The score at the bottom? You know, the one you’ve already skipped to - the 10? It doesn’t say ‘perfect’, because no game is perfect, it says ‘unmissable’. LittleBigPlanet, the dreamchild of a few British guys with a remarkable vision and a desire to right everything that’s currently wrong with console gaming, is now finally on European shelves and there’s no better adjective for such a crowning achievement: LittleBigPlanet is unmissable. Microsoft, Nintendo, come in, your time is up.
We first spoke with Alex, Mark and Dave over at Media Molecule back in August 2007, and since then have kept a very keen eye on the game as it has progressed from quirky platform to the epoch-defining genre-spanning system seller it now is. Indeed, our LittleBigPlanet tagged stories alone span 9 pages, probably more than any other game since we started the website. It’s true that LittleBigPlanet and MediaMolecule have been the centre of attention for over a year now, but it’s all justified, and now that the final game is in our hands we can even forgive the false starts and delays.
For the unfamiliar, and those unlucky enough to have missed out on the Beta, LittleBigPlanet is essentially a platformer, albeit one with a number of unique features. Firstly, it’s in pseudo-3D, or at least there’s 3 planes that your character can hop between at will whilst traversing the massive levels spanning 8 different worlds. Secondly, Sackboy, your character, can be customised almost beyond recognition by applying any of the items you pick up whilst exploring the levels, and this is done via the ‘pop-it’, a little window that pops up when called and allows access to any of the items, stickers and costume parts you collect. Thirdly, and most importantly, the very same pop-it is then used to create your own levels.
Yes, the game ships with a large wad of brilliant, brilliant pre-made levels, but the genius that is LittleBigPlanet is all about the ‘Create’ mode, a fully integrated level designer that not only allows you to build levels of the same quality as the ones on the disk, but also go far beyond them. Starting out with the most basic of building blocks (and watching hysterical tutorial videos voiced by Stephen Fry) you’ll soon unlock mechanical parts, machinery, materials and even AI elements that can all be twisted and manipulated into essentially anything you want. Your imagination literally is the only limit, well, that and free time, because creating levels can take considerable time.
Once created, you’re free to share your inspired contraptions and designs with the rest of the World, who can view, play and rate your levels as you climb the social ladder of LittleBigPlanet. Rewards can be placed in your efforts as a reward for completion, alongside timed sections and high score tables, and all this is managed per level as you navigate the available entries from the safety of your cardboard Pod, which acts as a customisable main menu. Multiplayer is fully supported throughout, and although you’re limited to just local players when creating, there are no such restrictions when playing levels, indeed some sections actually require more than one player to get the most out of them.
Visually LittleBigPlanet is a breath of fresh air. The rich, hand-crafted look fits the game perfectly (think Yoshi’s Story but in HD) with crystal-clear texture work and subtle motion blur and depth of field effects and regardless of the size of your level or the amount of things moving at once the framerate holds a perfect 30 - highly impressive. And sure, whilst the music has created a few headlines recently, the soundtrack is outstanding and the various effects, from scraping metal to crackling fire, suit the game perfectly. All the music found in the main game can be used in create mode, and whilst we’d have loved to be able to upload our own music we can understand the copyright issues that could potentially arise.
There’s little else to say, which is odd given that this is the most important PS3 title ever released. It’s probably because we’ve spoken so much about the game recently that most of our readers will be more than familiar with it, and an equal number already have the game themselves. We’ve been holding off a review because it’s one of those games that don’t really need it: LittleBigPlanet will sell itself - the quality TV adverts and the recent word-of-mouth press are only really there to bring home the fact that the game is now sat on the shelves of every single retailer in Europe.
A stunning, powerfully confident title that deserves all the praise it’s ever been awarded, the Media Molecule guys should be so pleased with what they’ve managed to accomplish and just as much good feeling goes the way of Sony for putting so much faith in the game and getting behind it 100%. If this doesn’t bring about PS3 shortages we don’t know what else will, LittleBigPlanet is probably the best videogame this generation, and until next year’s heavy weights like Killzone 2 come around, we can’t see our attention drifting anywhere else. There’s so much to see and do in LittleBigPlanet that the community levels alone would be worth the entrance fee, just imagine the treats you and I will be playing and creating months down the line.
Get this game, today, now.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I skipped to the score before reading your opening line, then looked over my shoulder to see if you were spying on me
fredrikpedersen Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I did that aswell, exept the spy thing. Thanks for a detailed, granted a little late, review.
Revolution Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Haha, honestly, same here. I’ve been doing it on all the reviews I’ve come over. I just want to see someone stupid enough to give it less than full score
I was very much disappointed to get home to an empty mailbox yesterday, and I’m not entirely sure when my copy will be here. I’ve been avoiding stuff like videos, reviews and all that for LBP since the delay, cause the lust just gets to big and I can’t control myself.. But this review is awesome and it makes me feel warm inside to know that I WILL get LBP very very soon.
GamerRiley Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Me too!
November 5th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I always skip to the score first i cant help myself, anyway nice review, its damn worthy of a 10, to put it simply, the game is genius.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
i didnt skip to the score and felt quite hurt by your lack of faith….
*sniff*
November 5th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
“the game is now sat on the shelves of every single retailer in Europe”
- Apart from HMV in Glasgow, they’ve still just got an empty box with “Released on 29/10/08″ on it. Go figure, as the Americans would say.
Anyway, good review for a great game. I think probably the most important thing about this game is the fact that anyone can pick it up and play it. It’s got the user friendly pick-up-ability of Wii Sports but with added depth for anyone who wants it.
Brilliant.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I LOVE THIS GAME SOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Perhaps I should get this game then.
hannes_truce Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
yes, yes you should! lol
I just picked up mine. leaving work at 4 to go and play the night away.
thank god for flexi time!
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Nope, first PS3 FW to 2.52 then LBP to 1.03
Although it doesn’t take to long it seems it whilst your waiting to get back into LBP
November 5th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Is this TSA first ten?
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Wasn’t WALL-E ?
No my mistake
colossalblue Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Singstar. Seriously.
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2008/07/05/singstar-volume-2-review/
We’re not always right. Or sober.
nofi Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
That’s not the first, either - Call of Duty 4 was, then GTA IV.
colossalblue Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
So we like soldiers, serial killing car theives, karaoke and cutesy platformers?
Let’s hope TSA never gets psychoanalysed…
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
GTA IV really?
colossalblue Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I would have said GTA IV was a 10/10 for the first week and then I got bored and missed the fun aspect that the series used to have but for the first week I thought it was awesome.
Now it’d probably be an 8/10 for me.
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Best game in the world ever for a couple of days, but sadly lacking something which made III, VC & SA so special
SteveTheSkorie Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Metal Gear Solid 4 as well!
Can’t forget that!
It’s the definition of masterpiece!
November 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Great review of a game which must be almost impossible to review because it’s so different to anything else and so difficult to describe or pigeon-hole.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Great review!
It’s completely deserved.
I have read some COMPLETELY ridiculous reviews about this game.
On Gamespot for example, they marked the game down for stupid reasons like:
1. “Building a compelling level can be time-consuming”
2. “[It has a]short story mode”
Firstly, it’s time-consuming to make anything good: music, lego, art, any game in general. he should be praising the fact that the level-building tools are soo easy to use. This comment is just asinine.
Secondly, they said that the single-player takes about 5-6 hours. Now, either he hasn’t finished the game or he is a mega-gamer and didn’t replay any of the levels or do any of the “side-quest” levels. Furthermore, this is kind of a moot point with all the user-created content and the fact that Medie Molecule are releasing more single-player levels soon.
In my opinion, games should just be reviewed based on how they make the player feel when they play it and what emotions it brings up. If you sit there getting frustrated with a game because of it’s controls, poor camera or just a boring generic story/plot, then it’s obviously not a very good game.
Even if there are a few frustrating areas or few glitchy parts to the game, it shouldn’t matter in the least if the game makes you laugh/smile/feel all warm and fuzzy inside/stare in awe at the amazing level design and thought that has gone into the game. This is why we play games. We don’t play them just because of their amazing graphics or good storylines; we play them and fall in love with them because of how much fun we have playing them and how well they stir our emotions.
TheDeathAvenger Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Exactly. And also I didn’t need to quickly scroll down to see the score, I just knew it would be a 10.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I’ve been playing this for the better part of two weeks now. It is a very charming game, but the single player has plenty of issues. The automatic three planes switching bollocks up sometimes often causing me to die. Everything is locked into the ingame physics which sound like a good idea until you realise that a platformer with floaty physics will net you only thousands of frustrating deaths that the physics system, not you, were responsible for.
As far as platformers go I prefer the ones with solid platforming mechanics like Mario and Megaman, not floaty ones like in LBP, because they are much less precise and impossible to predict.
I must admit although I do make games for a living I never the less have no interest in playing around with the level making abilities of LBP, because it will likely suck out a lot of my time, be incredibly hard to make anything remotely good and frankly I rather play games than make them.
That being said I am sort of intrigued by the ability to play levels made by others, but as it is now I am not too fond of how it is handled. The planets of user created levels one can browse through do not provide you with a quick and easy access to sort away the 99% crap having been posted to hone in on the 1% quality levels worth checking out. MM really needs to provide a sorted list of the best levels sorted according to bayesian estimate of how people who played said level rated it.
Another very frustrating thing about the game is with all the time MM had developing the game it never the less shipped in a state where it has crashed my PS3 several times. God I hate it when sheit like this happens, my PS2 games never crashed on me but now I have to live with console gaming being lowered to PC standards, yuck.
I would have liked if customising our sackboy avatars were a little more flexible than slapping pre-created colours and items on them. Making LBP levels do not have my interest but custom pimping my sackboy in a less restricted way does. I think MM missed the mark not putting more time in sackboy customisation.
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
“…The planets of user created levels one can browse through do not provide you with a quick and easy access to sort away the 99% crap having been posted to hone in on the 1% quality levels worth checking out….”
User created content sucks, just look at YouTube, and MySpace in fact the internet as whole is basically shite… but the 1% rule makes it all worth while.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
hehe loving this game, what a great experience. feel free to help me out by adding BioshoX-1h to your friend list
November 5th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Yeah, great review. I managed to grab the last copy from an independent store selling it early. Didn’t see much in the way of promotion in the big retailers though.
Still, I’ve got it. And it’s SKILL!!11!
cc_star Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Big retailers do re-merchandising on Thursday evening’s ready for Friday big release day… not geared up for mid-week releases
November 6th, 2008 at 6:04 am
i have only one problem with the game. that second to last level, EVERYTHING MOVES SO SLOWLY!!! that would be me because i have absoluty no paitence but other than that I fully agree with you guys.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:53 am
I kind of knew it would be a 10, but I NEVER check the score before reading the review, I don’t even srcoll all the way down to the number, just so I can read it all before I see the score. Although I thought it would get a 10, it sucked that you wrote it in the beginning of the post :p
Anyway, good review
I was supposed to get the game in my mailbox yesterday, but did that happen? No.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
oh well so much for my A levels…
November 6th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
As you said “unmissable”. 10 out of 10?, don’t think so. Only a game that is totally perfect in every way can score a 10, but LBP is the closest to it.
Michael Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
That depends on what the 10 pertains to: At TSA that means “Unmissable”. I think LBP is far from perfect, but for me it was a 10 from the moment I first played the beta. It’s totally deserving of the highest accolade TSA can give it - and that’s 10.
colossalblue Says:
November 7th, 2008 at 1:22 am
We could send it a puppy. OR we could have one of those pointless awards polls where we make everyone vote for their GOTY and then we send the devs an email saying well done, you rock, now give us an interview so we can get even more popular.
A puppy would be nicer though.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Great Review for a truly awesome game
The 10/10 is totally justified! I fell in love with LBP when I saw the first trailer and now it turned out to be as great as I hoped back then.