LittleBigPlanet Review

LittleBigPlanet is a great platformer that brings together some absurd fun with some interesting platforming puzzles and good timing principles. In LittleBigPlanet you are a sack person, and as a sack person you have the power to dress in various clothes, change your sack colour, and paint the world with stickers. In the world you run about gathering bubbles for points and getting extra stickers and clothes for more adventures in different lands. The world has been created by Media Molecule and it contains themes from various basic settings. There are Mexican deserts, African savannas, Gardens and even a Cityscape. Although the missions have story like objectives you probably won’t be too concerned about what they are. Each one of these themed levels, although artistically exaggerated, becomes part of a much larger world. A world in which the players can join together to complete objectives or if they like create their own corner of the world for other gamers to visit.

You will come across some great contraptions

Indeed LittleBigPlanet’s biggest component is naturally the platforming elements. As you move along the level you collect bubbles for points but also larger bubbles for stickers, objects, clothes and decorations. The game is a side scroller in a 3D world, but your sack boy (or girl) can move 3 levels deep into this side scrolling world allowing some 3D movement. This enables levels to have various overlapping steps or slopes to jump over and dodge objects to that may be dangerous.

Thankfully the game is smart enough to assume you wanted to land on a certain ledge even if you are actually jumping from the background. There are spongy type materials you can grab hold of to either swing across the level or maybe revolve around spinning objects propelling you into the air. The game speed is fairly fast but you can hang back and try out small hard to access areas where many goodies might be located. As you progress through levels save points will restore your lives back to three. When you get squashed by a large object, fall into fire or explode into pieces you will return to these save locations staggered along the world. In general the actual progress is very simple; there are relatively few hard sections. In fact many of the deaths may simply come from you trying to get these obscure bubbles for extra points, more objects or even keys to unlock challenges.

Not all the game is overly simplistic; there are a few difficult sections. These difficult sections may require you to learn a new skill quickly or more than likely time your moves extremely well. In some cases the designers knew these sections were hard and they have simply doubled the number of lives at the save point. Unfortunately it doesn’t do much to offset the inconsistent difficulty level. When you do lose all your lives you will need to restart the whole level even if your previous efforts were flawless. The game only takes into consideration your efforts from the last save point ignoring everything else. I would not class LittleBigPlanet as a hard game, the bulk of the levels are simple and generous in terms of save checkpoints. Because there is some conservation of momentum, moving objects can prove a little trickier to deal with. New puzzle ideas early on are demonstrated well enough with leniency to start with. Many of the introductions of a new sequence, a vehicle, a springboard or spinning wheels is usually cause for enjoyment. This goes along with the majority of upbeat fun style music, especially the theme used in the first few levels.

Good timing is needed for some trickier parts

Of course much of the fun in the game comes from the multiplayer portion. Single player is fun enough to start with but to greatly extend play time and increase enjoyment you’ll want to venture online to play story or custom levels with other players. The story missions will have many sections that require two or more players to access so this cooperative nature is very natural. Your other buddies will start the level the same as you but they can also be killed. Once killed they must wait until a player reaches the next save point. In some cases this can mean you or your friends online will be waiting a few minutes watching you complete a more difficult or lengthy section. This isn’t as bad as it sounds; it’s still fun to watch the platforming action. In groups of 3 or 4 the levels become a lot easier and quicker, because you get more chances to complete objectives. There is also a good chance that other players have beaten the level before and can teach you a thing or two.

Unfortunately there are some connectivity issues. If the connection is poor the response of your sack person is very sluggish which can make some of the trickier levels unplayable when you need to time jumps. This is even worse when people are connecting to your existing game, slowing all things down and making it very hard to control your sack person. There are quite a few people online in the LittleBigPlanet world but they are spread very thinly across many levels and all the custom user levels. This means you won’t always be able to play with others even if you want to.

When every sack person is alive in multiplayer the game camera tries to keep all the players in view. Most of the time everybody will be close enough to be seen although at some distances it means the camera is zoomed out a fair way and the sack characters look pretty small. You’ll find that you really need to wait for others to catch up. At a certain point those far enough behind will simply disappear from the screen and be given a short time to get back in camera view. Of course it’s almost impossible to scale obstacles and jump chasms when you aren’t visible on the screen. Therefore falling behind, like dying, means you must wait for the leaders to get ahead and reach a checkpoint or possibly return to the last checkpoint. This type of thing happens frequently when you are dealing with vehicle type objects that propel players across the level very quickly. The levels are also competitive to a degree. Racing sections mid level reward the quickest players between sections. Those who obtain the most bubbles will be declared the winner at the end, so you’ll want to keep a brisk pace. The co-operative aspect however can be very enjoyable, working together to perform simple tasks is quite rewarding.

The power of the level editor is quite something

The final great aspect of LittleBigPlanet is the very powerful level editor. Not only is it powerful but also very friendly to gamers not so familiar with making levels. It’s helped significantly by the intuitive tutorials voiced by Stephen Fry. The tutorials are required because they will unlock many of the useful objects in the world for level creation. These things include contraptions, point bubbles, traps, switches and creatures. The power of the editor to alter individual points on each world object and move them any direction demonstrates that in most cases the limit is really going to be imagination and time. Even though the controller execution works really well it can still be awkward to do some tasks initially when designing levels. But once you get into full swing it’s easy to copy, flip, rotate, change materials with very few button presses. This level editor extends the time you will get out of the game, even if you only view the great tutorials. The ideas they give you might be just enough to set you on a level creating journey with no end in sight.

LittleBigPlanet is definitely a fun platforming game and the music helps set the tone and speed of the game world from the very first level. The game is also very accessible to a large range of gamers even if there are some slightly difficult sections in some levels when playing alone. The customisation options even when you exclude the numerous micro transaction purchases available are pretty large. You can access a lot of content just by scaling obstacles in the game and running into point bubbles. Then you can see a lot of strange user created content if you hop online and get help to reach even more content. The level editor is extremely powerful, you can position objects but you can also manipulate the shape of the objects, offering you near limitless design potential. The fun multiplies when more people get involved, you might just start laughing when the sack people do silly things or get stuck. Although the camera is strangely implemented the platforming is very enjoyable with good music and themes.