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I've played 4 hours of the review code with Sony's lead games demo guy for Europe. I wrote up a piece about my experience a couple of weeks ago and you can find it on my blog. Apologies for not posting it directly into the forums. A link is much more simple than posting the whole thing again. (Mod Edit...it wasn't that difficult, it took me ten seconds to cross post your entire blog entry to this page. In the future, please don't post if you're just going to promote your blog. Thanks)
On Saturday afternoon, my brother and I managed to talk our way into a 4 hour hands-on with LittleBigPlanet at the "LittleBigPlanet Store" in Manchester. Sony have hired out a retail space in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens for the next month to show off the game to the public. Anyone can walk in off the street and queue for a chance to play the game in a kiosk, but I managed to book in some time with Sony's head of game demonstrations for Europe, to play the review code in private. Before you ask, I won't tell you how I managed this, because Sony could do without all of you turning up tomorrow trying the same thing!
The code on show to the public is older demo code, the same shown at Leipzig. My brother and I though were able to sit with a PR guy and play the finished review code for 4 hours. The single-player is under embargo so we can't talk about that. We didn't see that much of it anyway. The bulk of our time with the game was in the "Create" Mode with every unlockable item available to us.
Firstly it was time to create our Sackboys. My brother based his on The Joker from The Dark Knight. I went for the classy option of basketball jersey and Dollar chain! You can change materials textures and colours as well as adding accessories, from hats to googly eyes. In-game you can turn your head using the Six-Axis or hold down L2 and use the left stick to manipulate your left arm, or R2 for your right arm. The d-pad controls facial emotions and when you speak using a headset your character automatically lip-synchs to your speech!
The first hour and a half of our demo time consisted of Sony's PR man taking us through the various menus and options, starting with the front end of the game, before showing us the basics of create mode and then some more complicated building techniques.
He showed us how you can make enemies from scratch by building a body shape, including limbs, from materials in the game and then using pivots to determine how arms and legs can move. By making the enemy's arms from wood he could set one on fire for use as a weapon. Perhaps most impressively, rather than design a face, he used the PlayStation Eye to take a picture of my head and use it on his enemy design. Very clever stuff. You can even program your creations to follow you through the level and help you with obstacles rather than use them as enemies.
Next we were shown how you can build objects to give to people as prizes for beating your level. We helped each other to construct a rack of meat over a fire and wrapped the whole thing in a Prize Bubble for collection by players at the end of the level. They could then take this object and use it in their own design. Coincidentally, you also unlock “Create items” in single player by finding hidden Prize Bubbles in levels.
Our next creation, was a Super Smash Bros. style fighting arena. You can't cause damage to each other directly, so instead we set the floor, ceiling and walls of the arena on fire, with the objective being to knock rival Sackboys off the safe platforms and into the flames. Or you could use my technique of grabbing the other person and jumping off the platform, taking them with you!
Realising the game's similarities to Gary's Mod, my brother and I felt compelled to do what all Gary's Mod players eventually do. We built a disco. We made a gantry with swinging lights of different colours and built the floor from glass to you could slip and slide along it with your Sackboy.
Then we experimented with more object building, making small wooden cars powered using the engine tool and a switch for accelerating. We went on to build see-saws, Wild West wagons (which I ruined by covering in ROFL stickers) and a race course where you had to swing over electrified floors.
Before Saturday I was really on the fence about LittleBigPlanet. The gameplay seemed very aimless when watching trailers, but after our mammoth 4 hour hands-on, under the guidance of Sony Europe's top game demo man, I can tell you that this thing is hella awesome. If you thought kids went mad for Pokemon, then watch them go insane for LittleBigPlanet.
If you'd like to see larger versions of the images then take a look in my images section. There's plenty more in there too, though they're from my phone camera and the quality isn't perfect.
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