Game Review: LittleBigPlanet (PS3)

[fg-54]

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Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Media Molecule
Genre: Platformer
Players: 1-4
Price: $59.99

Video Review:

Overview: When LittleBigPlanet was first announced everyone became curious about what this little sack people were all about, as more and more information was released about this ambitious game the more people seemed to get hyped for it. A few weeks after its release I finally get to put my slimy hands all over this one of a kind platformer to calm my own hype for it, is it really as fun as it seems? find out NOW!

Gameplay: LittleBigPlanet is a platfomer like no other in almost every single way and there is alot to be said about it so I am going to separate it into different sections.
I am going to go ahead and start with the main story. After about a good ten minutes of tutorials and explanations you will be able to head on straight to the story mode, actually, until you complete the first three levels or so, that is the ONLY thing you will be able to do, no matter tho, they are short and off course, fun. The whole story consists of you being a sack boy or girl, and you pretty much just travel the world helping out friends with all sorts of problems, towards the end, a nemesis shows up and you have to save everyone but that is all I can say without spoiling too much.
The main story takes place on a world where all dreams go to, here you will get to play through levels from all over the world, each being as stereotypical as they can be, you will fight ninjas in Asia, explore Mayan ruins in Mexico, ect, this makes each world completely unique and non repetitive. The way levels are spread out is each continent has one or two buttons you can click on, once you click on of of them, all levels within that area will pop up, each area also has a few challenges outside of the main story that can be unlocked ether by beating levels, or by finding hidden keys within levels, these challenges are well varied from bull riding to rope jumping and can as well be played with friends.
Now allow me to go on with gameplay. There are three different lanes of the map in which you can be at during the game, this is new in the world of 2D platforming, you can change lanes at any time by pressing up or down on the left joystick, this works well, but can be frustrating when you are at a crucial moment and it decides it wants to rebel, luckily, the game changes lanes for you whenever it thinks it needs to, and again, this works fine most of the time, but sometimes it will change into a lane that you want to get out of over and over again just because it thinks you WANT to go to that lane, I wish there was a way to turn this off.
Aside from that, another new thing that LittleBigPlanet wanted to do was make their game physics based, now this opens up the game to new platforming opportunities such as launching yourself from a spinning wheel onto another, or picking up momentum while swinging to land further, but this also restricts the level of control that you have over your character while it is in mid air, as well as once it lands, this lead up to a few frustrating moments for me when I landed on a small platform, only to walk off of it because I didn't want to slide off.

Every family has a black sheep, sack boys have four.

Aside from the story there are two other things you can do, one is create levels with amazingly powerful tools, and two, is play user made levels, both great choices.
Starting with making your own levels, this is probably where LittleBigPlanet shines the most, at first, you will be bored with a good 40 minutes of tutorials, on the bright side, most of the things they tell you are things you will want to know, so pay attention! plus, you get a trophy for going through all the tutorials after that you are pretty much left alone to do what you wish on the level creator and what a creator it is, stickers, textures, figures, even buttons and hidden action events are at your disposal and even tho they are great at doing the things they were meant to do, it feels even better to do things they weren't meant to do, to use items in ways that no one ever though of before.
Even tho it is very easy to make levels, it takes up alot of your time, it took me a good two days to make my first level and it was just a boss fight with a giant alien, and it wasn't all fun, I had to test my level over and over again, then go back and fix whatever it is that needed to be fixed, and seance it is physics based, you need to give anything you make extra thought.
A big let down for LittleBigPlanet was the fact that it is very easy to completely mess up your level, during my first attempt at making a giant boss, I made a dragon, after I thought I was done I tested him to see if he would disappear when you hit his weak spot, so I did and he DID disappear and all the point bubbles came falling from the sky like I had programed it to, right after this event I saved the level, exited out of edit mode I went into "play" mode where you get to play the level you made as it will be once you publish it, to my surprise, the level started as I had saved it, the dragon was destroyed and the ground was covered with points, I tried to get my level back but it was all in vain, my level had been ruined and there was no way to get it back. Another thing that should be pointed out is that you can't undo actions, you can only reset time to a the moment of the last action, this is just like an undo button except it can take a good 10 seconds or so at random times, still, despite all of this issues, once you become familiar with the way things work, you will get used to them and won't bother you as much.
Once you are finally done with a level and publish it, you can see how many people have played it, and how many people have hearted it, once this is done you can't update it anymore, but you CAN go back to the level editor, fix it up, delete the already published and outdated level, and replace it with the new and improved one.

One last thing you will be able to do, and probably the mode you will spend about half your time with is playing levels that other people made. You can go straight to "cool levels" which will show you bunch of the most played levels, you could also look at "recent levels" which shows you the latest levels you have played, and lastly you can search for levels yourself. The amazing thing about LittleBigPlanet is that games that are dependent on a community to make awesome levels normally fail to succeed, but LittleBigPlanet seems to slap all those other games on the face with already plenty of great and imaginative levels to play. You can "heart" any level you see, this allows you to look at a list of "hearted" levels and play them whenever you wish without having to search for them, you can also heart people, so if there is a single person who has made multiple levels that you like, instead of hearting all of his levels you can just heart the creator himself. It seems like LittleBigPlanet has great potential to be even better as time goes on, you would not believe the creativity that some people have and have been able to bring to life with LittleBigPlanet.

You can turn your creations into prize bubbles and give them to others during or at the end of a level as a reward for beating it.

Graphics: In one word: "OUTSTANDING!" I have never stared at character models the way I have been at the sack boys ever seance I first played gears of war. The character animations are as smooth as you can get without sacrificing the control over it and the fact that you can control their emotions during gameplay is genius and IS be constantly used by users, this is not only a great way to express yourself online when you don't feel like typing or don't have a mic, but mostly it is plain hilarious! as I was driving an unstoppable car while the road behind me exploded, the fact that my sack boy was making an incredibly scared face actually made me laugh out loud, small moments like these make the game even more fun, and they pop up constantly. Smoke effects are top notch and the environments are non repetitive and well made, everything in LittleBigPlanet looks like it came out of a kid's fairy tale book, everything is bright, colorful, and overall has a very nice and attractive look to it that brings me back to my kinder garden days. The game has an amazing and unique new visual style never before seen in video games as far as I am concerned, seriously, everything looks so good in this game it may at first distract you from gameplay, then again I AM graphics freak. (Insert Nintendo fanboy comment about that being the reason I hate the wii here)
And then we have the double edged sword of the fact that it is physics based, on one side, everything looks and acts natural adding to the great animations and making it feel like you are actually interacting with things, and on the other side, because it is physics based, poor little sack boy gets his limbs stretched as far as the whole screen every now and then because of some strange error and even tho this could potentially be fixed with future updates, it is not fixed now and it DOES happen enough times to the point where I have to point it out, this will off course, not interfere with the overall experience.

Sound: There are a bunch of different sound tracks and each of them is completely different from the last specially seance they come from all over the world. You can unlock them to use in your own levels the same way you unlock everything else, by ether collecting the sometimes hidden prize bubbles, or by beating a level with a certain condition. Sound effects are wacky but often easily ignored, the two main sound effects you will hear are the "woosh" from the character jumping and the "bloop" and "pop" whenever you collect a point bubble. Overall they fit well with the whole visual style of the game as they are mostly the kind of sound effects you would expect from a happy Nintendo game.

Replay Value: The story mode literally has HUNDREDS of unlockable prize bubbles, some can be found easily, but some are well hidden, and you will need the assistance of one or more sack person in order to get to them. New levels will keep on coming from the community for a good few months if not years, not to mention that alot of them are really fun, and with the ability to create your own levels like no other game allows you to including the fact that you can make a level with friends which is rarely seen, I would say that the replay value of this game is probably about as good as it gets.

Conclusion: There are some things that need to be tweaked here and there and I specifically have to complain about not being able to copy and paste props without converting them into objects which will remain on your prop menu until you delete it. specially the online play, but nothing that will affect your final decision on whether or not to buy this game, this is seriously a must buy for all ps3 users this holiday, and for those of you platformer haters, you might want to try this one out, there is enough non-platforming levels online for you to enjoy it even if you end up not liking the story mode. Also, if you want to get someone started in gaming, this is one great friendly game that can attract many people due to its simplicity in control (left, right, jump, grab).

The game looks WAY better on a T.V.

Overall Score:
.:Amazing Game!:.

[Accordion]

An important feature to remember is that the level editor is 'live'.
Any testing you want to do in the editor you will need to rewind afterwards, and any major testing should occur in Play mode.
Switching between PLAY and CREATE can be done in the pause menu when you are in a level on your moon, you dont need to exit the level.

Also, "RECENT LEVELS" does not show recently uploaded levels, it shows levels that you have recently played. not nearly as useful.

[fg-54]

yes, that was my mistake when I first started to test it, I went out not knowing I could go into play mode from the start menu and it came back to bite me hard, almost sure I am not the only one who did that tho, or at least I hope not, and thanks on the correction on the "recent levels" thing, glad to see people actually read these things.