Yes, I have the beta. Whilst I’m sure you’ve heard this from the other beta testers that have been tinkering with LBP already, I’m going to say it again; this game is everything that Sony have been promising.

In fact, not only is it everything that’s been promised, you won’t quite understand how magically it works until you get your slightly sweaty hands on the controller and play it for a while. Let me make it easy for you; if you were interested in this game, you will love it - now go place your preorders.

You want more information? Alright then, brace yourselves. LittleBigPlanet will, god willing, introduce a new age of console gaming - the user-generated content age (UGCA). In the UGCA, many more games will give users the opportunity to make their own content without even leaving the games - think Unreal Tournament mods without having to learn how to use the map editor. Everyone will be able to do it, which will invariably lead to many, many great levels and probably much more not-so-great levels too, but that’s how things happen.

Why do I think this? Well, I’ll tell you (it’s my job). LBP has a lot of fantastic things going for it. Not only does it have a superb physics engine, one that is realistic enough to make everything…well, realistic, but forgiving enough to make it all fun, too. Not only does it have the cutest characters to grace a game ever, and not only will it have some of the best levels to cross platforming games since…well, forever, really.

Now, I will be honest with you. I hate Mario. I never found the 2D games fun, and, as a general rule, I don’t particularly like platformers. They tend to frustrate me into throwing something at something (what I throw and what I aim at depends on where I am at the time). LittleBigPlanet, however, has made me see the cute, sack-made, physics based light. There is something about physics in games that has always made me want to hump the game’s leg, and LBP is just so awesome it humps back.

Right, onto the game itself. The 4 levels that come with the game are a lot of fun, and they’re all mainly tutorial levels. They serve you with nice, Stephen Fry-narrated instructions whilst letting you weep over your sackboy looking so cute as you make him jump across things. Whilst we’re in the area, Stephen Fry as the voice over was a masterstroke, his voice is perfect for the job and his humour fits LBP’s quirkiness perfectly. The tutorials introduce you to the gameplay mechanics smoothly and, whilst it’s nothing you couldn’t figure out on your own, still manage to keep you interested as you get a small taste of what the game can do with it’s levels. I promise you, you will fall in love with this game when you first turn it on and see it in motion if you are at all interested in it beforehand.

It’s quite clear from the levels that come with the beta that there is something special waiting to be played in the single player campaign. It’s been overlooked in the hype from the astonishing level creator and physics and heart-melting cuteness, but mark my words; the single player is going to get a lot of recognition when the game is released. You can already see that it’ll be a lot of fun, and you’ll have to play through at least a few levels before you can start creating your own levels, and you’ll have to play through more if you want to unlock a lot of items and materials and stickers and…well, you get the point.

Now, we move from the wonder that is the single player, simply because there were only 4 levels to be played in the beta, and we look towards what is probably the biggest attraction for a lot of people: Level creation. I shit you not, the sheer volume of features and options and tools could overwhelm you into a shell of your former self. Well, it could if you weren’t introduced to it so well. The level creation part has it’s own tutorials too – and there’s a lot of them. Don’t fret though, if you feel like it, you can simply skip the tutorial and go back to it later, but if you really want to get the most out of the level creator you will need to go through all the tutorials so you can best understand the sheer power you have in your hands.

Speaking in metaphors, the tools are like an avalanche, and you’re at the bottom dying of thirst, wondering how you’re dying of thirst on a mountain that’s covered in snow – but then, Stephen Fry appears with a lot of British humour, a pan and a gas-powered camping stove. He sits next to you, sets the stove up, puts the pan on top, and then presses the up directional button to pause everything (that’s an in-joke for people who have played the game, by the way). He then stands up again, pulls a large ice cream spoon out of his pocket, and scoops some snow out of the frozen (ha!) avalanche just a foot above your head, before emptying the snow into the pan, he explains how to do everything.

Sorry, I got lost in a really strange metaphor there, let me make it simpler. He melts the avalanche of options available to you into little, cup-sized lessons for you to learn when you need to learn them, so you can quench your metaphoric thirst for awesome level creating ability. I hope you get what I’m trying to communicate, because I got lost a while ago.

The tutorials in the create mode introduce you slowly to the power before you, just like the tutorials in the play mode do, but with many more of them. They don’t really get boring thanks to Fry’s voice over and humour, but you can figure out most of the later things yourself because they are so easy to use once you’ve got a grip on how to play.

The controls are dynamic in create mode, changing depending on what you’re doing. The directional buttons act as an undo (left), redo (right) and pause (up) controls, which are very useful and come complete with fancy visual effects, whilst the down button switches your sackboy between walking and hovering modes. Hovering is generally used to get around and see what you’re doing better, whilst walking is used to test what you’re doing. The right analogue stick moves you or whatever you’ve picked up around, the right analogue stick moves objects you’ve picked up bigger, smaller, and rotates them, or, in hover mode, moves the camera a bit so you can see the side of objects better and such. Square brings up the PopIt menu, where you add stickers, objects, find tools and other such editing goodness. X selects things/makes you jump, R1 grabs when running around, just as in play mode, but when placing objects R1 and R2 change the thickness of it and L1 and L2 change which layer you’re placing it on (there are 3 layers).

There isn’t too much I can explain without showing you, but let me assure you, the tools are very powerful and I can see myself spending hours on top of hours making my own levels, and that’s on top of playing through the story and playing through the already plentiful user-made levels.

Well, if you were at all interested in LBP for whatever reason, you can lay your mind at rest – it will follow through extravagantly, and you’ll love it. It’s so awesome it’ll hump your leg.

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