LittleBigPlanet – this generation’s most original game so far. If you’ve not heard of it I’m quite surprised you managed to be on the internet and avoid it. So, for those who haven’t; welcome to the internet. It’s an ultra-cute physics-based platformer featuring Sackboys, adorable and impressive graphics and the most powerful level editor in any console game. This is a very hard game to review, because it’s so expansive and there are so many things to do and say about doing them that it’s hard to know where to begin and where to end. Does the storymode come first with the level editor at the end? The level editor is a huge attraction to the game, should I start with that?

Since I’ve already given you my impressions on the beta, I will simply link you to it and expand on that.

The beta had a few problems: sometimes, user-made levels didn’t load when you tried to open them, it crashed for no reason (though rarely), sometimes it jumped around a little bit and the lag whilst playing online was horrendous. Whilst creating levels it crashed more often than it did when playing, rewinding/fast-forwarding (ie, undo and redo) could take minutes and the fancy tape effect it does when doing either could stick there sometimes (causing you to leave the level and open it again). Thankfully, these have all been fixed, though sometimes it can take a while to undo something, but this seems to be linked with how much it’s accessing the internet or something.

The graphics are great, very well textured materials and sackboys, beautiful backgrounds, and it all looks adorable – even the scary levels can’t help but be adorable when you’ve got an inch high character made out of soft material dressed as a pirate running through them with his tongue hanging out. Moving at speed is well done too, with a speed blur on everything as you zoom by, looking nice and polished and very, very pretty.

The controls are just as effective, with no changes from the beta. In fact, there are very few actual changes to the game itself, and the ones that were made are small. For example; there’s now a 5-star rating system for user-made levels (and a comments section for all levels), and the level ‘Tie Skipping’ was moved a little bit on the story planet.

I am going to have to take a moment to highlight something: I haven’t played a game as fun as LBP for a very long time – I might go so far to say that this is the most fun I’ve had in a game. The multiplayer. If the sight of a sackboy doing night fever on top of the controller in your Pod whilst you’re looking for a level doesn’t make you burst out laughing there’s a good chance you actually have no soul, or if a sackboy dressed as a lion with an angry face and fists in the air so it looks like it’s roaring doesn’t make you coo as your heart melts you are probably actually Death.

Oh, and slapping someone is hilarious, as is sticking a feather that is 5 times the height of a sackboy onto someone’s head so you can’t see what levels you’re looking at in the Pod and getting a trophy for it. You won’t get a trophy for doing it again, but if you try hard enough you can make them look like an ostrich.

Really, LittleBigPlanet is truly astounding. The community is full of people you just want to play with just so you can slap them around and talk to each other (which, whilst I’m on the subject, amazed me at first as your sackboy’s mouth moves as you talk in a very-close-to-real-life way. Yes, you can make them talk), or make your sackboy laugh and listen as the people you’re playing with laugh. If you’re feeling mischievous, you can wait until they’re next to a hazard and slap them into it. They’ll either laugh until they cry or yell at you and spend the rest of the game trying to do the same to you. Either is funny, but it’s not really recommended; karma and all that.

The tutorials and the voice over by Stephen Fry are just as useful and amusing as ever, Fry’s humour matching the quirkiness and cuteness of the game perfectly whilst also instructing you so you’re never in doubt of what you’re doing.

The level is fantastically powerful, to the point of you have to spend a level or two to mess around with the tools until ideas start bursting into your head. I’ve had the game for 8 days and I started a brand new level today (after two previous levels that are unfinished) and spent 6 hours doing it. It’s still nowhere near finished, so, as you can probably tell, levels can take a very long time if you want to do them properly, with a proper theme and environment to almost tell a short story with.

These are the kind of levels I want to see online, but, unfortunately, not many people do them properly, just throwing platforms and things to swing from and such out there without pulling them together, so it just feels rather thrown-together, regardless of how fun it is to play. There are a few levels online that you absolutely must check out, like the God of War level, which keep a theme (in that case, God of War) through the whole level and are head and shoulders above the majority of other levels out there, but it still doesn’t quite match the quality of the levels that come with the game. Clearly, they are getting close, and, whilst the levels may not have to polish of the premade levels, they are very fun to play and quite an achievement (especially since that God of War level was actually done in the beta).

The trophies in the game range from easy things like completing sections of the story mode, to funny things like sticking a sticker or decoration to someone else’s sackboy to harder things, like (for a gold trophy) getting a certain amount of views and hearts from the community on one of your levels. These ensure that not all trophies are quick and easy to get, but there are certain trophies that are very easy to get if you screw around in the editor, like travelling at a high speed or travelling to a high altitude – and have led to levels being uploaded that are designed solely for those, which is a gigantic waste of bandwidth, if you ask me (though you probably don’t).

When it all comes down to it, LittleBigPlanet is everything that has been promised by Sony. It could very well ’save’ the PS3 the way it has been expected to, if not only from the game-drought (which hasn’t been there for ages now anyway), it will almost certainly grab the attention of children, especially when the adverts hit TV (or the cinema, where I’ve seen them). If you are interested in any of the following three things, you will like this game:

• Story mode made up of levels were all made in the level creator that comes with the game, showing the power of the editor and the huge creativity of the creator curators.

• Online tackling of said levels and an unlimited supply of levels from the community, in a way that will definitely make you burst out laughing on more than one occasion and will always cheer you up.

• Creating levels with the most powerful level creator in a console game, with a physics engine that will make realistic theories work whilst keeping it less frustrating by softening the realism in the physics. Make levels as well as the actual level creators did with the exact same tools without being overwhelmed by them.

Go and buy this game. Not got a PS3? Go get one with this game. It’s that simple. It is unique, it is beautiful, it’s adorable, child-friendly and, most importantly, it is fun. Amazingly so.

10/10

Filed under: LittleBigPlanet