Little Big Planet

I feel as if I should not swear so much while playing such a cute game.

 

When LBP first starts you hear the familiar tones of Stephen Fry doing a voice over to a slightly twee (okay, very twee) introductory film and he is immediately the right man for the job. He also voices all instructional clips and the tutorials in the build your own level or My Moon section.

The game is a platformer with the lively appearance of three dimensional animation. The customisable character you play is a sackboy or sackgirl. I have played through quite a bit of the campaign on single player so far.

My Sackboy

There are several levels for each continent in the world, starting in Europe and moving through Africa, South, Central and North America and then on to Asia which is where I have got to. The levels get progressively harder and at first I did not notice that it was possible to fail to complete a level. I have now been brutally disabused of that happy illusion. Each level is split into numerous sections and if your sackperson is killed four times in any section you have to start again (or give up).

The last level I completed was Sensei’s Lost Castle. I hate to think how many sackboys I was responsible for the deaths of! There are two unbearable facts about dying outright.


i. When you die you know that the difficult bit that killed you was almost certainly close to the end of the level
ii. After you have died about three times you are so aggravated that you proceed to die again, this time at an easy point in the level which you have previously got past with no problems.


When you die it is the world’s fault! it is because of the stupid design of the level! It is because you pressed the button and nothing bloody happened!


You can build your own level in the My Moon section, and publish for others to try. My first attempt is looking a bit underdeveloped so far and there is a lot you have to learn to make a sensible level. There are loads of published ones out there to play which are quite a bit easier than the main game (on the whole) and generally shorter. I’ve played about twenty and only one of those was comparable in length and variety to the levels of the main game but quite a few of the others were interesting and worth playing.


For all my frustrations I have found Little Big Planet a worthwhile place to visit and I will definitely be back.