Little Big Planet (PS3)

[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

New Eurogamer Preview

It's funny that a game that makes such blissful sense when you see it in person can be so hard to explain in words.

It's all summed up beautifully by the game's main interface screen - so beautifully, we probably should have started there. Sackboy is in his cardboard-box space station with his giant PS3 controller (labelled "Puter"), looking down at the little big planet and its moon - "My Moon". The planet is labelled "story" (we're assured that there is one, sort of, but it's not very important). It has tens of themed level hubs with names like "Comrade Sackputin's Bunker", each of which seems to link to a dozen or so levels and mini-games. This, it's becoming apparent, will be a big game even if you never download or create a thing for it.

We're shown a level called The Plains, with an African savannah theme and a structure that's a straight, competitive race to the finish, picking up as many bubbles for points as you can along the way. There are giraffes whose necks raise the sackboys to higher levels when they stand on their heads, tip-dispensing monkeys, and a dangerous stampede of wheeled buffalo.

Fundamentally, however, platform games have to be about the joy of motion above everything else, and that includes dressing-up, playacting and world-building. And this, happily, looks like it could be LittleBigPlanet's greatest strength. It's not as precise or involved as a Mario, but using the most basic controls imaginable it conjures up a joyful, elastic, tactile momentum that brings an instant smile to the face, and works perfectly with the impressively consistent and fun physics.

At times over the last year, LittleBigPlanet has sounded too clever for its own good - too clever, at any rate, to be the PS3 smash hit Sony wants it to be. Don't be misled; it's one of the simplest and most appealing propositions we've ever sat down in front of. It's 21st century Lego.

It's going to be fascinating to watch LittleBigPlanet go head to head with that other poster-boy for the community-creation age, Spore, when they both release this September. Spore might be more successful by virtue of its platform and pedigree, but at the moment, the PS3 game looks the more coherent, consistent, easy to grasp, rewarding and just plain lovable. It may not be the biggest PS3 release this year, but one thing's for sure, it's absolutely the most important.

[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

LittleBigPlanet Dated

A healthy amount of news came out of Sony's European press event today, but one of the more intriguing tidbits was the date that was given to the greatly anticipated LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule: this October. While this is a UK event and thus only confirms a European release specifically, we imagine that October will bring about a world-wide launch for the title.

New video

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[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

New trailer

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Helghast sack-boys.

...

IGN: Hands-On

At its most simplistic, this is the most flexible and open-ended sandbox game of this generation. It hails back to The Incredible Machine on PCs – a game that took the same DIY mentality to gamers back in the mid-90s. However, the promise of being able to upload, download and display your creations – be them fully-fledged levels, obstacle courses, Rube Goldberg machines, deathtraps or just fun levels to fool around in – just makes us more excited. Surely, as Sony has been touting, LittleBigPlanet will foster a community of eager designers.

There's a feeling out there that LittleBigPlanet is a return to gameplay that will inspire creativity, rather than simply force-feeding pre-made levels. It's this creativity that will sell the game to many. However, there are a full 50 maps of increasing size and complexity (with pits of fire, towering mounds and winding passages) planned for the final game, designed with meticulous attention to physics and more importantly, fun. The Sack-boys will reign.

While none of this is particularly new from the team, the demonstration did show exactly how refined the game already is. Visually, the engine now sports even more subtle depth-of-field effects, soft light blooming, lovely fabric ruffles, clouds of volumetric smoke and animation that strictly adhere's to Newton's laws. More than that, however, the framerate is now locked in somewhere between 30 frames per second and buttery. It's got the trademark quality of a triple-A game and we can't help but expect great things come October.

[HMcCoy]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

This is looking great.

[Skyboxer]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

Must own. Been waiting for this one..... Getting closer.

[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

LittleBigPlanet Progress Report
We play a new level and get confirmation on a U.S. release window.

Folks representing the title started us journalists off at a simple selection screen where three planets float in front of a cardboard box that has a viewing hole cut out of the middle. It looks like a TV or a spaceship window. One planet is the cloth-like material the game is synonymous with and is called CraftEarth. This is where you'll jump into actual levels you've created or downloaded. MyMoon is where you'll be given the keys to the kingdom and allowed to create your own contraptions and worlds. InfoFridge was blank for our demo, but is made up of push pins and corkboard -- when the title goes live, this is where messages will be displayed as kind of a community gathering place

Thing about this screen is that Sackboy -- or boys depending on how many players you have ready to go -- are just chilling in the box while you browse. When you're ready to move,
they'll grab the massive representation of the PS3 controller and wiggle the joysticks for you.

I played with three other folks, and the objective was to get through the level as quickly and efficiently as possible while collecting colored-orbs. Our total orb count was tracked in the center of pie chart in the left corner, while the pie part tracked how many orbs each of our team's Sackboys had collected. When we modified our characters looks -- tap square and have at it when it comes to eyes, teeth, moustaches, etc. -- the character's representation on the pie chart changed in real time.

Still, what I find most impressive about this title is how simple it is to control while maintaining an incredible depth. I ran through the level tapping X to jump and holding R1 to push and pull objects into position. That's it. Two buttons. With those two buttons, I was moving blocks to make stairs on one side of the level, leaping onto ledges to activate switches so that my team could move on, and even riding a mechanized elephant over some fire spots that would surely kill my Sackboy.

From there, our demo sent us to the moon to see what we could create and how. It started with the content I'm sure you're all familiar with -- you can put him in a dragon suit, you can give him a Cyclops eye, etc. -- but quickly moved to how these individual pieces end up interacting with each other. The game busted out an oh-so-cute skull that's suspended above the ground by this wooden spine. The lower part of the skull's jaw was on a set of ropes and would fall and rise over and over again. Our demoer whipped up a switch and placed it next to the skull, he then paused the action (which brings about this sick VCR tracking art at the top of the screen to let you know something's different) and connected the switch to the ropes via chains.

The action resumed without the skull's mouth moving. One Sackboy climbed onto the jaw, another threw the lever, and the character rose.

Equally as awesome as all of that was endowing your creations with elements. Every platforming level needs deathtraps, and creating them in LBP is easy. Our demo-giver created some sponge rectangles and then clicked his elements option. Fire, ice, electricity and more popped up, he chose electricity, he clicked the sponge and -- ZAP -- we had a way to kill our little buddy.

Seriously, I could talk all day about how amazing this game seems like it's going to be, but you won't know the joys of making your Sackboy hold his breath until he explodes, using the PlayStation Eye to make an in-game sticker, or any of the other cool stuff until the game's global launch in October.

New Screens

[Altimus]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

This game is going to be crazy. Sony has a couple really good months coming up.

[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

Developer Walkthrough:

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[Skyboxer]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

This game is going to be crazy. Sony has a couple really good months coming up.

Can't wait to play this thing.......

[Pared]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

Wow... Never really cared to look into this but I just did and WOW. Looks great.

How can you guys like this and avoid a game like Patapon on the PSP?

[JRod]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

I don't know about this game.

It's really nothing but a platformer. I think the concept is really good. And they are banking on users creating a huge number of levels to add more life to the game.

I feel that this is going to be a huge bomb for Sony. I could be wrong and it could have popularity like the Sims. But it just seems that this is a concept game that's short on gameplay.

[Altimus]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

Wow... Never really cared to look into this but I just did and WOW. Looks great.

How can you guys like this and avoid a game like Patapon on the PSP?

Pata what now? Never heard of it.

[Pared]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

http://www.gamespot.com/psp/action/patapon/index.html?tag=result;title;0

[Flawless]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)


5 Incredible ‘Little Big Planet’ Details

1) How Enemies Work — I kept hearing that each new “LBP” press demo would finally reveal the game’s enemies. But in each demo — including the one I went through last week — they were not in there. I asked Evans about this; what he told me made me realize I had been expecting the wrong thing. The developers at Media Molecule aren’t focusing on giving players pre-made enemies.

Instead, Evans said the game will ship with five or six artificial intelligence brains. He wouldn’t tell me what the AI behaviors would be, but explained that a “LBP” user would be able to apply them to their creations in the game’s editor. Whether or not the AI brains will drive your creations effectively depends on your designs. For example… did you put wheels on the giant attack-llama?

2) Gaming’s Most Impressive Screenshot Tool — You can take in-game screenshots in “Little Big Planet.” Hooray. You can then take those screenshots and apply them to objects. That’s actually… promising. While using the game’s content editor I made a few beams and struts. Then I hopped my character on top of them to pose for a screenshot. I took that shot and applied it as a sticker to one of the beams or struts. I had created an optical illusion, my character standing on top of a beam that looked like an image of him standing atop a beam. Think about how you could use this feature to mess with people: making solid walls look like empty space and fooling them to crash right into them.

3) How “LBP” Music Can Turn Levels Into Rhythm Games — “Little Big Planet” users can place sound objects in the levels they create. The object Evans showed me was a little speaker. We were able to attach it to a block that was resting at the beginning of a level we were making. You can assign music that will play from that speaker when a user’s character walks past it. The music from that speaker can be set to play from any point in the track. I proposed an idea to Evans that he said was 100% do-able: I could line a level with speakers, one set up every few steps — and set them all to play the same song, but queued up from different parts. Doing this, I could make it so that if a player ran through my level at a certain pace, he or she would hear the song play perfectly. Running at the wrong pace would cause the player to hear the song play in a choppy fashion.

4) Just Add Water — The game features an impressive content editor. It integrates all its objects within a certain style of calculated physics. Objects teeter and roll with mathematical precision. But there’s one element that’s not in the game yet — liquids. I can’t flood a level with water and watch how that affects everything I generated. Instant non-purchase? No way. Evans told me liquids are possible: “If people want that, we can do it.”

5) The Gifts That You Can Give — Not only can you use “Little Big Planet” to create any imaginable gaming object that would fit in a 2D playing field, but you can also make the blueprints for any such object. Those blueprints — really, the object itself — can be uploaded to other gamers. Better than that: you can make the blueprints a collectible item in the levels you create. Better still: you can associate such objects with leaderboard requirements. So I can challenge the world to score a certain number of points in a level I’ve made and then automatically reward anyone who achieves that mark with a trophy object that I made myself. I wonder what I could force people to receive if they play my level poorly…

[Skyboxer]

Re: Little Big Planet (PS3)

I think this game will be far far far away from bombing. IMO. It's going to be one of those sit down and relax, build some , play some and just have good old fashion fun.

Hopefully I'm right because we need more games like this and less cookie cutter FPS's.