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Platform games have been around since the earliest days of gaming consoles, and each one introduces some new and original platform games. PlayStation Portable joins that group with Tecmo's original platform game, Tokobot, a charming and fun experience.
For several years, especially since becoming three-dimensional, platform games have mixed more action and mature content in with basic platforming fun in order to broaden appeal and differentiate themselves from other games. Tokobot takes a different approach, mixing interesting gameplay mechanics and a very simple and appealing game world. You play as Bolt, who has the unique ability to communicate with the newly discovered robots, and you need to discover slates that reveal more and more about the history of the forgotten race and the current evil plot. You gather artifacts and parts which allow you to unlock and built new configurations and bots and transformations, which makes exploration fun and rewarding. The tokobots arrange themselves around you as commanded with a single button, and lock into that configuration so you can execute attacks or bridging moves or transformations into other arrangements. The controls are simple and easy to remember, and changing arrangements happens quicklyï¾—which is needed for many boss battles where a single strategy is not enough.  Some old issues associated with three dimensional platform games plague Tokobot, such as controlling the camera and aligning movement. The camera changes location often when jumping, leaving you without the ability to re-center behind Bolt. This bothered me much less than with other PSP games, and frankly much less than I expected. The reason it is tolerable is because the pacing of the game allows you those few seconds to reorient yourself and to slowly check your surroundings before proceeding. The game is also short and linear. Even with a short playtime, the relative sameness of many of the areas comes through. As my son so aptly put it, "This reminds me of Pikmin 2, but that game is better and more fun". While it is not a "Pikmin clone", the charm, the simple fun, the little guys swirling around you and to an extent the sounds evoke those excellent games. This entertaining game full of simple and charming gameplay is a welcome addition to the PSP library.  
Tokobot is a classic platform game with good clean fun throughout. It is not too long, but can be challenging and requires some reading and attention to detail appropriate for kids who can at least read and follow directions at a first grade level. But any kid that you trust to hold your PSP can have some fun jumping around and doing other tricks with the 'bots.
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