Upon arriving at the GameDaily office last week I was disappointed to see the garbage lying in the edit room. I'm not talking about loose papers and old banana peels, mind you. I'm talking about the horrible games, misfit pieces of shovel ware destined to be reviewed by some poor and unfortunate freelancer. But amidst this crap was LocoRoco, Sony's imaginative PSP title that's received plenty of positive buzz ever since it was unveiled at last year's Tokyo Game Show. So as soon as I saw it I snatched the game up and excitedly tossed it into my bag. But unfortunately for Sony, I'm not enjoying it.

It's not that the game is bad per se, just that it's rather frustrating and at times painfully annoying. The goal is to maneuver this colorful and intensely cute blob (known as locoroco) through this wondrously simple yet elegant world by tilting the environment using the PSP's triggers, so pressing left tilts the playfield 30 degrees to the left and pressing right tilts it in the opposite direction. Plus, you can jump by pressing both triggers together, and if you encounter places in which locoroco cannot fit, tapping Circle causes it to break into smaller blobs and holding it brings them back together.

The level that I played contains lots of cool scenery such as a gigantic moon, pulsing flowers, humongous creatures, and dark, floating beasts. It's definitely a world rich with life and it looks incredible displayed across the PSP's screen. I did run into some frustrating moments where I just couldn't get the locoroco to reach a certain area (the game is very much trial and error), but by and large I found it to be quite challenging.

I'm also very fond of the game's visuals and animations. The flat backgrounds are simple, vibrant and full of color, and I love how the locoroco moves, which is sort of like a giant natural boob. Make of that what you will.

Ok, so now it's time to enter the realm of the suck. I can't speak on the entire game because this was just a one level demo, but the music is god awful. It's decent for the first two minutes but then it continues to loop, and to make matters worse the level is a lot longer than it probably should be, so the music combined with the ramping difficulty creates this "GOOD GOD WHEN IS THIS SHIT OVER" type of experience. I don't know what the rest of the soundtrack is like, but if it's just as sugary sweet as this one track then I'm going to be in for a torturous gameplay experience.

LocoRoco doesn't come out in the US until September and I hope SCEA takes its sweet time localizing it. Unlike my peers, I just don't see the appeal. It's a neat concept, no question, but it's also something that I think Nintendo would have made more appealing. LocoRoco works all right with the triggers, but at the same time it would be a lot more enjoyable if I were able to physically tilt the system in order to play the game.

Ultimately, I've got to just accept the game the way it is, and with that being said it's decent enough, but it hasn't made the same impression on me that it has with most of the other journalists. I like that Sony's creating new IPs for its handheld instead of porting games, but I also think LocoRoco could have benefited from some different technology, or even better, a different platform. Hopefully, the rest of it will entertain me far more than the disappointing demo.