At any rate I’m very happy to see this finally come to pass because we all know full well that Sony’s taken a beating in the market share department this generation — Monster Hunter 3 is coming to the Wii for crissakes! If I were Media Molecule I would’ve started most every conversation with Sony with the words “You know Microsoft sold another 300,000 systems last month, that’s a lot of potential level builders, don’t you think?” or “Hey, that Wii developer kit isn’t hard at all!”

Holdonasec, Media Molecule… it’s damn near March! It’s LittleBigLate to be reviewing the 2009 DLC landscape, eh? It’s also a little weird to be talking about how “new and exciting” 2010 will be, when we’ve already been through two months of naught but some LBP PSP DLC tossed into our hoppers.

Still, December’s Pirates/Water add-on was hot stuff, and your video is another typically pleasant stroll through your garden. So get us some new content and we’ll be good and psyched again. (Note that the White Knight Chronicles DLC is coming this week.)

You can check out MM’s video after the jump.

Source: LittleBigPlanet.com

I nabbed my copy of the Collection for $40 plus a $20 BestBuy gift card a while back, a card I’ve more than depleted thanks to the LittleBigPlanet Pirates of the Carribean Pack and last week’s sale pricing on UNO, Critter Crunch, and Zen Pinball.

I’m a huge God of War fan, but even without Circuit City in the mix — a moment of silence for the loss of its pricing pressure on its competitors, please — retailers online or off typically find a way to nip a few bucks off a game at or around launch, so I’ll avoid preordering. We’ve all got plenty to play in the meantime this Spring, even if you’re not trying to dig out from behind a stack of unplayed Fall 2009 releases like I am.

Today MM officially announced the Pirates of the Caribbean DLC, although the news was leaked last week. Available December 22, Disney’s audioanimatronic pirates turned blockbuster film leads will arrive in LBP in two highly-anticipated bundle packs.

The costume kit will sell for $6 and include a staggering six costumes: Captain “Sack” Sparrow, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Tia Dalma, Captain Barbossa and Davy Jones. Kiera Knightly sort of got a raw deal on her costume.

But you’re here for the LEVEL KIT, the first fully-featured LBP DLC level kit since the Metal Gear release back in 1904!

Check out the full list of components after the jump… but it’s great news: five levels, eleven Trophies, 133 stickers, a bonus Cannibal costume, and more. Still only $6. And note that the Pirates Level Kit will include the formal release of Water as a building element! Now you can recreate all those horrible Drowning Sonic levels!

Next up: Disney’s TaleSpin Level Kit?

New Gameplay features for Create:
Water – Global Water Object, Scuba Gear, Bubble Machine, Water Switch
5 Brand new Pirates of the Caribbean themed Levels
1 New costume: The Cannibal: Leg Bands, Teeth, Nose Decoration, Hair, Loincloth, Skin
4 new music tracks
A new level background
8 Materials
14 Decorations
27 Objects
133 Stickers
11 brand new PlayStation® Trophies

More outlandish trivia, wordsearches, jokes, objects, games for the pc and levels for littlebigplanet itself. There’s even an exclusive item on the way!

We’ll keep an eye on the calendar and be sure to let you know if anything exceedingly awesome comes out of it.

UPDATE (ARTICLE EDITED to remove erroneous credit to Media Molecule): The calendar is provided by LBP community fansite, lbpmedia.co.uk! Good on ya, LBP Media!

The 1.21 patch announced last week for LittleBigPlanet has launched, boosting more than a few core aspects of the year-old Media Molecule game. Better net code, better backup options, and online co-op create mode have all been mentioned by Joe in his post on Friday, but this new walkthrough video goes into a hair more detail, and all with the developer’s highly entertaining trademark sense of humor.

They discuss exactly what the backup improvements are, which are mentioned in text format when you load the game after the patch and are replayable from your Profile Settings area, and they mention that each of the 3 other co-op create players you can invite or can ask to join you (just as in the regular game) can send you requests to rewind, pause, or otherwise change the level state as the host.

As Joe noted on Friday, the full patch notes are available at littlebigplanet.com. Happy creating!

Video first noticed at: Shacknews.

Today Media Molecule announced the impending arrival of the latest LittleBigPlanet patch: Leerdammer. See, they don’t have teh Thanksgiving in the UK, so a major announcement like this on our Black Friday isn’t as weird. Booked for Monday, November 30, LBP will get its “biggest game update ever.” Among the features are:

• - Online Create mode with up to three other players
• - Improved matchmaking
• - Increased profile size (no more “your profile is too large to save” errors, I hope!)
• - Ability to backup levels as separate files on your PS3 HD
• - Sticker switches made more noticeable
• - Ability to rotate Sackpeople while decorating them (IE, back tats, finally!)
• - Soft keyboard now has QWERTY option (DUH!)

And that Play / Create / Share score bit will be entirely removed as of this version 1.21. I know mine has been stuck at 0 / 0 / 0 since launch. Media Molecule says “We thought these scores were a good idea but they never worked in the way we wanted them to. They may return one day. Maybe.”

Leerdammer will be, of course, entirely free. Now we can all group-jam on a special Aeropause writer-designed level. Three cheers for MM!

Oh, I know. They had the launch of LittleBigPlanet PSP (which hit retail and then had a technical delay on the PSN version). There was the PS3 Game of the Year edition. They relaunched the official website. Been a busy time.

But could we maybe get some decent DLC again, please?

Today Media Molecule released the worst bit of DLC yet: a $4.99 t-shirt. From the site:

To mark the launch of LittleBigPlanet on PSP we’re releasing a second exclusive Rare T-Shirt for the PS3. As with the original launch T-Shirt this new rare will be available for one week only then never again so if you want to get your hands on it, you’d better be quick!

Setting aside the notion that I don’t think America ever actually got the first exclusive rare t-shirt, $5 for a shirt is pretty nuts. And then to make it seem like it’s a rare collectible? I’ve certainly given LBP a lot of rope (and a lot of DLC money), but I’m not giving them $5 for a freaking t-shirt.

Since the summer, the steady DLC stream seems to have faltered. We had the Watchmen costume pack, which was too little (not a level) too late (Watchmen fad already dead). We had the re-release of last year’s holiday-timed costumes. We know that Sonic and Marvel costumes are on the way, but when? Here’s hoping Media Molecule gets back on the stick – especially after announcing that there is no plans for a PS3 sequel – and starts delivering that regular beautiful content that spoiled us silly. More new tools, more new enhancements! Give us Water, for we are thirsty!

And we still don’t have a working Play-Share-Create meter? What’s up with that?

Ok here’s the thing: I don’t care about the huge military-themed, cross-platform shooter coming to the PS3 this month. It’ll get its spot of ink below, don’t worry, but I’m highlighting the three exclusive franchises returning to PlayStation platforms this month first.

The God of War Collection lands on November 17th as a new experiment: a reissue of two PlayStation 2 games in high definition on a single Blu-ray PlayStation 3 disc. The remastering of the top-selling God Of War and God Of War II includes the addition of Trophy support. Sales of this collection will be watched closely – it takes quite a bit of work to remaster games like this, but if it sells well we might see other Sony PS2 franchises reappear like this on the PS3. I’m a huge fan of the franchise, partly because of the brutally satisfying gameplay, partly because of the mostly-consistent mythological backdrop, so this is a must-buy for me. Of note: this is a $40 game.

The PlayStation Portable gets the PS3’s most recognizable mascot this month with its very own version of LittleBigPlanet. While you’ll be able to make and share your own levels in LBP on the PSP, you’re going to be playing them alone since multiplayer didn’t make it into this game. I’m being cheeky by mentioning this would be a $40 game as well since PSP games tend to debut at this price.

Also hitting the PlayStation 3 this month is Buzz! Quiz World on the 10th. I’ve become a fan of the original Buzz! Quiz TV on the PlayStation 3 and it’s just about the only game my non-gamer wife will play with me on the system. Of note: this also is a $40 game if you already have the buzzers from the first game, or $60 if you need the buzzers too. And in case you’re wondering the buzzers aren’t Bluetooth devices. They need a USB dongle to work.

What else is hitting the systems this month?

PlayStation 3

EA and Bioware are bringing a new fantasy franchise to market this month with Dragon Age: Origins on the 3rd, something some have theorized might have been a D&D game that never quite got the license. As a fully single player adventure it’s already got DLC lined up for it. As someone who’s still thoroughly enjoying Sacred 2 on the PS3 I might be interested in this game at one point, but not quite yet.

LEGO Rock Band also comes in on the 3rd, taking what should have been a filter in Rock Band 2 – the option for kid-friendly songs only – and putting it in a whole different game. Still, LEGOs are LEGOs and it could sell a few copies this holiday season. It’ll also add a whole different submenu to the already large set of PlayStation Store weekly update music game DLC menus.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed — Ultimate Sith Edition comes in on November 4th, and having spent some time with the original I’m not interested in this one. The controls and camera just felt too complex in this one, and since this only adds some additional missions as far as I can tell it’s not something I’ll be going after anytime soon.

That elephant in the room I mentioned is, of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game’s going to have midnight retailer openings and throngs of fans waiting to ventilate each other online, and as I said I couldn’t care less. I’m all in favor of stimulating the retail and game development economy, though, don’t get me wrong, so go ahead and buy it with abandon!

I found the story and feel of the original Assassin’s Creed game to be slow and unwieldy, and it gave me a very strong Half-Life 2 vibe which made me think I knew where the story was going very early on. I quickly lost interest, so its sequel coming on the 17th doesn’t have my interest.

A former Xbox 360 exclusive, the Scene It franchise also comes to the PS3 this month (making me wonder if it did ok over there) with Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen!. More party games are always welcome on the console but I haven’t been following this one.

PlayStation Portable

The PSP gets some new blood this month with its first proper Jak and Daxter game, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. High Impact Games’ take on the franchise Naughty Dog previously took 3 runs at on the PlayStation 2 already has a demo on the PlayStation Store, so feel free to scoop that up and give it a look. It lands on November 3rd on both the PSP and the PS2, of all things.

Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines takes the first game’s storyline in a new direction, apparently, and does it portably. We’ll have to see how it fares alongside its sequel bigger brother on the 17th.

Lastly, about a month later than its PS3 and Xbox 360 older brother, the PSP version of Tekken 6 comes in on November 24th. Tekken’s got a very good track record with Dark Resurrection on the PSP, so this could be a really stellar fighter.

That covers it for the big deals hitting PlayStation platforms this month. Did I miss anything you’re after? Let me know what and why in the comments below.

November 4, 2008: Resistance 2 brought Nathan Hale further into the grips of his chimeran mutation and increased the first-game’s large-scale multiplayer while breaking it down into goal-oriented teams. It also sported a three-class co-op component that is still popular today. Metascore: 87.

February 27, 2009: Killzone 2 opened eyes wide and garnered a very strong following from the hardcore shooter crowd. Most critics said it didn’t do anything particularly new, but what it did it did exceptionally well. Metacritic Metascore: 91.

May 26, 2009: inFAMOUS brought a brand new super-powered comic-book-styled universe to life and let gamers take the goody-protect-the-innocents or fry-em-all-let-God-sort-em-out route routes for two different story arcs and some mission variety all in a very wide open city that doubled as Cole’s giant, climbable, stunt-friendly jungle gym. Metascore: 85.

October 6, 2009: Demon’s Souls is From Software’s crushingly hard game that Sony declined to publish, leaving Atlus to pick up the pieces and, with really high praise from critics and probably an equal number of tears of frustration from reviewers, reap the rewards. Just this week they’ve had to put out new copies of the game to meet demand. Metascore: 89.

October 13, 2009: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves brought back Nathan Drake and friends with new enemies in tow on a game that takes the great characters, chemistry, and realistic animation and from the first Uncharted game and kicks it up a few notches. Throw in a surprisingly strong set of multiplayer offerings, including some 3-person co-op and it’s a gem the critics adore. Metascore: 97.

Now I’m sure I’ve missed something along the way, so please correct me in the comments below, but next week we get Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time to sew things up for the year. That doesn’t cover the PlayStation Network offerings we’ve seen, either. While it’s true that not every game is for everyone, and not everyone will enjoy every genre, gamers just joining the world of the PlayStation 3 have quite a few meaty games to at least try out demos for, if not buy outright.

What PS3 game haven’t you played yet that you’ve been meaning to get?