Posted by Derrick Sanskrit
Many would agree with me the LittleBigPlanet is the most significant game release of 2008. Sure, Spore was a big deal, but it was only the next logical step in Will Wright's Sim series. LittleBigPlanet is a platform for whatever the user wants it to be, a venue for sharing and interaction, and a robust toolbox for imaginative and aspiring game designers. There's no denying LittleBigPlanet is an impressive and forward-thinking new box of toys for the kids, but is it a fun game? With one week of Sackboy inhabitance under my belt, I'm prepared to render my first impressions.
First, an astounding "Yes!" LittleBigPlanet succeeds in its campaign to bring fun back to gaming. From the charming tutorials narrated by Stephen Fry (remember his delightful British voiceovers in the feature film treatment of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? Accompanying those wonderful Shynola-produced animated sequences? The very definition of whimsy, right there.) to the wondrously expressive characters and environments, the fancifully capricious score of licensed music to the patchwork globe user-interface, everything about this package just oozes fun the way a frat boy at a party oozes Axe body spray, only you'll want to spend the whole evening with LittleBigPlanet, wake up next to it the following day and ask if it has plans the next night.
There are, of course, a few areas where the fun breaks into "well, that's annoying." While the stages included on disc are ingeniously designed spectacles of platform peril, precise jumps and landings are frustratingly difficult due to the fact that Sackboy sort of floats into place rather than the stop-on-a-dime runs and jumps we've gotten used to from Mario and Mega Man. I've lost dozens of innocent Sackboys to spike pits, poison gas, and electrified obstacles because they didn't quite land jumps the way I expected them to. This brings me to my next qualm, the ever-archaic lives system. Each checkpoint throughout the stage allows you to respawn there for a certain number of lives before you fail the entire stage and I am left wondering why. Shouldn't an all-ages game focused on cooperation and fun like this allow at least the option for infinite lives? It's quite annoying to make it more than halfway through a stage filled with challenging obstacles only to come across one of those aforementioned difficult-to-land jumps, quickly fail at it four times and have to start back at the very beginning again. Just let me try this jump until I get it right! There are wonderfully informative tutorial videos on how to use each and every tool and object in the game's create mode, but while there are easy-to-use reality-altering pause, fast-forward and rewind commands for the world around Sackboy in create mode, these timeline controls do not apply to the videos, which continue uninterrupted until they end. Miss something important? You have to wait for the video to be over, then hit the switch to start the whole thing over again.
But enough whining, because what LittleBigPlanet does well it does astonishingly well. Not only is the story mode included on disc thoughtful and compelling, it continuously activates the players imagination. Every stage introduces obstacles and puzzles and enemies unseen before and then provides you with the tools and knowledge to make those elements or your own crazier takes on them. The true measure of a game's fun for me has always been how much I find myself thinking about it when I'm not playing, such as keeping track of the time I spend running for trains outside of WiiFit or pondering my place in the universe and how that effects my fashion choices outside of The World Ends With You. Well, this past weekend, waiting for a train after a Halloween party, I found myself dreaming up obstacles to build for my little Sackboy. Within seconds I had pulled out the sketchbook and doodled this curious little environmental puzzle:
Having played with the create tools for an hour or two by the time I'd sketched this, I already had a general idea of how it would all work, and it took maybe five minutes to build as a functioning prototype in-game. No, it's not huge or world-altering, but as a small bit of a larger environment it's enormously satisfying. This brings us to the biggest aspect of LittleBigPlanet and the hardest to review: user-generated content. LittleBigPlanet is all about sharing. If you don't make your own stages and/or play other people's stages, you're only playing an incredibly small part of the game. Sure, betas have been out for a while, but the full game and its server have only been around for about a week and, having played around 45 user-generated stages at this point, I can say that I'm honestly blown away by what some people are making. Of course they aren't all great, it's commonly accepted that a majority of all user-generated contet will be complete rubbish, but it's a testament to either the creativity of the early adopters or the jury process of how the stages are organized that so many of the user-created stages I've played so far have been beautiful and well thought-out experiments in game design, from underwater temples to basketball courts to classic game soundtracks to a recreation of the Pac-Man arcade. The only reason I haven't finished LittleBigPlanet's story mode yet is that I feel propelled to check out the new user-created stages every time I turn the game on, I am just so fascniated by them all. (Edit: Shortly after writing this, I did face off against the final boss and earned my "Just Beginning" trophy for completing story mode.)
Clearly so far, LittleBigPlanet is not a perfect gaming experience, but it transcends. LittleBigPlanet is so compelling, so unique, so inspirational that it will undoubtedly be played widely for the entire lifespan of the Playstation3 and beyond and is likely to usher in a whole new generation of gaming like Super Mario Bros, Wolfenstein 3D and Dance Dance Revolution before it. Unlike last year's PS3 blockbuster Ratchet & Clank which was billed by critics as being the first game to look like you were playing a Pixar movie, LittleBigPlanet strikes me as the game that would result if the creative minds at Pixar decided to make a game instead of a movie. What can be done in games that can't be done in other media? What can be done in games that hasn't been done in games before? How can we make all of this a compelling emotional experience for players, regardless of age, gender, or nationality? I believe LittleBigPlanet will reshape the way both gamers and game designers approach the medium and, as is the whole point of the software, bring the two groups even closer together.
Look for continued impressions and final analysis to come...
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