, and may even eat one of your blobs if you're not careful - may be a little intimidating at first, and perhaps even a little scary for younger players, as they tend to chase you down, but a short sharp jump will soon stop them in their tracks, and a swift headbutt can stop them coming back.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4