LittleBigPlanet Review (PS3)
My first review of 2009 and it ends up being rather contrary to popular opinion. The subject: my biggest disappointment of 2008, LittleBigPlanet.
Outrageous! How is this even possible, here in this haven for cute, side scrolling, jumpers? That this darling game, this honored above all, innovative, creative game could be called out in such a manner is…inconceivable!
Shocking, I know. Frankly I was surprised by my dislike of the game. But no amount of cute graphics could make up for its fatal flaws in game mechanics.
My Experience
The beginning was simply brilliant. After an introduction to my little sock person and a few simple instructions, I was lead through the level of developer pictures. Simple, cute and ingenious way to show a sampling of the game while running credits.
All was explained by the narrator, whose British accent highlighted the superb writing. But it wasn’t just the excellent writing and voice acting that I found so engaging; the graphics really blew me away. A completely new and quirky sort of cute.
This wonderful beginning left me completely unprepared for the shock of finding myself stuck in the middle of an early level. Quite suddenly the shiny-new-game-goggles were ripped off, and I all but threw my little sock person to the end of said level.
Thankful to have made it, I was determined never to play that level again. Certain to find that experience just a random fluke I sailed onward, buoyed by the euphoria of early brilliance.
My certainty slowly eroded as each successive level ended up filed in the never-to-play-again category.
The completely dark level finally crushed my last bit of hope.
Review
Release date: October 28 2008
Website: http://www.littlebigplanet.com/
Developer: http://www.mediamolecule.com/
Platform I played on: PlayStation 3
Game Summery
Play as a little sock puppet and discover a world filled with crazy art and strange characters. Do chores for them, collect building blocks, and then finally create your own world.
Game play
The game is essentially a side scrolling puzzle jumper. While most of the traveling happens in the horizontal and vertical planes, the game has added three different depths. This allows for things like hidden items and interactive backgrounds. But this switching between different depths is something the game itself handles, so as to make it easier on the player.
As the little sock girl jumps perpetually to the right, sometimes up, sometimes down, she collects a myriad of items – world building art pieces, clothes to dress up in, and points (which seem to also act as health).
The world building pieces are usable to make ones own levels. Each individual area plays host to its own set of art assets and must be conquered by sack girl to unlock all available art pieces (including accessories for sock girl and bonus points).
Clothes, hair, shoes, hats, glasses, fabric swatches, it’s a veritable fashion show. Dressing Sock girl up and down and around and around is a must! Everyone in LittleBigPlanet must look his or her best.
Sock girl is not just limited to accessories; she can also dance and emote, all with the deft handling of the controller.
But mostly sock girl is interested in jumping, to the right. Sometimes she will Velcro herself to certain materials. Although jumping is sock girl’s number one favorite mode of transport, sticking via Velcro comes in at a close second as a particularly handy skill when playing the game.
World and Story
Sock girl lords over the three planets of LittleBigPlanet from her cardboard space ship with a PS3 controller as her dashboard. The large planet is story mode, while the two smaller ones are world building and online play respectively.
Story mode is about exhibiting the wonderful art style, understanding the game, collecting items that are used in creating new levels and collecting outfits for your sock person.
Most of the early areas are dedicated to understanding the game and how to play. Each themed set of levels has a minor storyline that weaves them together, but there doesn’t seem to be much of an overall story.
The world building is super easy and has lots of tutorials to help you understand the powerful tool.
Online play is about finding other people to play with, but mostly about seeing what new levels other people have created, or possibly sharing your own wild version of LittleBigPlanet with its large community.
Graphics
By far the most amazing, creative, stylistic, cute graphics I have seen in a long time! The patches of fabric and knit materials really remind me of a quilt. It’s one large crazy quilted craft project.
The world building tool will be oddly familiar those that do any sorts of crafts – gluing various forms of natural surfaces together, like cardboard, wood, and glass, and then painting it or covering it in fabric swatches. Sounds like a craft project to me.
Replay ability
Oh there is replaying, so much involuntary replaying that I wanted to scream sometimes. Meaning my sock puppet died and I had to replay sections over and over and over…
In a more traditional way, the replay value of story mode is collecting any stray art bits that you didn’t manage to get the first time around. Other then that there isn’t much incentive to play through multiple times.
Of course there is a bunch of user created content to explore and quite a powerful tool to bring your own crazy imaginings to life.
Multiplayer
Play up to four players, but there is no split screen, so make sure to keep up. The game doesn’t wait for stragglers and if you happen to be lag behind, then its waiting time until the next respawn portal is reached (there are quite a few of these scattered throughout most levels, so its not too long of wait usually.)
Some puzzles require help from up to three friends to complete. But since only art assets are the reward, its left to individuals to determine if they need to complete all those puzzles.
Game finished
No. No and not going to.
Things that bothered me
-No depth switching
The world-building tool has depth switching built in. On the other hand, the same controls that allow depth switching manually in the tool allow sock girl to dance and wave her arms when actually playing the game.
Someone out there in developer land thought it was more important to have your sock person dance around then to be able to decide manually if you want to go up a ramp or not.
My guess is that this person didn’t spend ten minutes running past a ramp over and over without being able to actually get on it because the game decided that sock girl just shouldn’t be going that way.
I almost lost my TV out the window that day.
-Imprecise jumps and slidey edges
Sock girl jumps are high and flighty. This is very well suited to the sock puppet style, light and floppy. Its not very well suited to landing on a small platform, especially when landings don’t stick so much as slide to a stop.
Sometimes they slide right off the edge. Remember, Velcroing is your friend, edges are not.
-Irritating levels
When all I can think of is getting to the end of a level to finally be out of this hellish misery, I usually suspect some poor design at work.
-Must play through levels to get art
If you want to use art from the game in your world creating, you have to play through the game and collect it. Otherwise you are stuck making your own. It’s a painfully slow process.
-No reason to end the game
This is sort of a toss up, but there isn’t any reason to play through the game. Maybe this was one of the reasons I ended giving up. I had nothing to aim for.
-When am I about to die?
Sometimes its pretty clear, like you accidentally jump into the noxious green cloud. Then sock girl respawns at the last activated respan beacon. Fine. But if that happens frequently in quick succession you fail the level and have to start over.
The only indication you have of this is a warning siren, which indicates that you have one more chance before you fail. (I’m telling you all this now, so that you don’t have to find out the trial and error way that I had to.) But if you play with the sound down like I do often, there is no warning. None. Beware the no warning!!!
Time played
Around two hours. And recently another thirty minutes since I was starting to think I might have had two hours of temporary insanity, but no, my findings of early brilliance marred by poor follow through were confirmed.
Mood Progression
Last Thoughts
The most frustrating art exhibit I have been too in a long time. When a game isn’t enjoyable to play it really doesn’t matter how pretty it is.
February 5th, 2009 at 6:26 am
THANK GOD. Geoff and I played and played and died and died and felt like big losers because everyone else was all “i love LBP, it’s the best!” It’s so frustrating because it probably would be the best if it wasn’t so painful.
I’m shocked how often we agree completely on games.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I was a little worried this time, since last we spoke you were talking about tolerating the terrible jumping, but I guess we all have our limits.
Once it finally occurred to me that the entire game was going to be the same it was all over.
Want a copy of LittleBigPlanet? =D