LittleBigPlanet

With the PS3 looking for its first “console seller”, here comes Little Big Planet, the first game out of the developer Media Molecule and well, it might just be the game the PS3 has been looking for.

There is no real story to Little Big Planet.  The basic premise is that the dreams that the people on Earth have come to a place called Little Big Planet.  This is just a basic story to let players really get into the game, but it really doesn’t matter.  It’s just an excuse for little Sackboys to go running around.

This surely one of the best, if not the best, looking PS3 games to come out so far.  The game has a certain style that really makes the game unique and certainly is a nice breath of fresh air with all the ultra violent, gray games out there.  The best word to describe the visuals is defiantly cute.  The levels each have this sense of style that really makes going through them a unique experience.  You will go from skeleton wedding to the streets of a city and they defiantly fight the whole cute look the game has.  The best looking part of the game, though, is defiantly Sackboy.  He is one of the most expressive characters in video game history.  He looks amazing.  One of the better of features of the game is how you can give your little guy his own unique look from clothing items you find in the game.  How you can customize Sackboy really adds a lot to the visual style the game is going for and really helps fit the mood of the level.  You can dress him up in a tuxedo for the wedding level or dress him up like a guy from the hood for the city level.  

Another really great feature of the visuals in the realistic physic the game uses.  This is not like other not like other platformers were you can really do anything you think you can.  The way Sackboy interacts with objects is really fun to watch.  The place where the physics really come into play is the level creator.  Everything reacts like it would in the real world, so if something is going to tumble over, it’s going to tumble over, not just stand there like a stone wall.  The physics do the make the level creation tools harder to use, but also far more fulfilling.

The soundtrack in Little Big Planet is easily my favorite of all time.  The music for each of the levels really fit the theme for the level and really adds a lot to the experience.  The music never gets repetive, though, because you are expierencing new music a lot because you are constantly beginning new levels.    You will be humming them to yourself after you play the levels because they are really catchy and hard to forget about.  The two tracks that stand out the most to me are the theme and Mexico themed level tracks.

The gameplay in Little Big Planet is where this game really shines.  There are some many ways you can play the game.  There is the single player mode, which for a game that is really creation based, is really one of the best to come out this generation.  There is the creation mode, which I will talk about that later.  Then there is the user created levels you can play.  The user created levels add a lot of fun and interesting new ways to play the game.  The user created levels will teach you to play the game in different ways as you go from racing vehicles to jumping over rods to score more points.  This is the one thing that really surprised me about the game to.  This game can be very competitive if you are playing with friends.  All throughout the levels there are little balls that will give you points whenever you run through them.  When you start playing with friends, the game compares using a pie chart to tell has scored the most points and this really makes you want to beat your friends, which really surprised me.  The number of ways you can play the game was really the biggest surprise to me.

The controls are the one place where you start to feel there are some issues.  The game is a 2D platformer, but there are 3 layers of depth that the game uses.  This really gets confusing when there is a lot of geometry in the level and you are trying to get to an item.  The game sometimes when you make a jump will move you to the plain on which the object you are trying to jump on is on, but sometimes it misses the mark.  This is also a game that makes you take very precise jumps and the controls make it really hard to do so since how hard you press the jump button decides how high you jump. 

The other place where the controls have the some issues is the creation tools.  The tools are very complicated and the game doesn’t do a very good job of explaining them to you.  There are many screens you have to go through and it gets very confusing what each sign does.  The issue with the three layers also becomes an issue here because, for example, if you want to make a jump, you have to make sure that the ramp and vehicle are on the same plain.  Now multiply this by a hundred and it becomes kind of repetitive.  Even with all these issues, though, the creation tools, once you get use to them, really do make you feel powerful.

This is defiantly the type of game that is worth the sixty dollars you pay to buy it.  Not only does it have a great single player mode, but with the player created levels and the level creator, it is possible that you will have an infinite number of levels to play through.  You are also going to play through the single player levels many times, though, to find all the items and to get the items for finding all the items and for acing the level.  This is defiantly a game were you will get your money’s worth

Little Big Planet is defiantly one of the best games on the PS3, if not one of the best to come out this current generation.  The way that it makes it so easy for players to do some many is just amazing.  The way it lets player create their own levels will never be done again on consoles like this ever again.  This game is defiantly one of the best platformers ever made.

Good

·         Amazing, deep level creation tools

·         One of the best looking games on the PS3

·         Great soundtrack

·         Surprisingly great competitive multiplayer

Bad

·         Controls have minor issues

·         Creation tools are sometimes overly complicated