When we first wrote about
LittleBigPlanet 2 for the
PlayStation 3, we knew the pitch — you play, create and share your own home-made video games using robust but easy tools. But it wasn’t until we played the game at the
E3 conference in Los Angeles that we got the full picture.
LittleBigPlanet 2’s crazy, accessible gameplay is designed for new players as much as it is for old, but it’s basically a familiar experience for anyone who’s played the first game. That said, it differs in two important ways.
First, it allows you to create radically different kinds of gaming experiences, whereas the first game only allowed for the creation of Mario-like platform jumping gameplay. It also greatly expands the social and sharing features found in the first game, adding search, web-based profile pages and friend activity feeds.
Make Any Kind of Game You Want
Now you can create something other than a Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog-type platform jumping game. LittleBigPlanet 2 offers vehicles, storytelling tools and other features that allow creative gamers to make much more sophisticated games in many different genres.
We played a few games made with the tools. One was a bumper-kart competition in which the objective was to push other players (either online or in the same room on the same screen) off the edge using booster rockets. It was a fun bit of mayhem, and it reminded us of something you’d find in a family party game like Mario Party for the Wii.
Another was a side-scrolling deathmatch. The new creation tools let you throw helmets into the game for players to wear, and you can apply any properties you want to them. In this case, the helmets shot rockets that obliterated other players.
Even the traditional platform jumping levels are made more interesting with cutscenes that have voice-overs and camera angles.
Finally, LittleBigPlanet 2 works with the new, Wii remote-like PlayStation Move controllers. We played a short demo in which one player pointed the Move controller at the screen to drag obstacles out of the way of another player controlling his character with a normal PS3 controller.
LBP.me and the Activity Feed
LittleBigPlanet 2 works a little bit like a YouTube for games, if YouTube more prominently featured a Facebook-like activity feed of your friends’ activity.
Each time a gamer friend plays or creates a game or level, it pops up in your feed. You can opt to play his or her level, or even join him or her in whatever activity he or she is doing at that moment. Alternatively, you can just search by keyword for levels that you want to try out.
When you like a level or game you come across, you can share it (ratings and all) with your friends just like you might share a cool link on your social network of choice.
This all takes place in the game, of course, but the other big addition besides the activity feed is LBP.me, a social website that hosts a personal profile for each user, including references to your creations and activities as they occur.
If you see something you’re interested in while you’re killing time on the site at the office, you can flag that level or game to pop up when you turn on your PS3 at home.
These new sharing and discovery features join the already web-inspired tagging system from the first game to make it easy to find user-generated content that you’d have fun playing.
Impressions
The game feels a lot like the first LittleBigPlanet in that it’s like the bass guitar. It’s very easy to pick up and play, but there are layers of sophistication that aren’t apparent when you’re first starting out. We didn’t get to play with the creation tools, but the regular gameplay was frenetic and accessible for any audience.
Most of the brilliant ideas are going to come out of the community of users who opt to create original content on their own using the provided tools, though we were told by a rep from LittleBigPlanet 2’s development studio that there are already select users working with the tools so there will be some good stuff to play at launch.
The social features and discovery tools will help solve the biggest problem with LittleBigPlanet: difficulty finding the diamonds in the rough. If you haven’t played the first game, though, we’ll recommend trying this one out anyway, if only because all two million user-created levels from the original library are playable in LittleBigPlanet 2, and it will be easier to pick them out now.
The game will go on sale exclusively for the PlayStation 3 game console shortly before the onset of the holiday season this year.
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marioMore About: e3, E3 2010, gaming, hands-on, lbp.me, littlebigplanet 2, media molecule, playstation 3, preview, PS3, social gaming, sony, video games
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