You don’t need to have played LocoRoco, the delightfully pleasant puzzle game for the PSP to appreciate Patapon, but it helps with describing what is an original but odd little game.

In a nutshell, you’re a deity and have offer Godly guidance to a warrior tribe called the Patapon, in the quest to get to the Earthworld, seek enlightenment and batter their rival tribe, the Zigoton. Unlike the level of control of more intensive God-sims like Black & White you are in charge of the strategic end of their armed forces using the power of... wait for it… music!

After you’ve beaten your drums, so to speak, the tribe trundles along the 2D map, chanting your orders for another musical bar and then stop. If you want them to keep moving you perform the same chant, or a different one if you want them to attack any enemies they encounter. It’s very simple and soon becomes second nature. Patapon is very reminiscent of a Flash game, especially if anyone’s played the one where you have to defend your fortress from the stick men by flicking them with your mouse cursor. Anyone who’s played that game knows how addictive the simple concepts can be, and Patapon is no exception; you can just as easily waste hours playing through this as you can playing the Grand Theft Auto games on the PSP.

Also, within the soldier classes there’s a lot of detail. Each soldier can change the quality of the weapon they carry (and some the armour), replacing it with better ones that you pick up in battle, and there’s a big table of stats where you can see how it affects your soldiers, if you really care that much. Also, you can ‘birth’ new soldiers from materials you pick up in your travels, provided you have enough of the local currency, aptly named ‘Ka-ching’. You can make stronger and better soldiers if you have better materials, but they also cost more ka-ching, so it quickly becomes just as much about resource balancing as it is about the tactical button-bashing.

Patapon is a great musical game with something different and deeper thrown in. if you don’t like arcade puzzle games then this still won’t do anything to change your mind, but if you liked LocoRoco, then you can look forward to sore thumbs and lost hours with this. And you just might get sectioned if you tell anyone you can still hear the voices of little men chanting ‘Pata Pata Pata Po!’ in your head…