Little Big Planet

It's coming in October, so let this be our anticipation/discussion thread.

Can't wait, personally.

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2008/09/24/4-hours-with-sackboy/

ya i have to say, this looks pretty freshers.

Watching videos and reading the impressions of people playing the beta this morning is suddenly making the wait for this a lot more painful. It's maybe a little weird that I'm more interested in fooling around with creating levels, than actually playing the game though?

gawd, if this makes me buy a ps3 i'm gonna be so pissed.

PRICE DROP PLEASE SONY

to like $49.99

there was one of those sony promo 18-wheelers outside my school yesterday with a Little Big Planet mural on one whole side of it. I rushed inside and they didn't have the game or anything to do with it! Just a bunch of crappy old Sony games.

hey guys this game looks incredibly stupid

sizzle vs steak

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/09/25/tetris-falls-into-littlebigplanet/

Tried this last night. It was really cool and inventive, but the gameplay seems awfully limited. A lot of the user-created levels are very nice, so it seems like a game that could genuinely spawn a community. But with that community, you're mostly just hitting x to jump and r1 to grab stuff. Given that, it sure is well made and cool.

i like jumping around platform games

Me too, but I was hoping for something a little more robust I guess.

I'd imagine the later levels in the game will offer more challenge. Isn't the demo just a few of the easy, early, more tutorial like levels?

I'm not sure if the beta version I played is a "demo" or what, but I exclusively played user-created levels, many of them pretty highly rated, and some of them quite difficult. I do not dispute that the engine allows for difficulty and nuance, I just wish there was more to do.

yeah, played it for twenty or so minutes last night, just a straight up tutorial, and the gameplay seems pretty limited. the art design is great, though, and it's not hard to see the potential for awesomeness.

It's too bad nobody owns a PS3, or else I'd predict sackboy as a huge cultural touchtone.

This also totally looks like it would be better with a wii controller.

That's true, although the the little dude tilts his head depending on how you tilt the PS3 controller, which is cute and fun.

Lots of impressions on this week's 1up Show...
http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/21812

plus Wipeout HD and RE5, a really strong episode, I thought

played this constantly over the weekend. some of the user-created levels exploit the somewhat limited gameplay mechanics in novel ways, like the Heist levels. yeah, it's mostly jumping, grabbing, and swinging, but the level tells a story and there's a physics puzzle at the end unlike anything else I've yet to see in the game. anyway, seriously addictive, even if the game is at its most fun when your Sackboy is just randomly dancing around with an on-line stranger's on the winner's podium.

anymore ilxors playing this yet?

I keep missing out on beta keys. It's out in 2 weeks anyway though, I can wait.

the beta ends on Saturday, I think

i got the beta

Alright, so if you buy a PS3, an extra joystick, battery recharger for two, Little Big Planet and say, one other game:
1) How much does it cost, US?
2) Do you need anything more?
3) God I'm such a consumer whore.

You don't need a battery recharger, as you recharge the controllers thru the usb connectors on the front of the console (you may want some longer usb cables though, as the supplied cable is only 3' long). While pretty much any usb camera will work with a ps3, apparently you can only import pictures and stuff to your little big planet levels via the playstation eye camera thing - thirty-two bucks on amazon right now - I feel like I have to get one of those too now, which is a bit of a drag. The ps3 doesn't include an hdmi cable, so if you're planning to hook it up via hdmi, you gotta buy one of those cables too. It also doesn't include a headset, so you may need want to pick one of those up too.

i.e. it ain't cheap

forks shouldn't you be focused on your players' club responsibilities

ps you so don't need one of those camera doodads.

are you saying you can import pictures to lbp using any camera, or are you say it's pointless to want to import pictures to lbp?

i'm saying that if cost is an issue, it's not essential for play

I was hoping you meant number one :(

if you want to go number one, i would keep it away from your playstation.

too late

take a picture!

xpost cultists are the saddest people alive

gah xbox

careful w/beer:post ratio

BURN THE WITCH

I really do need to be playing fallout right now. My mom left yesterday; she stayed in the room where the computer was so I haven't had a minute to play in over a week!

why hasn't she been posting then?

She's more of a minesweeper type.

incredible

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez! It's too bad that I'll probably never own a PS3, and my friends don't have one either. I'll never see this in action, other than youtube clips, likely.

^same here... looks very cool, nonetheless.

this gameplay looks dull, i've yet to see any clips to prove me otherwise.

Check out the clip Jeff linked to earlier:

Lots of impressions on this week's 1up Show...
http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/21812

The appeal of the game isn't really tied to any traditional "gameplay" strengths. There's a part in that video where they're talking about how it's pretty difficult to build a working elevator, getting the physics right, etc. But, at the same time, once you've played someone else's level, you can win their contraptions. So you don't have to build an elevator - you can just use one that someone else built. It reminds me of the earlier days of the internet when everything looked like shit. People get better at it, borrow, steal, and it's morphed into where it is today. I'm not saying Little Big Planet is the next internet. But the fact that you can even make a conceptual comparison between the two is really cool - and new games will be able to take its ideas and refine them into something even better.

Ad campaign idea:

Little Big Planet - The Next Internet

Game seems like spore. Everyone drooling over the bells and whistles and concept and the game itself sucks.

it must be depressing to live in a town with such a pessimistic mayor

9 out of 10 review from Eurogamer that reads a little more mixed than the score...
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=259015&page=1

However...

"LittleBigPlanet sets out to resurrect the simple fun of a game you control with left, right and jump. It sets out to make the side-scrolling platform game relevant and exciting again. And it succeeds."

"LittleBigPlanet is a great platform game. It's not a perfect one. It doesn't need to be, though, because its creative tools turn it into something else entirely, a unique, hilarious, endless entertainment."

"New ideas are great, great old ideas are better, and LittleBigPlanet has both: it's the future and the past of videogames, rolled into one."

One more week!
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=199300

Game seems like spore. Everyone drooling over the bells and whistles and concept and the game itself sucks.

It doesn't suck at all. Your guy can basically just run, jump, and hold on to things, but Sonic could only do two of those three. It'll come down to level design, and how those basic commands are exploited, like pretty much every good game ever. The beta only had three story levels accessible, and they were all tutorials, so it gave little idea how good the off-line game will be. But there were already a number of excellent user-made levels that proved how much fun can be have with the fairly limited gameplay mechanics.

I've been thinking about getting a PS3 just for the Blu-ray player, honestly.

i gotta say from messing around with the beta, it does seem really fun but i'm not sold on the controls.

yeah, it's not too easy differentiating between the three horizontal planes, or whatever, and the jumps are a bit floaty and weightless. I adjusted to the latter eventually, but the first thing was always a thing.

Agreed on the depth issues (as in the .5D); the best levels I played on the beta didn't use it at all.

Well, I lucked into a copy of this game tonight (sorry guys) and it's so awesome. I've only played seven levels, one of which I've yet to beat (game isn't as easy as it looks), and a couple of the mini-challenge levels, but so far, WOW WOW WOW. Especially playing two player co-op - it's just so much fun! I've yet to fool with the level creator and the online features aren't live yet, but so far I'm just stunned by what an enjoyable, beautiful, funny, unique creation LBP appears to be.

Yipes - apparently the game is being delayed worldwide because one of the songs in the game "contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an"

http://threespeech.com/blog/2008/10/littlebigplanet-scees-official-statement/

What exactly is wrong with the Qur'an, wtf

I played the retail version last night. Still fun, but I stand by my earlier half-heartedness. I wouldn't buy a PS3 to play it.

Well, five hundred+ dollars to play one game (even a great one) - yes - that would be pretty absurd. But, even without the online functionality, I'm having a total blast with the game. I'm really glad I got an early copy, but now I'm worried it won't end up being compatible with the final retail version.

That calculator video upthread blew my mind. Damn ps3 exclusivity, I really want to play this.

The stuff causing the delay:

1- In the 18th second: "كل نفس ذائقة الموت" ("kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: 'Every soul shall have the taste of death').

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "كل من عليها فان" ("kollo man alaiha fan", literally: 'All that is on earth will perish').

I'm supposing Sony's fearing Muslims not appreciating bits of the Qur'an casually tossed into a video game and the other end of the spectrum thinking this is some sort of subliminal brainwashing.

Apparently music levels are getting quite popular. Here's a Radiohead cover (with all the sound devices hidden behind the scenery)...

Here's a Guns and Roses song with the sound devices left in the open, so you can get a better idea of how to create this kind of level...

personally i'm still not convinced this offers much in the way of gameplay, also are we relying on other users to create interesting levels? I mean, are they no levels that come with the game already?

What exactly is wrong with the Qur'an, wtf

― polyphonic

It's complaints from muslims not complaints that the game is muslim.

Ant Attack - there's plenty of gameplay. The levels that ship with the game are GREAT (I'm a little over halfway through). There are 8 worlds, each with 3 to 4 levels, each with a few mini games to unlock. The mini-games are actually really fun and/or challenging too. All total, the game ships with over fifty unique levels. All can be completed single player, but there are also specific challenge areas to each main level that require at least two players. The levels that I've played are a mix of platforming and puzzles. Some of the platforming gets pretty challenging. The design, characters and humor make the levels a delight to play through, even when they get frustrating.

I look at it as a bonus that the game ships with an amazingly deep level creation tool. It's very fun just to fool around with and see what you can do

Sorry - I'm kind of puzzled by some of the negative comments surrounding this game, because it's the most enjoyable, wonderous game I've played in a long long time. I would say since Super Mario Galaxy, but it's better than that.

There are 8 worlds, each with 3 to 4 levels, each with a few mini games to unlock. The mini-games are actually really fun and/or challenging too. All total, the game ships with over fifty unique levels

This I admit sounds a lot more tantalising than the user defined stuff, which on youtube evidence didn't really do much for me.

but i guess in time the user defined stuff could become quite intricate and making full use of what's available.

I would say since Super Mario Galaxy, but it's better than that.

I haven't gotten too far into the retail version yet (thanks to Dead Space and Fable 2), but I can't wait to focus solely on LBP and see if this statement is true. For if it is, we all win.

Probably a better game to compare it to is Katamari Damacy. Even though it doesn't have that games unique rolling mechanic, I do get a similar feeling of joy / amazement when playing it. Just getting to see each weird, new level. It also has the same collect 'em all obsessive kind of thing - though here you need to collect all the stuff, so you can build things with it. It's sort of an English take on that kind of quirky game.

god damn walmart have it on the shelf, but they still won't sell it to me. gamestop sold out by the time i got there.

It has become annoying that the servers aren't up yet. With so many people having the game and regular stores selling 'em and everything, I wonder if there's another problem keeping the servers offline?

FUCK that giant wheel.

also this game is amazing, although the jumping feels like crap compared to, say, NSMB

im still having a hard time dealing with the controls... kinda frustrating. a lot. the jump land is too slippery or something.

I don't know - maybe I'm just used to a floaty jump after playing TONS of N+ this year, so the jump here never bugged me? The longer you hold down X, the longer you jump - seems pretty straight forward (though yes, I'll always still prefer the perfection of SMB). On the other hand - when the switching between three planes doesn't work right - yeah, it's a bit annoying.

Also, I've tried out lots of crap user levels, trying to find some good stuff. The sorting system, if there is one, seems completely worthless. Maybe people are making good stuff, but how will we ever know? I mean, I've seen some neat stuff, but nothing that plays very good.

yeah, the gradius level is actually pretty neat, though I died at the volcano / only tried it twice. I do find that I'll give up pretty easily on the user created levels. They just don't motivate me like the story one's do... so if I die once or twice, it's on to the next. I am starting to find it kind of a relaxing experience to just browse random user levels though. There does seem to be a lot of variety there already, though I wish some people would work on their levels a little more / think about if they're worthwhile, before publishing them. Even on the worst levels though, there's some fun to be had in giving them one or two stars and leaving a "rubbish" tag.

i've noticed a few really well-made ones. but a lot where you can't make it to the end... those are the worst

Metal Gear DLC

hope this doesn't get my friend at mediamolecule into any trouble free codes for metal gear DLC

AWESOME!!

thanks dude - they work

So is the metal gear stuff actual levels you can play thru or just more items?

levels.

and a paint gun.

it's actually pretty awesome.

sod it. i bought this today

i'm into platforming at the moment anyway.

oh shit

I was going to learn music tonight but maybe I will buy this instead

I knew I'd hate this game

It's a beautiful concept with striking art direction wrapped around a floaty turd of a platformer.

Tried this last night. It was really cool and inventive, but the gameplay seems awfully limited. A lot of the user-created levels are very nice, so it seems like a game that could genuinely spawn a community. But with that community, you're mostly just hitting x to jump and r1 to grab stuff. Given that, it sure is well made and cool.

― polyphonic, Friday, October 3, 2008 8:30 PM (4 months ago)

agree with those

also, and i know this isn't exclusive to LBP, but fuck trophies - I don't need a trophy to tell me I've completed a level when I have the fucking game itself to tell me that I've completed the level.

The PSP game is out later this month and it got a 9/10 review from Eurogamer...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/littlebigplanet-psp-review?page=1

"it helps that the controls feel ever so slightly tighter than those in the PS3 game. Sackboy still has the spring in his step which makes his movements a little floaty, but it's just a touch easier to time jumps and direct landings with precision. Plus there are now only two planes of depth to deal with rather than three, which means the auto-correct function is less likely to mess you about."

"That's not to say there aren't still moments of frustration. Once you've sailed through the opening levels the difficulty curve ramps up significantly, and there are some set-pieces which will challenge the hardcoriest of hardcore platform fans."

"It also has plenty of checkpoints, and unlike in the PS3 version there's no limit to the number of times you can respawn at each one. When you die, you lose some points, but even if you get down to zero you're not forced to start the whole level from scratch - which makes the more frustrating sections easier to bear."

"Most importantly, the environments you get to play through are just as beautiful, the puzzles just as ingenious and the difficulty level just as challenging."

loving the PSP version. but then I loved the original too.

sounds like they made the right changes

There's a demo out for the PSP version. Two planes is definitely a little better than three, but it's still a little clunky switching between them too. The demo at least, really felt exactly like playing the ps3 version. I was a little surprised at how much of the look and feel they were able to keep. But because it just feels like more of the same, it doesn't feel particularly essential. I'm not sure there's enough new here...

From Smalltown Supersound's Twitter- Lindstrom & Prins Thomas's "Feel AM" is going to be in the PSP version.

Er, wait, no, from Eskimo's news mailout. I have too much informations, I am confused sometimes.

so what's new in the second game ?

grappling hooks.

And stuffed animals to ride.

The demo for LBP2 put me off the series for good; still floaty jumping, only now with a bunch of other poorly implemented gameplay elements like grappling hooks and floppy bunnies. It's a shame, because the aesthetic beauty of the game makes me want to play, but once I start I want to tear the stuffing out of the little fucker for being such shit.

little big penis :(

decided to reinstall the first one, after never being all that impressed with it originally. i played the multiplayer for the first time and have to admit it was a real blast.

fry's voice on the tutorial parts can get really annoying though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuCFvRW6sSo

haha that's groovy

okay i'm really enjoying making my own shit now, and it's a lot easier than i expected. just wish the 3-plane movement and jumping wasn't so damn poor.

got the second one

jesus christ the grapple hook is dreadful. why does it contract by its own accord? why do they manage to fuck up the controls all the time with this game?

said that, the jump seems slighly better.

graphics and presentation are improved, but game seems a lot easier so far. And sticker triggers seem fewer, which is a shame.

I am enjoying LBP2 very much, and actually love the grappling hook despite it being unwieldy.

The intro was sooooo long though.

i was gonna sell my lbp2 copy but i got hooked on it over the weekend, the online multiplayer element is stupid fun

yeah must get back into this

i thought i had 2 but not its the first one. is 2 any better?