Little Big Planet Beta Impressions!

By Richard Windsor | October 6, 2008

It was a sunny Thursday afternoon when I checked my e-mail and noticed that I had been sent a beta key for Little Big Planet. This immediately sent my heart rate sky high and I jumped around like it was Christmas…okay maybe I wasn’t that excited, but darn close to that! Three and a half hours of downloading later I finally got to play with the game, and I haven’t stopped playing since! To get a full recap of my experience continue reading.

The creators of Little Big Planet state that you can create almost anything using the tools that the game provides. So I took them up on the challenge and tried to build a refrigerator for my little Sackboy to run through. Five hours later I was progressing to the third level of my frig and I was loving it! The array of tools that Media Molecule is giving people to play with is very extensive, even for a beta. Once I had unlocked and learned how to use each tool I began to brainstorm about what kind of objects I could create, and how those could be used in the levels I was creating. I have about a million ideas in my head of cool stuff that I could make, but at the end of the day there is just not enough time to do them all.

Object creation is easy to get into, but at times tricky to master. You can do everything free form with the joystick or you can call up three different sizes of grids which allow for more precise control. The grids are nice, but when using them with certain objects the game slows down to single digit frame rates. Once you have created an object you can then use the object capture tool and store it for later use. You can also give away your objects to people who play your levels. This feature is one that I truly love. The ability to build up a huge library of objects over time will help those who are less skilled at the creation aspect, let’s just hope that people are not too stingy with the goods.

Ok…back to the refrigerator. It does take a while to make a complicated level. I must have gone back and tweaked my level over 100 times. It’s easy to make a level that you alone can play, but it’s also easy to forget that more then one person may play through your level at once. I do hope that in the final game that you can sort by how many players a map is designed for, this would be a big help for people who want to create single player experiences. Once the level is done you then just simply publish it. This allows everyone in the LBP world to play your creation. The game will keep track of how many people have played it, how many times it was added as a favorite, and you can even leave comments for the creator. So all in all it’s a very deep online system for sharing your creations. I hope the servers will be able to keep up, as the beta servers have already melted down twice. I had to take an extended break while they fixed these issues. In the meantime my brain went nuts trying to think of more things to create. Let’s just call it LBP syndrome. Once the servers finally returned I published, and then went about getting feedback on how to balance the level better from friends who are also in the beta. From conception to completion it took me about two days and a half to complete the level. I imagine that since I now know how to use the tools better future levels will take less time and effort. Then I can get some more sleep!

Another amazing aspect of Little Big Planet is the sheer amount of polish and work that has gone into creating the game world. Everything from the voiceovers to menus has been crafted to make the experience amazing. The voiceovers in particular are great. They are done, I assume, by the same man who did the humorous narration of Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy. They are very funny and lend a great mood and feel to the game. The game is presented so well it is really hard to put it all in to words, but trust me it’s really really good!

If there is a weakness to the game it is that the online play can be a bit frustrating since it seems almost no one on PSN has a headset. You sometimes need to communicate things to people in your party, but without a headset you have to spend a lot of time typing, which is just dumb. Sony should feel really stupid for not including some type of headset with every PS3 purchased. This is by far my biggest gripe with the game. There are other small things such as a camera that goes to far out sometimes, and the random bugs of creation, but being a beta I can deal with those.

I think Sony may finally have a title that they can truly call a killer app, since they have none out at the moment. Little Big Planet is cute, but not so cute that it can’t be enjoyed by the hardcore Garry’s Mod gamer out there. I can’t wait to get hold of the full release and see what features they left out of the beta.

If you have the beta as well feel free to check out and play the levels I have created so far. Below are their names.

The Refrigerator V2
Election
Object Creation Station