
The story mode is structured a lot like the first game's, and it serves the same basic purpose. There's an evil force out there, and you'll work with a batch of "Creators" to right the wrongs and get things back to normal. It feels like these levels are largely designed to introduce you to the new mechanics of LBP2, like a grappling hook that you can use for swinging and climbing, or the grabinator, a pair of gloves that let you pick up and toss objects. You'll also start to get a sense of how you might use these new things in your own levels. You'll also get a user's-eye look at the controllinator, which is an in-game device that can be hooked up to allow you to use the DualShock to control objects other than Sackboy. This is what allows you to control cars, play dual-joystick shooters, fly lunar landers, or just about anything else you can come up with. It's a big part of what makes LBP2 so much broader than its predecessor.
The single-player is a brief romp that, as before, is practically required since you'll unlock a ton of objects and stickers for use in the create mode. Interacting with the level creation tools hasn't changed a lot since the first game, though there are plenty of required tutorials to go through before you can really start creating your own levels. You'll still shuffle objects back and forth along the three usable planes, and you're still represented in the creator as a floating Sackboy, as opposed to a mouse cursor or anything, well, "tool-like." While the tools are pretty easy to use and are usually explained well by the 50+ tutorials, getting in there and creating something awesome isn't an especially fast process. It seems like a mouse or a PlayStation Move controller would make things happen more quickly, but the game doesn't currently support either. Word is that a patch is on the way, though.

There's an awful lot of wonder and joy to be found in those user levels. It starts by being fully compatible with levels created in the first game, giving you a great base to start with. But a lengthy beta and a collection of busy creators have been putting LBP2's improved tools to great use, resulting in goofy fighting games, better basketball games, multiplayer shooters, bootleg versions of The Legend of Zelda's first dungeon, a zillion levels with unlicensed Mario elements, and that's only scratching the surface. Some players are just building machinima-style movies with the level tools and telling their own stories. Even the music levels that just play MIDI-like versions of real songs are better thanks to a rebuilt music sequencer. The sheer number of levels can be a little overwhelming, but with the great level-sorting tools, it becomes easy to spend hours just checking out and rating the work of others and leave you wanting even more.

The tool upgrades given to creators in LittleBigPlanet 2 are enough to make the game feel pretty fresh, making the game worthwhile even if you never actually delve into the creation mode yourself. But if you've got a great level idea burning a hole in your brain, and don't mind putting in a grip of time to get it just right, you'll find the tools to be pretty accommodating once you learn how they all work. Me, I'm perfectly content with just surfing through the lists of levels, picking out the craziest examples I can find, and losing myself in a world of twisted Mario clones, shooters, and levels loosely based on feature films. So get out there and create some more of those for me, cool?