For years now, gamers have wanted to make their own games. We've
written down our ideas on paper, shared them with our friends, and more
recently, written blogs about them for others to comment on. Now that
LittleBigPlanet is here, we can finally put some of our imagination to
use, and show our creative prowess to the world.
The gameplay in
LittleBigPlanet is simple, all you need to know to get through a level
is how to run, jump, and grab. The actual platforming, however, can be
rather imprecise. This is because of the "plain" system that
LittleBigPlanet uses. Your Sackperson won't always jump onto what you
want them to, and this leads to occasionally frustrating cheap deaths.
Its particularly annoying when there's a prize bubble that's out of the
way of the main path and you can't get your Sackperson to reach it
because they want to remain on the main plain. This never becomes so
frustrating that you want to throw your controller at the television
though. In fact, the platforming in LittleBigPlanet is very fun and
enjoyable most of the time. You'll just have to deal with some floaty
controls.
The main "story" mode in LittleBigPlanet lasts roughly
five to six hours. There's plenty of replay value to be had with these
levels though. There's plenty of prize bubbles, and keys to collect
that unlock various mini-game challenges that you wont be able to
access on your first playthrough. The official levels also serve as an
inspirational garden of ideas for people to use in their own levels,
which is the core component of LittleBigPlanet.
LittleBigPlanet's
level editor can seem very overwhelming at first, but there's an hour
long set of tutorials that show you how to make things move, dissolve,
blow up, and more. Once your ready to start creating, starting small is
key. But once you've mastered all of the mechanics, you can make pretty
much anything your imagination cooks up with relative ease.
This
brings us to the biggest concern about LittleBigPlanet since the
beginning, will users be able to create quality content that others
will find enjoyable to play? Well I can safely say the answer is yes.
There's already been a slew of levels that absolutely just blew my mind
away. Some are even more imaginative and more impressive than the
campaign levels, even though they might not always have the same
polish. I can't even count how many times I've been playing through
user created levels and said, "How did they do that?" Yes, worry no
longer, the gaming community is completely capable of making fun,
quality levels. Of course there's some real stinkers in the mix as
well, but you can successfully avoid them as long as you stick to
playing the levels with high play counts, lots of hearts, and positive
tags.
There's sadly more negative than positive things about
playing online cooperatively though. First of all, its difficult to
even join a game, since most of the time a "Failed to load all player
profiles" error message will come up. Once you are playing with others,
the game starts to have to have some lagging issues. And the camera
also presents a problem, like the Lego games it doesn't pull back far
enough, so those that fall behind won't be able to see where they are
going. This applies to both online, and offline co-op. Which is
unfortunate because playing cooperatively with others is some of the
best fun to be had in LittleBigPlanet.
The graphics in
LittleBigPlanet would even impress the guys at Pixar. The visuals are
cute, clean, stylistic and simply beautiful, and the art direction is
absolutely top-notch. The soundtrack is as perfect as it gets, LBP
features plenty of British pop-rock and Indy tracks that fit the game
perfectly. And the rest of the sound work is excellent as well, from
the clashes of different materials, to the pops and squishes, it simply
sounds great.
Overall LittleBigPlanet is one of the most
creative and imaginative games ever made, and the best platformer since
Super Mario Galaxy. Its also one of the best games available for the
PlayStation 3, and a title that all PS3 owners should play. Despite its
problematic online and offline cooperative play, the fact that
LittleBigPlanet looks great, plays great, sounds great, and has nearly
limitless replay value should tell you one thing, play LittleBigPlanet.
