Fantastic and wacky co-op with a hip-hop beat.
I'm a bit ahead of myself though.
Toejam & Earl follows the travels of two wayward aliens who have accidentally crash landed on Earth. Your goal as these two friends (or just one friend, if you choose to play single player) is to traverse the new and strange landscape in search of your scattered rocket ship pieces so you can fly home to the safety of your home planet Funkotron.
The game play is simple enough: move with the d-pad, use a currently working item with A. C takes you to the present menu where you can choose to use any one of the many presents that you find laying on the ground. When the game starts, you find yourself on Level 1, and both players have two presents that contain super high tops. These let you run fast for a short period of time.
From here, you can swim to a small island to collect a few presents, and then it's off to the elevator that you see. The elevator is the means of getting to the next level. There's one elevator on each level. Your goal is to find it while collecting presents along the way. When you reach the next level, if there is a rocket ship piece on that level, you will see a screen that says tells you so. You don't want to get on the elevator until you find that piece!
These presents contain a variety of items. Some good, some bad. The only catch is that you don't know what any of the presents are. Once you use a present though, if you come along the same item again, it will be identified, as opposed to an unknown present being called "?????". Let's say you find the thin blue package with a red ribbon. If you've never used it before, it will be called "?????". Now let's say that using that item gives you a slingshot. Great! Now you can attack those pesky Earthlings that are trying to get you. Now, the next time you encounter that gift, it will be called "slingshot". The other way of identifying your presents is to find the Carrot Man. If you have enough money you can pay him to tell you what your presents are.
Moving on! The game would be far too simple if all you had to do was collect presents and find elevators! You also have to avoid the enemies. The fighting here is real time, and it's very simple. You either run from them, or pelt them with tomatoes. Quite clever.
As you get to higher and higher levels, the enemies get more difficult to combat. They range from hamsters in wheels to ice cream trucks that badly want to run you over.
The game has pretty much infinite replay value because every play-through has a different present setup and different level designs. The rocket ship pieces are on varying levels every time too.
If you're craving a simple yet fun game to bunker down with and play with a friend, then this is the right one for you. Just think about two little girls squealing with delight as they pelt dancing devils and singing cupids with tomatoes and racing to get to the rocket ship piece first. I think you'll like what you see.