all games are not created equal

Both of these games have such a great art style.  Even that alone makes it hard for me to not like any aspect of either of these games.

However, Patapon felt really repetitive at times.  You pretty much do the same actions over and over again to achieve the same results to move forward.  There isn't a ton of strategy either.  With Loco Roco, it was fun to try the speed challenges and also to try and find all the fruit.  And the songs in that game totally rock.

Don't get me wrong though, both games can be really fun.  But in the end, Loco Roco is just more fun than Patapon.

Both of these games are very stylized, so I think it's fitting to try and compare them.

I love the music in Loco Roco and how all the little loco rocos sing along.  The music in LBP isn't terribly catchy for me, but it's still pretty fitting.  I still randomly hum the Loco Roco theme song because of how great it is.

Gameplay-wise, both are similar in the sense where you may want to replay the levels over and over again in order to collect all the collectables.  You don't have to if you don't want to, but for all the 100% completion people out there, you just gotta.  In LBP though, you collect things that you can use when building your own levels, so that's a plus.  Both can get equally as frustrating as well as fun.

LBP shines a lot more than Loco Roco in the style department for me because of how all the levels are constructed.  Every monster, platform, moving thing, vehicle etc is made out of basic building block pieces.  In one level, a giant elephant took me across the stage and it was made up of these huge cardboard pieces that moved and it was quite amazing.  Loco Roco looks pretty, but LBP has so much more cuteness and coolness in its style.

When I first started writing this review, I was only about an hour into Loco Roco 2.  I decided that I should play it a little more and really get a feel for it before I try to compare it to the first one.  I'm glad I did.

Loco Roco 2 adds a lot of things to the formula.  Stages have more things to do in them and give you reasons to go back and revisit the stages in order to collect everything.  They also have cool new little gameplay things, like swimming.  Only problem is, I don't really think it makes the game any more enjoyable.  In fact, I find it a whole lot more frustrating than the first.

In the first one, I found it kinda fun to try and find all 20 of the little fruit things that make your character bigger.  That still exists in Loco Roco 2, but now, they've made some of them impossible to get once you go past a certain point.  They had this in the first game a little bit, but it seems like the majority of them in the second one are like this now.

So let's say you're playing a level and you've done everything perfectly and found all the fruits so far.  Then you accidently move over a hole that sucks you in a spits you out at a totally different section of the level before you could grab the fruit next to it.  Tough luck, gotta go through it all again.

If you totally ignore the "collect them all" mentality, you're left with decently fun game, albeit simple.  A little too simple for someone who wants to play a real game and not roll a ball around a stage just to get to the end.  There are no real challenges except for trying to collect everything.

Loco Roco 2 is 20 bucks though, which isn't bad.  But I still prefer the first.