Posted by Derrick Sanskrit
My, what a difference a month makes.This time last month I was just about ready to proclaim LittleBigPlanet the late great hope for 21st century video games. Upon completing the on-disc single-player game, there was nothing left to do but explore the multi-player and user-generated options. This is where the game was truly supposed to shine, the "fun" that the advertising keeps referring to.
The good news is that local multi-player is pretty great. Most of the pre-made stages include optional challenges that require teamwork and cooperation and being able to turn to your friend and discuss strategies and enact them instantly is smooth and delightful. Playing online, however, is a tremendous crap shoot. There's no way to really communicate, so play goes from cooperative to competitive instantaneously, which becomes a problem when players share respawn points. If two players attempt to cross a bridge and both fail, they return to the continue gate with two "lives" lost and the game ends twice as quickly. Four players and you've got a recipe for instantaneous game over.
As I mentioned before, the user-creation tools are impressively deep and fantastically easy to use if you're willing to sit through a series of tutorials that rival the on-disc stages in length. If you can dream up a wacky contraption, odds are good you can make it if you're willing to think about all that goes into it. LittleBigPlanet promises endless replay value thanks to its community of constantly-updated user-created stages, and while the patchwork globe interface for finding these stages is novel and charming, and the game certainly can't be faulted for the fact that, as a rule, an overwhelming majority of all user-generated content will undoubtedly be garbage, there are still problems that prevent me from enjoying this key selling feature as much as I should.
Foremost is the method of "heart"ing stages and creators whose work you have enjoyed. While it's nice to see good work rewarded in some way, there seems to be no manner of browsing your hearted stages and creators, which begs the question why allow users to heart them at all? The "hearted" option in the ubiquitous popit menu only shows tools and objects you've hearted for use within stages, which seems redundant as no such object is particularly hard to find in the popit as is. Does anyone really love the bike handlebar with pink tassles so much as to add it to a second separate menu? Second is the incredible censorship and management of user-created stages so far by Sony. Yes, it makes sense that stages based on Mario, Batman and Ghostbusters will disappear eventually, doomed to the realm of copyright infringement, but what of The Azure Palace, the immensely popular user-created underwater stage that introduced complex play mechanics and a degree of polish virtually unseen in the on-disc stages that referenced absolutely nothing outside of itself? That stage was included in the massive cleanup a few weeks ago, much to the dismay of its creator and a large portion of the game's online community. Sure, the stage was soon returned to its rightful place, but it only proves that whomever is making the decisions of what is and is not suitable content is clearly not looking at the actual content.
The potential of endless fun provided by the user-creation tools and community is only as good as the people who use it, and I worry that gamers will grow tired of LittleBigPlanet and abandon it sooner than we'd all like. Just look at Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the biggest selling game of the year, a game that delivered on its promise of exciting new user-generated content every day via wi-fi, and a game that nobody is playing anymore. Still a great game, still great features, but if nobody's playing it anymore than those features are all running dry.
Obviously the second half of this review was much more negative than the first and we can probably pin this on the game's allure and shine wearing off over time. Make no mistake, though, LittleBigPlanet is still pretty damn fantastic. The sheer joy experienced the first time you do any of the hundreds of things you can do in this game is wondrous. While I would love to see the control issues (see part 1) and problematic "lives" system (much like Rock Band, this game would benefit greatly from a "no fail" mode) fixed in downloadable patches later on, LittleBigPlanet delivers on the fun it promises and then some. Even after the community has run dry, the stages already produced by the players, coupled with the intensely though-provoking variety of stages on disc, are well worth the price of admission and then some. Finally, somebody remembered that games don't need to be obtuse, gritty, wordy or pandering, they can just be fun for the sake of being fun.
Grade: A-
Related articles:
If Sales Numbers Mattered, LittleBigPlanet's Commercial Would Be Appealing
Sony Might Just Hate You
Sackboy vs. Muhammad
LittleBigPlanet is Insane
The Natural World of LittleBigPlanet
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem, Sackboy
61FPS Reviews:
LittleBigPlanet part 1
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3
+ DIGG
+ DEL.ICIO.US
+ REDDIT