Gathering LocoRoco is your central goal, and the Mui Mui and bees add to the collectibles, and locating all of them will require plenty of re-play. You even find secrets hidden within secrets - and the sight of that final red flower blooming in front of you is every bit as satisfying as the sight of a golden coin in Mario or a hidden package in Grand Theft Auto. Sadly, the benefits of finding so many items are few - you can access different types of LocoRoco at the start of each new game world, each with their own song (yay!), but apart from that they're functionally identical, while the mini-games you unlock aren't much beyond the sort of thing you can find on any web-game site or bundled on your mobile phone.

With that said, any criticism you might infer there shouldn't dissuade you, because LocoRoco is one of those platform games that's more about the hunt than the treasure. And that's also where it's likely to prove a little divisive, as it does demand a bit of enthusiasm for the things you can't find on the first run-through. Like Mario or one of the Jak & Daxter games, it's your love of the world and need to see everything that drives you onward, and if you're the sort of person who stumbles through games without ever checking what's down the other path, you'll probably wonder what all the fuss is about.

So if that's you, play the demo. You can download it to your Memory Stick from locoroco.com. And if it doesn't change your mind, I don't know what to suggest. Perhaps some glue to stick your lobotomised brain back together.

The rest of you should have little hesitation in buying the full thing. It's as though Nintendo started working on the PSP. With more games like this, Sony's system has plenty of life left in it.

Smiles better than the rest.