LittleBigPlanet Review

The promise of an original platformer that would allow us to create our own levels, practically on the fly, was immense, and the game quickly became one of the PlayStation 3's marquee titles and a good reason to pick up a system. We all figured it would be good, so the question was, just how good would it be?

The answer is that it's absolutely fantastic, an instant classic that actually turned out to be better than my expectations. The community and creation stuff was bound to be reason enough to own the game, but the included content put together by Media Molecule is so good that even if the level building tools weren't in the picture, this would still be a must-have experience.

That's not to say that it's without faults. There are a handful of things that can be cleaned up or fixed by way of patches that are a little annoying at the moment (which I'll come back to in a bit), but they barely mar the surface of an overall game that is nothing short of brilliant in terms of both its design and implementation.



When you first start up the game, your only option will be to hit up the main Story mode. The first three levels (which are the same that were featured in the beta, if you played that) serve as good tutorials for how to play the game. In terms of mechanics, this is about as pure and basic a control setup as you can get. The X button jumps, R1 grabs objects, and that's about it. If you grab a jetpack, you can either shake the controller or tap one of the face buttons to remove it, but that ends your control mechanics (outside of the editor, of course).

While that sounds simple, and it is, it's the level design that makes the whole Story progression the fantastic experience that it is. The first set of levels is fairly easy and will look familiar to anyone who's followed the game at all. The cool thing though is that every other level in the game (of which there are more than 20 "main" levels) is completely unique. Each themed area has three main stages, and while those generally use a lot of the same art assets and look very similar, what you're doing there in each individual area is very different. The jungle areas have you swinging from monkeys, climbing giraffes and riding on buffaloes. The Metropolis stages have you navigate sewers, hop between subway cars and drag race. There's a wild west set of levels that rely on plenty of explosives and mine cart rides, and every other section is just as varied (if not more so) than these.

Really, Media Molecule has done an amazing job of giving you something cool to do in one level, then switching it up and giving you something completely different for the next without ever really repeating ideas throughout the entire game. It's all platforming, sure, but the variance within that frame does nothing short of pushing the limits of the genre.



The art direction is fantastic.
While you could run through the game in a matter of five or six hours if you simply blazed through everything, you'd be missing a large chunk of the fun. Each level contains a ton of collectable content kept within prize bubbles, with much of them either hidden away or contained in places that will require you to explore and think to figure out how to reach them. The hidden stuff ranges from stickers and decorations that you can use at any time to full-fledged objects for the level editor, as well as clothing and materials with which to outfit your Sack person.

One cool twist here is that most levels have a few "blank" canvas spots where a certain sticker needs to go, and if you have said sticker and place it there, you'll unlock a bunch of content. So you might play through a level, notice that you don't have what looks like an elephant sticker, and then come back once you've found it a couple of stages later and unlock even more content.

i played the demo and i didnt like it, i dont get how it got game of the year, its stupid in my opinion, its something that 8 year olds would play, i hav ADD and ADHD so i get amused very easily and it still doesnt seem fun at all

It sure took more then 5 hours for me... but that's probably because I died all the time.

sOs-Vlan wrote:

i played the demo and i didnt like it, i dont get how it got game of the year, its stupid in my opinion, its something that 8 year olds would play, i hav ADD and ADHD so i get amused very easily and it still doesnt seem fun at all

this awarded game of the year because of it desing creating system which make game awesome for me you can design everything in this game that the reason

soul_eater93 wrote:

sOs-Vlan wrote:

i played the demo and i didnt like it, i dont get how it got game of the year, its stupid in my opinion, its something that 8 year olds would play, i hav ADD and ADHD so i get amused very easily and it still doesnt seem fun at all

this awarded game of the year because of it desing creating system which make game awesome for me you can design everything in this game that the reason

yup ^^
that's why that game is good, millions of stages.

haha ya i love to creat stages and see how they play then get family to play them.

yea my family arnt big on games other then my brother but he moved out to an apartment with his GF in another city like an hour from me so i never getta play with him, hes gonna buy a PS3 though so thatll be good

i think that that game is only good for family use.

sOs-Kil wrote:

i think that that game is only good for family use.

yea, thing is though, my family doesnt like video games

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

i think that that game is only good for family use.

yea, thing is though, my family doesnt like video games

dang suks for u.

sOs-Kil wrote:

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

i think that that game is only good for family use.

yea, thing is though, my family doesnt like video games

dang suks for u.

not really cause i never have to share it with anyone else

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

i think that that game is only good for family use.

yea, thing is though, my family doesnt like video games

dang suks for u.

not really cause i never have to share it with anyone else

oh ya true.

sOs-Kil wrote:

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

sOs-Vlan wrote:

sOs-Kil wrote:

i think that that game is only good for family use.

yea, thing is though, my family doesnt like video games

dang suks for u.

not really cause i never have to share it with anyone else

oh ya true.

just buy your own

This is a fun PS3 game. It's cool being able to create your own levels and share them with other people online. I highly recommend you download this game.

love little big planet, im 13 and also have ADD. I borrowed it from a friend and loved it so when he bought his new ps3 slim it came with the lbp game of the year edition, and he had an old version (not goty) so he gave it to me! happy me! lol