UP

Little Big Planet SERIES

8.5
Release Date: Oct, 2008 (LBP1); January 18, 2011 (LBP2)
Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Developer: Media Molecule
Review by: r2d2111

LittleBigPlanet is a puzzle platform game created by Media Molecule and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation 3 in 2008. The player takes hold of Sackboy/girl in a 2D perspective to save Craftworld, a world which platforms, enemies, and objects are made up of user-generated content. The emphasis is to "Play, Create, and Share" with an online community through the Playstation Network.

littlebigplanet_2
LBP Fun

AUDIO/VISUAL DESIGN:

Levels are made up of 3D objects, stickers, decorations, and materials of various shapes, thicknesses and depths. Allot of the content used to create the levels have a realistic natural look to them, as if crafts you would find laying around the house is dropped into the level. The player controls a humanoid character made out of fabric called Sackboy, which can be customized with an assortment of costumes, stickers and decorations. Sackboy can express four emotions; happiness, sadness, worry and anger. The audio has a wide range of wonderfully designed sound effects, music and narrations that instruct the player on how to play, create and share. I remember seeing advertisements of LittleBigPlanet 2 for the first time and being amazed with the beautiful in game footage and cutting edge music.

littlebigplanet_4
Colourful Cartoonish delightful Visual design , can cheer up mood of any gamers

MULTIPLAYER:

When connected to the PlayStation Network, players can share levels they have created, or play co-operatively with up to 4 friends. There are millions of user-created levels available; platformers, music, movies, galleries, puzzlers, racing, fighting, role playing, etc. That is both LittleBigPlanets charm and its curse, because there are so many poorly designed levels, it’s easy for really well designed levels go unseen or played. A creator could spend months designing a masterpiece, from beautiful designed visuals with innovative gameplay and barely get any plays, while others levels published in under a minute and completely empty could have thousands of plays. Even though the developers attempted to use a system for spotlighting good creators, allot of really well designed levels go unnoticed and because they go unnoticed good level designers stop making levels. My friends and I had fun playing the numerous levels in LittleBigPlanet 1, but with LittleBigPlanet 2 I had difficulty staying connected with other players. The game would consistently diverge and kick you from your friend’s worlds or freeze the PS3.

littlebigplanet_5
LBP fun with friends

GAMEPLAY:

LittleBigPlanet uses traditional two-dimensional platforming such as jumping, avoiding obstacles, moving or grabbing onto objects to progress though out the level. At the beginning of each area, gameplay is introduced by these characters with instructions on how to use it to navigate through the level, collecting points, prizes, and used as a strategy in defeating the area boss. Gameplay may consist of single player or coop of up to four players at once. Players can collect bubbles which contain points, costumes, stickers, decorations, objects, materials and tools, used for creating levels on their moon to be later published and shared with an online community. Each level is created with an assortment of level creation tools for designing platforms, obstacles, characters, and bosses, while logic lets you program their behaviors.

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Grab 'N' Graveyard, one of the "Halloween Themed " level I created

Various different types of levels can be created from platforming, racing, fighting, shooting, sports, player vs. player, music, films etc. It really left to the creator’s imagination and capabilities in developing their ideas with the level creation tools provided. When creating, complexity was a major problem causing much what I created to stop working; stickers used to color and decorate materials with would often disappear or bleed into other materials, entire platform sections would become invisible, objects would merge with the level becoming unable to be removed, logic stopped working even though it appeared to be working, the game would diverge sending players back to there hub or freeze the PS3. I found out that the developers used a completely different system to create levels than what they provided the player, which highlighted complexity to avoid the level from breaking.



One of the Level I created using LBP2 Game Engine -- Ghost Buster Intro
It's amazing how much you can do with LBP engine once you get to know it.

STORY:

LittleBigPlanets emphasis is more towards gameplay, so there isn’t much of a story. In each version of LittleBigPlanet, Sackboy/girl travels around Craftworld, helping characters with various problems, while learning a skill set and collecting items, leading to the defeat of the area boss. It’s simple, affective and delivered with cleverly designed animations.

SUMMARY:

At first I loved LittleBigPlanet, it had the potential to be an amazing game, but ‘play’ often kicked me from playing with friends, ‘create’ had complexity issues which broke my levels, and ‘share’ content you spent months to create was largely ignored.

Overall Score: 8.5 /10

By

r2d2111


June 22th 2014

Luddite11




The games you might like if you enjoy Little Big Planet :

  • Puppeteer
  • The Cave




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