The Sack Attack is Back... Sorta
LittleBigPlanet: Game of the Year Edition is everything you'd imagine it to be a nothing more. No, that's not a bad thing.
Published: October 11, 2009
This is going to be a fairly quick review. If you want to know why the original LittleBigPlanet release caused such a stir, you need only look at our original review (or read on, as I'll include it below). Nothing has changed with the Game of the Year Edition -- including the price, though there's more than enough here to cover the additional cost over the original game dropping to $30, meaning you're getting three sticker packs, 16 costumes, the Metal Gear Solid add-on pack complete with Paintinator accessory and a collection of 18 levels built by the LBP community exclusively for this version of the game.
It's a fantastic deal for those that never picked up the game when it originally hit, and given the cost of picking up the stuff that you'll be getting on the disc (well, minus those exclusive levels and the three creator bits, which are fantastic), this is a great way to scoop up a little post-launch content all in one go. If you haven't already added LittleBigPlanet to your collection, this is should absolutely be the way to do it.
[Original Review Follows]
Hype is a weird thing. It's absolutely needed in order to get a game to sell well, but left unchecked it can mutate, creating expectations that are all but impossible to be lived up to. Astonishingly, LittleBigPlanet met expectations that I'd had for things since I first laid eyes on it at the Game Developers Conference last year. Given that I considered the game to be the next big thing from Sony, it's fair to say that LBP had a lot to answer for. Well congrats, Media Molecule, you guys and gals did it: LittleBigPlanet is absolutely incredible.
Now, it's certainly important to talk about the online, user-created content, but let's at least spend a bit of time talking about the single-player, MM-created stuff. It's entirely possible that some people out there picking up the game will never go online with it, and even without the community part of things, LBP is an unmitigated success. The sheer amount of creativity and imagination that has poured from the minds of the folks that built this game is downright staggering, and even if you only play this stuff, the game is worth buying.
It's not perfect, but it's close. The controls in any of the game's modes can be a little too touchy, and the physics in place occasionally make for some over- or under-corrected jumps -- ordinarily the kiss of death in a platformer -- but they can be learned to the point where things aren't frustrating anymore. Navigating the three levels of depth in each of the levels can also be problematic. That still means that newcomers will have to overcome a slight learning curve, but it does happen naturally, and much of the game's early level design is meant to sort of coax players into understanding how high and far the little sackperson can go.
That attention to detail spills out into nearly every facet of LittleBigPlanet's design, but it's perhaps most obvious in the game's intro and tutorial explanations, both narrated brilliantly by Stephen Fry. Even the introductory level, where you simply run to the right, is peppered with delightfully cute little pop-ups with the faces of the development team. Absolutely amazing stuff, really, and it matches the rest of the game's aesthetic so perfectly that you can't help but fall in love with it all.
It's a fantastic deal for those that never picked up the game when it originally hit, and given the cost of picking up the stuff that you'll be getting on the disc (well, minus those exclusive levels and the three creator bits, which are fantastic), this is a great way to scoop up a little post-launch content all in one go. If you haven't already added LittleBigPlanet to your collection, this is should absolutely be the way to do it.
[Original Review Follows]
Hype is a weird thing. It's absolutely needed in order to get a game to sell well, but left unchecked it can mutate, creating expectations that are all but impossible to be lived up to. Astonishingly, LittleBigPlanet met expectations that I'd had for things since I first laid eyes on it at the Game Developers Conference last year. Given that I considered the game to be the next big thing from Sony, it's fair to say that LBP had a lot to answer for. Well congrats, Media Molecule, you guys and gals did it: LittleBigPlanet is absolutely incredible.
Now, it's certainly important to talk about the online, user-created content, but let's at least spend a bit of time talking about the single-player, MM-created stuff. It's entirely possible that some people out there picking up the game will never go online with it, and even without the community part of things, LBP is an unmitigated success. The sheer amount of creativity and imagination that has poured from the minds of the folks that built this game is downright staggering, and even if you only play this stuff, the game is worth buying.
It's not perfect, but it's close. The controls in any of the game's modes can be a little too touchy, and the physics in place occasionally make for some over- or under-corrected jumps -- ordinarily the kiss of death in a platformer -- but they can be learned to the point where things aren't frustrating anymore. Navigating the three levels of depth in each of the levels can also be problematic. That still means that newcomers will have to overcome a slight learning curve, but it does happen naturally, and much of the game's early level design is meant to sort of coax players into understanding how high and far the little sackperson can go.
That attention to detail spills out into nearly every facet of LittleBigPlanet's design, but it's perhaps most obvious in the game's intro and tutorial explanations, both narrated brilliantly by Stephen Fry. Even the introductory level, where you simply run to the right, is peppered with delightfully cute little pop-ups with the faces of the development team. Absolutely amazing stuff, really, and it matches the rest of the game's aesthetic so perfectly that you can't help but fall in love with it all.
