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 James Wallis
WDS Article Author, Frontiers Nerd, Star Trek Geek, Console Inventer Wannabee...
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At one point in a demonstration of LittleBigPlanet, someone asks a simple question about the physical interaction of the materials you can use to create stuff in its sticky-back-plastic platform-game world. It's answered, wordlessly, by level designer Dan Leaver. In a minute or two, he creates a constellation of blocks of concrete, wood and sponge hanging in mid-air. Then he exits edit mode - effectively un-pausing the game - and they crash to earth convincingly, tumbling, bouncing and squashing each other.
Then someone else asks an equally innocuous question about whether heavy blocks will kill the game's little cloth-puppet avatars, the sackboys. The short answer is yes, but the long answer - the ten-minute-long answer - involves Leaver, from developer Media Molecule, and Sony producer Pete Smith getting embroiled in an absurdly convoluted attempt to prove it. Leaver's sackboy creates a gigantic set of stairs and carefully balances a giant concrete block on the top of it. Smith uses his sackboy to attach a weighted rope to the block. They start the level (several times - the block keeps falling off too soon). Leaver climbs the steps and pushes, while Smith grabs the weight and pulls in an effort to kill his sackboy in a slapstick-assisted suicide.
It doesn't work. It doesn't matter. They're clearly having fun - more fun than we are, it must be said. They bounce ideas and comments around, suddenly oblivious to the presence of half a dozen perplexed and slightly bored games journalists. That's because, contrary to what some people are saying, LittleBigPlanet isn't designed to be observed by hacks and discussed on their trendy, buzzword-brandishing blogs. It's designed to be played, and played with, by everyone. Based on our short demonstration and playtest - and the ridiculous antics of Smith and Leaver - the pull to play with it is wholly irresistible.
Imaginative, artistic, challenging, begging to be knocked over.
It's funny that a game that makes such blissful sense when you see it in person can be so hard to explain in words. It's also true that, in the rush to talk about its content-creation side, it's easy to forget to cover the basics, so let's start there. LittleBigPlanet is a side-scrolling platform game. It lets up to four players, online or local, romp through its knockabout assault-courses and mini-games in a happy scramble of competition and co-operation.
You can also use LittleBigPlanet to make stuff. Not just your own levels for the game - any stuff. A giant ball-pool to play in with your friends - that would take about five minutes. A sort of interactive toy website, maybe featuring your holiday photos or links to favourite LittleBigPlanet levels by other creators, might take an hour or two. A giant, hideous effigy of one of your friends and a piston-driven canon that fires sponge frying pans at his wobbly head: two or three hours. A full-size, meticulously-designed platform game level with an "Early Learning Centre does Salvador Dali does Flash Gordon" theme: a week, a month... how long have you got?
The easiest way to make shapes is by cutting out from the edges.
You might not want to do any of that, but somebody will, and it'll be there on PSN for you to download and play, making LittleBigPlanet the platform game with no end. Sony's vision is of a never-ending stream of stuff to play, filtered and sorted by the networking, aggregating and tagging systems familiar from the likes of YouTube.
It's all summed up beautifully by the game's main interface screen - so beautifully, we probably should have started there. Sackboy is in his cardboard-box space station with his giant PS3 controller (labelled "Puter"), looking down at the little big planet and its moon - "My Moon". The planet is labelled "story" (we're assured that there is one, sort of, but it's not very important). It has tens of themed level hubs with names like "Comrade Sackputin's Bunker", each of which seems to link to a dozen or so levels and mini-games. This, it's becoming apparent, will be a big game even if you never download or create a thing for it.
CRITICS CORNER:
100Playstation Official Magazine UK
There simply isn't anything else like LBP on any system, anywhere. It's a beautifully elegant and powerful creative tool that puts unlimited potential in the palm of your hand. [Nov 2008, p.92]
100Maxi Consolas (Portugal)
LBP is a unique game. It disguises itself as a 2D platform game but surprises the players with a set of editing tools and level sharing absolutely amazing. With a distinctive style and an everlasting future potential, we can say that Sackboy already conquered this industry. [Oct 2008]
100Gameplayer
LittleBigPlanet is like a magic trick, and in that respect it feels less like a videogame than an incredible concept executed perfectly. LittleBigPlanet is like LEGO (the blocks, not the game), it's like Monopoly, it's timeless... it's lightning in a bottle – and if Sony play their cards right it could well save the PS3, and propel the console into the stratosphere.
100Total Video Games
Undoubtedly one of the finest games in recent years, LittleBigPlanet deserves every single shred of a 10. You won't find a more polished or rewarding videogame this year, and for quite some time we'd imagine.
100GamePro
There's really nothing I can say other than this: if you own a PS3 and you don't buy LittleBigPlanet, you are robbing yourself of one of the most unique gaming experiences ever designed.
97IGN UK
It's a celebration of inspiration and human interaction and a hugely welcome, utterly invigorating experience among usual roster of nihilistic shooters jostling for shelf space this Christmas.
96Computer and Video Games
You'll look for inspiration for levels, mechanical dilemmas or puzzles in every corner of your life. And in your sleep. It will take over your conversations with fellow players. You will become obsessed. You have been warned.
95Meristation
Little Big Planet is revolutionary thanks to its flexible, fun and powerful editor. Creating a quality level takes time but the feeling of achievement is overwhelming. A must for everyone who loves creativity or likes to explore what the creativity of a passionate community can produce.
95IGN
Media Molecule has created a brilliant platformer, and then given you the tools to recreate the whole thing over again, or better yet, to create your own ideas from scratch. It's not perfect - the controls could be tighter, automatically shifting between planes can be problematic, the editor isn't quite as robust as you might hope - but what's there is nothing short of astounding.
93Ferrago
LittleBigPlanet is one of the most inviting game world's ever imagined, the concept is a masterstroke, the implementation slick.
92IGN AU
Where LittleBigPlanet stands out is in the genuinely amazing integration of deep, deep content creation tools and incredible variety of objects with a community mode that truly makes content exchange and rating not just easy, but practical and even essential.
90EuroGamer
We're just happy to see a flagship game for a modern system that's about running from left to right and jumping over things. New ideas are great, great old ideas are better, and LittleBigPlanet has both: it's the future and the past of videogames, rolled into one.
90VideoGamer
LittleBigPlanet may well save the PS3 (if it indeed needs saving), it may be the most creative game of all time, it could well usher in a new era of user-generated gaming, and has a chance of bringing about a 2D platforming renaissance, but all those things are down to you. The game Media Molecule has created won't do these things alone, but if gamers create the levels we think they're capable of, we might be looking at one of the most important games this console generation has seen.
90Kikizo
A quantum leap in concept and design, and one which falls inches - nay, millimetres - short of a perfect score. There's no better reason to own a PlayStation 3.
90GameDaily
It also has some of the best graphics and audio on PlayStation 3. All of the textures, from a sun drenched African landscape to Sackboy's realistic looking burlap skin look amazing, as do the various special effects.
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Posted by GameGuideDog.com Member on October 28, 2008