Yesterday I got the chance to play LittleBigPlanet for the first time, and what a time I had. This game is everything it’s cracked up to be and more, and I am so glad I got a chance to see it firsthand. I played it 5 different times, 15-20 minutes of playtime each turn, so about an hour and a half of total play time.
This is how it was set up: The Associate Producer of the game(his name was Eric *something*, I don’t remember his last name) played using one controller, and three others would play along with him. I got time with the character customization, level editor, and one of the single player levels, all the while I was able to ask him any questions I had, which I did. There was a tutorial level, but I never got a chance to play it. I did watch some people play it, though, and I got a chance to film a portion of it for you guys before he told me he didn’t want me filming the game. I am gonna portion off the info for each chunk I got a chance to see and play, so the information is relevant to the topic it is placed under. Anyway, here is everything I noticed playing the game:
Character Customization
* There are a huge amount of customizable items, from hats to glasses to shoes to pants to zebra outfits and everything in between.
* There is a Tron suit you can wear in the game, along with a killzone helmet and mask.
* Not only that, but there are about 25 different materials and designs that you can choose to have your sackboy made out of, including 3 types of camo.
* There are held items that you can choose from, such as a wooden sword and a magic wand(a stick with a star on the top). You can’t use them as weapons, but when you slap while holding an item you hit them with said item.
* You can slap just about any kind of sticker you can think of on your sackboy, so you can essentially make your own designs.
Level editor
* For those of you that don’t know, you can switch back and forth between flying and running around by pressing *down* on the d-pad.
* When everyone has a menu open, the menus auto-adjust to the top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right corners to keep the screen clear.
* LBP comes with a nice 10 premade vehicles or so(I drove a lowrider!), but as with everything else you can edit them as you like.
* Logs burn. You can make a log, or anything out of wood, really, and set it on fire. We made a floor full of burning logs and then we drove a monster truck over them.
* There are “triggers” that you can place to have events happen right when you want them to. For example, you can make it so halfway through swinging on a rope across a gap, the rope snaps and you fall down to another area.
* Anything you can think of, you can make. Just be careful when making a “Sonic” level or a “Mario” level, because that won’t fly on the servers. Name it something generic that won’t warrant deletion.
* If you want to make carpet, you can. All you have to do is take a picture of some carpet, apply the sticker to something thin and soft(sponge, for example), and save the item.
* If you made a kickass vehicle, you can make that vehicle collectible through your level. For example, you could reward players who made it past a particularly difficult portion of your level with a buggy you made, which they could use at any time throughout making their levels. This applies to items, such as carpet, as well.
* The size of your crater on the moon corresponds directly with the amount of items you can place on a level. This way you can have a minigame taking up a small crater, while a full, hour long level would take up one of the largest craters.
The Construction Yard
* This is the level I got a chance to play three times.
* Eric was really stressing the term “Coopetition”, which is cooperating so you can compete for the collectible items and points. For example, there was a lever that would slide a girder across a gap. It requires two people(at least) to complete. One would move the girder across using a lever, the other would grab the chunk of sponge at the other side, which the first player would now bring back with the same lever. That sponge was required to reach a certain height, so you could collect more goodies. In my case, I stood on the sponge with a friend while another guy dragged it across, and right before we got there I slapped my friend off so I could have the stuff to myself. That, essentially, is coopetition.
* The developers love to hide goodies that you have to find later. I didn’t notice all the stuff I could eventually collect until the third playthrough. If you’ve ever played Portal, and you know that usually there is more than one way to beat a level, the same applies here. The more difficult task you accomplish, the more collectibles they reward you with.
* At any point, you can bring up a sticker which is basically a live image recorded from your PS Eye. When you stick the image on a surface, it takes a picture at that moment, so you can tack yourself onto the walls in a level(or whatever else you feel like doing).
Emoting
* Emoting is awesome. Using the d-pad, you can select three different degrees of sadness, anger, happiness, and fear. For example, you press up to smile, press it again to smile big, and press it again to be ecstatic with your tongue hanging out.
* If you hold R2, the right stick becomes a controller for your right hand. The same goes for L2, the left stick, and the left hand.
* The sixaxis controls which direction your head is facing, and it was surprisingly intuitive.
* If you click and hold L3, the sixaxis controls your hips instead of your head.
* Using a combination of these, I made my guy do a pretty kickass hula dance. I forced him to do it, though, so he was pretty scared at the time.
To Sum it Up
LittleBigPlanet is so in depth, so customizable, so personal that there’s no way to sum it up in words. You could say it is our generation’s Mario; 20, 30 years from now you’ll be telling your children that you got the chance to grow up with this game, and that’s an experience you don’t want to miss. All I can say is, if you are still on the fence about buying this game, don’t hesitate.
