Although LittleBigPlanet has its fair share of competition and rules of engagement, it’s in the gaps between these from which its strengths truly shine. It’s almost just a bonus that the framework built around these by its rather traditional gameplay are incredibly solid too. Media Molecule’s game is probably the cutest of the year and in many ways aims to remind us of just how much fun gaming can be. LittleBigPlanet’s worlds exist in an incredibly childlike universe. One of the sort of places that most of us used to visit every day in our formative younger lives, where sheets over chairs became tents for camping out in the deepest, darkest jungles of South America, and dolls and action figures were blessed with lives and spirits of their own, able to play along with us, and not just be played with.
Visually, LittleBigPlanet is what one would expect if Toy Story had been created and directed by French filmmaker Michel Gondry. Its rich, warm world looking as if it has been crafted out of a Things to Make and Do activity book. Most platformers have the pulleys and strings that set their worlds into motion obscured, mere background code, but not LittleBigPlanet. The boxes, levers and podiums of its various lands are all physically linked to their backgrounds, making them seem tangible, as if you could actually set to creating them on your living room floor, as long as you’ve got adult supervision and your scissors licence that is. It’s an incredibly fresh aesthetic and although craft-like worlds have formed the backdrop of games in the past, none have done it with such flair and believability.
How could you not smile when confronted with this?
Navigating your way around LittleBigPlanet, between its story mode, online user created levels, and your own crafty creations is all done from a menu screen called ‘The Pod’, an orbiting viewing room, which is sewn seamlessly into the world of LittleBigPlanet. Hovering above its planets, this interactive menu lets you, choose which area you want to visit whilst maintaining the hand designed look of the levels. Alongside the game’s fellow in-level creation tool, it is a subtle and clever method of allowing function and form to blend elegantly (not to mention it lets you decorate it with the various stickers collected in the game’s levels).
Whilst the game’s single player story seems a little tacked on, urging you very loosely through the game's variously themed levels to awaken the imagination of the world, it does serve its purpose in showing off the creative environments LittleBigPlanet holds within. And alongside this crafty inventiveness is an ability to create an immense sense of fun. LittleBigPlanet’s fun is not born from the visceral thrill of taking out an opponent, leaving behind a bloody crimson mist, or of giving your opponent the virtual hiding of their lives. It’s a fun that instead comes from simply playing around within and manipulating your environment, the kind of fun that most adults have forgotten how to have. Just running your Sackboy or Sackgirl (or possibly even Sacktranny if you so desire) around the levels and watching them interact with their environment.
Observing the sheer cuteness of your pint sized avatar standing still is a gleeful enough experience, but the game’s animation is spectacular, down to the smallest details. Your Sackboy/Sackgirl's movements are fantastic, cute and often times funny. Their facial expressions able to be changed using the directional pad are a great way to make fellow players chuckle as you frown after they've nudged you to your death or as you put on a cheesy grins as things look up. The world’s objects wobble about realistically if held up by strings and you really get a feel that these little guys exist within this world of cardboard horses, levers and pulleys.
Art and craft giraffe.
As you travel through the handicraft worlds of the game you not only rush past many bubbles scattered throughout that offer up points, but there’s also a plethora of bubbles filled with objects for use in your own level designs, and for unlocking new areas, that can be picked up. Their hidden nature, the fact that finishing each level gives you a percentage found score, and the fact that their able to be used for more than mere bragging rights, means that heading back into each level to find those still unseen is both rewarding and meaningful.
The game’s platforming is challenging, and as it progresses it can be downright difficult, but its levels are never tests that are insurmountable. Occasionally the physics based world betrays you leading to an untimely unexpected death as you slide off ledges you didn’t expect to. Thankfully its continue markers are scattered quite generously and they pop you back out the instant you perish. Whilst its controls are not always as responsive as some others in its genre, and there’s, tighter platformers out there, LittleBigPlanet is a gestalt experience: the sum of its parts are far, far greater than its whole.
The fun of LittleBigPlanet is intensely evident when jumping into a level with other players. Bounding about levels with people you’re friends with, or those who you’ve been randomly paired with by the game, is plainly and simply fun. There are moments, often born of unstructured play, that elicit genuine giggles of glee. From the absurdity of dressing your little sack person up in a giant zebra headed mask and complimenting this with delicate fairy wings, to grabbing hold of and dragging your fellow players uncooperatively about the world, the moment to moment pleasures of LittleBigPlanet are bountiful.
Two is company, three is a crowd. So what is four?
Multiplayer completely changes the way you have to interact with the levels, requiring a much more measured, collaborative approach. Rather than rushing through levels, on a collection/speed run quest, everyone involved is forced into thinking about, and being aware of, what each other is doing. Local multiplayer is a feature that most developers have put out to pasture, but it’s implemented here with splendid results. Easy to focus on single screen play lets you laugh along with whoever it is that you’re playing with.
Online play is essentially the same as local multiplayer, offering up voice chat as an option for those that want to talk. Unlike many games though, verbal communication is not really necessary, especially as the levels are never too complex and your Sackboy’s animation is good enough to allow other players to get a clear sense of what it is you’re up to and where it is each of you need to be. As with nearly any online game there can occasionally be a small amount of lag, but it’s never game destroying.
Playing with others is not just simply a perfunctory addition to the game. Dotted throughout each level there are object bubbles that can only be obtained by running through a series of cooperative puzzles. In many of the early levels these only require one additional cloth skinned partner, but as the story progresses, obtaining some of these bonus items can require up to four people working as a team. Thankfully, these areas are never needed to make it through the level.
If bikie gangs were more like this then they'd be far less imposing.
Of course, one of the most talked about features of this game is its level creation mode. And it's a feature worthy of the chatter. Level design is an incredibly well refined affair. Of course LittleBigPlanet isn’t going to inject creativity into the hearts of those lacking it in the first place, but to those that have the desire and imagination it offers an incredibly well thought out set of tools to create worlds whilst you are, at the same time, in them. Pressing the square button pops up a small menu from which you can access all types of art, objects and tools to shape your creations. All of your collection gathered throughout the single player campaign are available, linking this creation feature and the rest of the LittleBigPlanet universe. New objects can be crafted easily too, using well thought out modifying tools. And the great thing is everything is supposed to look handmade in LittleBigPlanet so once textures are added even the most mangled of conglomerations ends up looking decent.
One of the concerns that many have expressed before actually getting involved in the game is that LittleBigPlanet may offer little to those not of the creative persuasion. Thankfully their worries are in vain. Much like internet services like Youtube and Flickr, you don’t have to create the content to be able to enjoy the fruits of other people’s labour. And if the pile of user created levels already available is anything to go on then there’s definitely a load of fruity laborious Sackboys and Sackgirls out there and they're well crafted enough and varied enough in style and gametype to offer up many hours of gaming.
LittleBigPlanet is not only one of those games that reminds us that play can be enjoyable without dealing with weighty narratives or overly visceral violence. It's also one of the most charming titles around, offering much to those who are kids at heart, regardless of whether they want to play, create or do both. At the end of the day if you can’t find at least something to like about LittleBigPlanet then your problem is plainly obvious. You’ve forgotten how to have fun.
Highly recommended to everyone!
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