The campaign or “Story” mode is actually much deeper than I anticipated, and continues to draw my attention. You are effectively forced into it to start as a tutorial of how to play the game. It evolves from that, however, into how you can shape the game. Throughout the Story you collect prizes bubbles which offer you more costume options for your Sackboy or objects and tools for the creation portion of the game. You can play Story alone, with friends offline or online, and some prize bubbles actually require teamwork, encouraging you to grab a friend or find one online to go through each world with. It’s not the longest campaign, but it will continue to bring you back to ace levels (get through without dying once), find prizes and generally explore the world to see what is possible. The real meat of the game is in the online world, however.

Besides being able to play the Story with anyone, all player-created content is open for business online. You can simply go to Quick Play and be transported into a random user-created level or search through the most popular titles or by keywords. Searching is probably the least fun you’ll have, as the results tend to come in rather randomly. As for the content so far, it’s a bit lacking. Most levels that seem to get the most love are simply run-of-the-mill levels with the aesthetic that slightly resembles a popular game, such as God of War and Mirror’s Edge. The gameplay hardly changes between most of the levels I’ve played so far, and some of the most clever ideas can be appreciated on a creative level, but aren’t actually that much fun. There is a lot said for the potential of LittleBigPlanet, but it seems a bit far-fetched to judge a game on what might be done with it. The same could be said of judging Microsoft’s Office Suite based on the fact that someone may write the Next Great Novel using the software in the future. What’s on display now is most impressive in what the Story levels have to offer.

The creation mode of the game is fairly complex, but easy to wrap your head around after a little bit of experimentation. It does feel slightly limited to a lot of drag-and-drop of what is already available in the Story mode. Of course, given time and a lot of creativity, you can essentially paint whatever you can imagine and even bring it to life. I created two levels attempting to challenge a few of the standards of the game, one which provided a cinematic experience inspired by What Dreams May Come and the other was a romp into a cave and a standard boss fight. Neither were easy to make, but did give me a good opportunity to test the waters. The creation tools will not draw a large crowd for anything worth while, but what’s available there can do quite a bit. That said, making things work bug-free with multiple people is extremely difficult, and something I couldn’t finish correctly with the time I had with the game. So, there is depth, but the game is still limited by the mechanics available to the players in terms of controls, which is pretty minimal.

Critically analysing this game has been one of the more difficult tasks I’ve undertaken in quite a while. It’s the first game I pre-ordered in recent memory, and one of the few titles I championed without any experience with it first-hand or even with the team’s previous effort Rag Doll Kung-Fu. There was a lot of promise as to what this game would be, and the expectations I had built up myself were lofty. Yes, it does deliver one of the most robust and feature-ridden online experiences I have ever seen in any game, giving you the ability to jump in and out of anyone’s own Pod with ease, or getting tips on levels within comments embedded directly into their information. Yes, it does bring a “fun” factor which is hard to deny and has kept me compelled to continue playing and looking forward to it every evening. However, the creation tools are not the end-all, be-all and are certainly more daunting to use than expected. The creation part is not something that will have a lot of the mass appeal that you would hope, and even some of the offerings to date do nothing to impress besides some technical feats that are better served as online videos.

That said, I can do nothing but endorse this game. It’s fun. It makes online playing fun even for those who may not be inclined to try games collaboratively. They’ve made competing and cooperating easy and given you a great world to use as your sandbox to do it in. Even without a headset, you can communicate through just smiling, flailing your arms, or jumping around. Sackboy is a character you can get behind and even without a deep back story or dark motivations is one of the most engaging personalities I’ve experience in a game recently. LittleBigPlanet‘s narrative is its gameplay, and it tells a great story to start and is something you can continue to come back for, possibly for years, and we hope it will be a vehicle for creativity and fun for as long as you’ve got an internet connection.

So what you’re really trying to say is…
LittleBigPlanet is fun. It is a true revival of the platforming genre. Online features are amazing and makes playing with others easy and accessible. You should try it, you should buy it. It might not appeal to everyone, but the polish and work that went into the game is obvious. A game you will likely be playing for a long time, with friends, with family, with anyone. The jumping mechanics could be better, and it might not be unlimited in its creation tools, but just play and you’ll be hooked.

LittleBigPlanet is published by Sony and developed by Media Molecule available for the PS3. Purchased for $59.99 (CDN) and played Story to completion. 48% trophy progress. 25 hours of play.

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