Back when I was just a wee lad hanging out at the arcade down the block, some of the most fun I ever had was feeding a week's allowance in quarters to a stand up version of the classic game, Moon Patrol. The thing I love about it wasn't any sort of fast paced action or ultra-realistic graphics. It was the childlike glee of pretending I was on some cool space mission, exploring the surface of some far off planet. Now, nearly three decades later, I've got a whole new case of space madness, courtesy of TerRover, the latest PSN platformer from the folks at Creat Studios and Sony Online Entertainment.

The premise behind TerRover is about as straightforward as they come. Players are given control of a robotic rover as it hops around from planet to planet, exploring the landscape of each as it collects widgets of various shapes and sizes. Many of these bolts and bits are conveniently laid out in front of rover as it rolls, climbs, and jumps along the surface. Others, though, are hidden off the beaten path, requiring some extra forethought and planning to collect. Problem is, you can't just meander along at your own pace in TerRover. You're in a race against the clock as well, trying to find as much as possible as fast as you can.

One bit of fair warning before you get behind the wheel of TerRover. Despite its cute look and simple premise, TerRover is far from easy. Just the opposite, in fact. The game can get maddeningly difficult. This is due mainly to the rover's odd control scheme. In order to move the rover around the environment, you first have to shift the positioning of the rover's head to either the front or the back, or even flip top to bottom, for those times the rover ends up on its back. You also need to make minor adjustment in the distribution of the rover's weight with the left thumbstick. All in all, it's a lot of work involved to just move around. It reminds me a lot of flying one of those R/C airplanes in the park. Sure, it looks easy enough when in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. But put the remote in the hands of your average Joe, and well, all you can expect is some spectacular crashes and a whole lot of frustration.

Another source of frustration in TerRover comes from its lack of helpful tutorials. You're already facing a steep learning curve in dealing with the basic controls, but once you start throwing rover upgrades and the like into the mix, I'll be the first to admit a little hand holding would be appreciated. Even so, there ARE plenty of checkpoints scattered throughout each level, and even though you'll die a lot in the game, eventually you will start to get the hang of things and the game will get easier. In time, you'll find yourself whipping through the stages with relative ease, focusing less on fumbling the controls and more on beating your previous best time.

Once you start to get the hang of driving the rover around, you can pit your skills against those of your buddies in one of three different local multiplayer modes. You can do a straight up race, with each death along the way earning your rival bonus points. Or you can test your puzzle solving skills by bypassing obstacles in the Trial mode. In this mode, once one player beats the obstacle, the others have just sixty seconds to do the same before being eliminated. Finally, in HotPoint mode, the goal is to collect ten randomly appearing stars before your opponents. Multiplayer games add a lot of excitement to the game, though the lack of online options is surprising.

TerRover is one of those games that requires a lot of patience to get the most out of. For most casual gamers, it's going to be difficult to get past the game's steep learning curve. Still, if you're willing to put the extra time and effort into it, you'll end up with a fun, fast paced platformer that puts as much focus on brainpower as it does on horsepower.

Final Score: B