LittleBigPlanet Beta Preview/Review

There isn’t enough that can be said about LittleBigPlanet and what it offers, you’ve all seen the hype, you’ve heard the word on the street. Just from the beta which weighs in at a mere 903Mb download there is SO much content held within. I’m very excited to see the final product which is rumored to be somewhere around the 40Gb mark, now with that much filled up I cannot imagine how much stuff there will be to play with in the final version.

Anyways, On the graphics side of things LittleBigPlanet is LittleBigBeautiful, from the very detailed backgrounds in the story levels to the small details like full reflections in the bubbles you collect, LittleBigPlanet is visually impressive on many levels. The textures just on the sackboys/girls themselves are very high resolution and it really makes you FEEL like those little sackboys are really made up of the material you have chosen for them. Speaking of materials they seem to favor a lot of real world materials that make up a lot of the objects in the game such as trees for example the leafy area seems to be composed of a felt type material and it MOVES like its real world counter-part, it is a very nice touch and makes it believable. On the technical side of it all it seems to stay a consistent 30 frames per second, I didn’t notice any slowdown which is very nice.

On to the sound, the sound is just as impressive as the graphics, from the quirky noises the pre-made people and creatures make to the cute and addictive music from such bands as “The Go Team”. I mean who doesn’t love the song every has tagged as the “Theme song” for LittleBigPlanet? I know I sure love it.

Sure I’ve spewed a lot of praise for the game but it wasn’t perfect, there were a few problems that I did encounter. For example: the online play was horribly laggy any time I tried to play with 3 other people, the sackboys and girls jumped around the screen inconsistently and it was very unplayable, but I’m sure that’s what the beta was for was to work out the network code. The other problem I had with the game was the way the Foreground, mid ground, and background layers of the game worked, When you jump towards something you’re meant to get on and it’s in a different layer than your character is currently standing in, it is automatically supposed to put you on to it. Now on paper this sounds “correct” and the way it should work but a lot of the times I found it would work against you when there were a lot of different things around you, so often times you would be jumping on something you didn’t want to get on. It’s a small annoyance in a game that is full of greatness it’s something that can easily be tweaked over time through patches.

On a closing note, the game was missing 1 key feature that was promised for a long time which was online create a level with other people, although Media Molecule has said it will be added in via a patch after launch, no one knows HOW LONG after launch we are looking at. I know I’m not the only one who is really looking forward to multiple amazing level builders getting together to collaborate and make the ultimate level.

Sony looks to have finally found their killer app and their own mascot for the Sony brand. Look out Super Mario here comes sackboy!