Impressions of a Medium-Sized World
Posted: October 5, 2008
The LittleBigPlanet.Lucky me, I was given the opportunity to participate in the Beta for LittleBigPlanet. This Beta featured the tutorial Garden area that contains three story levels plus a challenge level, and the Moon area where you create your own levels and share them with other players over the Internet. I could not wait to have at it.
The origin of LittleBigPlanet lies within our minds; our collective dreams combine to create the LittleBigPlanet. This immediately brought to mind an article I recently posted claiming that we are processing ideas and occurrences during our sleep to in turn make us more creative while we are awake. LittleBigPlanet is the world of our imaginations, one in which anything is possible. We have complete control over our Sackperson character and the environment around us, allowing us to manipulate most anything as we please.
The introductory credits are part of the initial tutorial level, which drew me deeper into the game initially. The point-by-point tutorial resumes after the romp through development staff names and faces. Controls are simple like most other platformers: moving and jumping. However, the point of LittleBigPlanet is to have a creative hand in the world, which I learned of in pieces.
There are a wide variety of fashions for your Sackperson.
Character customization is probably one of the more defining aspects of LittleBigPlanet. Throughout story mode, players collect a multitude of items, many of which are wearable by Sackpeople. Various items include fabrics, hats, tops, bottoms, eyes, and well, you get the picture. The selection granted within the tutorial levels is enough to get most Sackpeople looking fairly unique. Changing your avatar is as simple as clicking a button, and can be done anything during play.
Another set of items players collect many of are stickers. Stickers can vary from scenic backgrounds, to words, to foliage, and they can be used nearly anywhere. Certain stickers will trigger events in various levels; these events can be races, points, or even pick-up items. For Eye-Toy purchasers, there are sticker tools that allow you to photograph yourself, or anything you may have handy, and turn it into an applicable sticker. Be wary if you are looking to share naughty pictures, as the select button’s use was created specifically to report designs that are inappropriate.
There is a large selection of tools from which you can choose to interact with your environment.Certain levels contain keys that unlock challenge levels. These are areas that offshoot from the main storyline to offer up a mini-game with which players can test their skills. The challenge level offered in the Beta was a jump rope sort of game. The more jumps performed, the more points gained, but the faster the next jump would need to be made. It was easy enough at first, but it gained speed quickly and proved to be a little more difficult than it seemed.
Every collectible object in the game carries a point value, and these points are combined as you progress through each individual level. These scores mean nothing without the online component of LittleBigPlanet. Actually, a decent chunk of the game can be lost if the Internet connection is neglected, but more on that later. Scores can be automatically uploaded to the LittleBigPlanet scoreboards, allowing you to see just how poorly you have done compared to everyone else.
One of the most highly-anticipated aspects of LittleBigPlanet exists on the Moon, where everything you do is create levels to play by yourself and revel in your creative genius, or upload and share with others. If you did not fail Kindergarten and allow others into your playground they may just “<3” your level, and give you creative credibility. Create mode can be rather tedious depending on what you are trying to accomplish. I came across several issues while playing:
- If you have multiple items attached to a wall (or other object) you can not detach just one of the attached items. Instead, you end up detaching all objects and then must reattached all other objects you did not want to detach. This is the same for deleting objects as they must first be detached to avoid deleting your entire level.
- The “rewind,” “fast forward,” and “pause” actions are cute, but not precise and they take entirely too long. I would much prefer the “undo” and “redo” to pop between actions to better understand exactly what actions the game is affecting.
- You can not move objects between planes that are currently on different planes. For example, if you have a material object in the background acting as a wall, and a detached fire trap in the middle-ground in front of it, you can not select the wall and the trap together and more them into another foreground plane. Instead you have to move the fire trap and then the wall.
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- This is more of a general complaint with the text input system, but it is most used when naming and describing your created levels. The system does not recognize any words that begin with capitals, even if it is a simple word at the beginning of a sentence. No word suggestions come up when capitals are the least bit involved. However, it is helpful that you can hook up a USB keyboard to the Playstation 3.
I was disappointed that I was unable to create my level as I had dreamed it. I was going for a “keep jumping or you will fall to your fiery doom” level, complete with button platforms made out of dissolvable material that would disappear upon landing on a button. Unfortunately, the button would not fall into the fire after the dissolvable platform was gone; thus leaving the player alive and not panicked. Did I dream too big? More like overcomplicated it. Next time I will make sure to go for the sensor switch instead of a silly button.
Multiplayer is not just another mode in LittleBigPlanet, it is LittleBigPlanet. Not only can story mode can be play co-operatively with fellow players in your living room, or across the Internet, but so can creation mode. That means you and your friends can all contribute to a unique level that can be later published online. While over-the-Internet multiplayer creation with not be available at launch, it will be unlocked in a later patch.
Nothing is too strange or outlandish for LittleBigPlanet.The narration was one of my favorite parts of this Beta. Everything from his British-accented voice to the dry humor-ridden script was spot on for the charming aesthetics of LittleBigPlanet. The off-hand comments made by the narrator were frequent, but not so much so that they became annoying. LittleBigPlanet’s narration sounded strangely similar to that of the film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As it turns out, Stephen Fry is the man of the hour who performed the narration for both the aforementioned film and game. He did a simply amazing job, really.
Running around the few available LittleBigPlanet Beta levels, experiencing all that I have written about is very exciting. The game is a breath of fresh creativity in the platforming genre, offering amazing single-player action and similarly enjoyable online capabilities. This Beta gives great insight on how the game has progressed throughout its development cycle, and proves that the love for this game is not all hype.
