No Small Feat
LittleBigPlanet does the impossible: it lives up to the hype.
Published: October 27, 2008
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.
The single-player levels themselves take you from one little garden around the world, slowly incorporating more and more challenging bits of platforming and just a wee bit of problem solving along the way. For every level in the game, you're rewarded for getting through things without losing a life, for collecting every object in a level and, initially, just for finishing. The levels are often littered with multiple hidden passages and alternate routes, some of which require you to tackle things with up to four players. You can get everyone together on one couch, of course, provided you actually have four controllers, but the simpler option is to just play the levels online with friends.
The online implementation of LittleBigPlanet is also insanely well done. So long as you're connected, you have the option of playing any level in the game solo or with friends, and if you happen to pick up a controller locally, you can sign in with another profile on the PS3 to migrate that sackperson over or just sign in as a plain guest. Online, people can (and often will) pop in randomly, so check gates were set up to prevent someone from hopping in midway through a level and breaking everything.
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.
The single-player levels themselves take you from one little garden around the world, slowly incorporating more and more challenging bits of platforming and just a wee bit of problem solving along the way. For every level in the game, you're rewarded for getting through things without losing a life, for collecting every object in a level and, initially, just for finishing. The levels are often littered with multiple hidden passages and alternate routes, some of which require you to tackle things with up to four players. You can get everyone together on one couch, of course, provided you actually have four controllers, but the simpler option is to just play the levels online with friends.
The online implementation of LittleBigPlanet is also insanely well done. So long as you're connected, you have the option of playing any level in the game solo or with friends, and if you happen to pick up a controller locally, you can sign in with another profile on the PS3 to migrate that sackperson over or just sign in as a plain guest. Online, people can (and often will) pop in randomly, so check gates were set up to prevent someone from hopping in midway through a level and breaking everything.
