LittleBIGPlanet in my PS3 - First test of Final Release.
Friday, October 10, 2008 at 12:26AM
I am a lucky gamer!
Today I received the final release of Little Big Planet from Media Molecule.
If you haven't already heard about this game, you should first of all be ashamed of yourself, then you should check it out immediately. See the game pages here.
The world of LittleBigPlanet is quite unlike anything you have seen before. A handcrafted landscape where players can find adventure, make their own levels and socialize with friends.
This is the description from the creators web page. Simple, but then again it is hard to explain the concept of Little Big Planet. You sort of have to see it, so check out the video below.
But LBP is a platform game. It is a 2.5D platform game in fact. You have your characters running in the old-school platform mode of left to right, trying to reach the end of the level. You also have three levels of depth to the game, as in moving behind something, hence the 2.5D reference used. After that there is nothing standard about this game.
You control you customizable characters of sackpeople. They and the world around them is built out of a vast amount of replicas of real life materials, shapes, figures and items. You control your Sackboy, or Sackgirl, whilst trying to master the obstacles in the various, and sometimes quite psychedelic, levels. The sackpeople are very controllable. You can even control their head and body movement by tilting you sixaxis controller. You can also control their facial expressions and have them displaying emotions whilst gaming. I found myself making my sackboy show fear whilst crossing dangerous crocodile infested waters, and gleaming with joy at the end of a level, and also clearly showing anger and frustration whilst playing co-op with my wife who kept dying and holding us back.
That combined with the look and feel, and the appearance of the sackpeople (yes, that is the politically correct term) is what immediately gets me attached to the little guys, and makes me really dig into the game and the levels.
It is after all a standard platform game by genre, but it is done in a very unique manner. All I can think to say is that Media Moleculs have perfectionized the genre with this game.And this is where LBP will becomeshuge. The games ships with enough levels of increasing difficulty to stand alone as a respectable platformer in terms of value for money, but the concept of the game is Play, Create, Share.
And this is where the developers put their trust in the community. They hope that the levels created and shared online, and the co-op games played and so on, will have the game evolving much further than what they themselves can imaging. And I believe them.
Having played around with the level editor a bit, I saw it's potential. Good level creation is a difficult craft, but I am sure a lot of great levels will be created and shared, and I am looking forward to playing them. And I think I will make some rather crazy ones myself. :-)
After 5 hours of gaming today I must say, I am not only hooked, but this game lived up to my extremely high expectations. I was nervous when I first started it, because my hopes for this game was sky high, but the game immediately delivered. The amount of detail put into the intro, startup, menu system and level selector drags you right into this Little Big World.
The controls in the game are easy to master, and there are good tutorials both for the game itself and the level creator, that builds your competence up quite fast, but simultaneously brings you right into the action. No boring stuff to complete before you are into the game here. Audio is great but the graphics is what makes this game unique. The way all the materials used looks so natural, and the hilarious stuff your sackpeople can do with, it is truly like nothing you have seen before.
I believe the developers when they say LBP could not have been created on any other platform than PlayStation 3.
But this is also a game to play multiplayer. Me, my wife and two kids have already re-created ourselves as a family of sackpeople, and we all enjoyed the game tremendously right away. I know this is going to be "the" game me and the kids spend this winter playing. Great fun for the family. I think the game, as it is presented in all its uniqueness, is the recipe for a hit for both hardcore gamers and families alike. Two thumbs up.
I am really happy for being given the chance to try one the the most anticipated games ever. And I am anxiously looking forward to the release of the game, and for the community to evolve online, in this monster hit from Sony this fall.
I really hope Sackboy will become to PlayStation was Mario has been to Nintendo. And I really hope somebody will make some real life Sackboy figures I can buy for my office desk.
This is the game that will make people buy a PS3 if they don't already have one. And all PS3 owners must own a copy of Little Big Planet. So please welcome Sackboy to the A-list of game celebrities. I believe he is here to stay.
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