Archive for December, 2008

My wife handed my the controller when I got in from work and told me that I had to complete the Meerkat Kingdom level without dying. Which was surprisingly easy. And the reason she told me to do it? Because doing it won me a big top hat and a monocle, two Sackboy accessories I’d said I wanted. Hooray!

Spent many hours on Saturday playing this with my wife. We’re near the end of story mode now. Only a few more levels to go. We got stuck on a huge wheel full of platforms, or maybe just after it. It was 3:30am by the time we quit, so I’m having trouble remembering details.

Awesome, awesome game, by the way.

The current king of games.

It is wonderful.

I’ve been going through story mode, sometimes alone, more often with my wife by my side. Either way, it’s superb. From the reviews, I’d got the impression that story mode was nothing more than an extended tutorial, but it’s a full game. Levels are very replayable, each new level throws up new surprises and challenges and it’s given us hours of pleasure already. We’re near the end, but there’s a fair amount we’ve not found yet. And, oh, for those of us who love unlocking little things in games, this is heaven. New costume parts, new objects, new stickers, new decorations, new mini score attack levels. Every level is absolutely full of new things to get.

And it’s fun. It’s not just a collector’s dream, jumping, running, swinging and flying are all great fun. Every level in story mode is designed with love and care, the physics, graphics and sound add charm by the bucket loads and it’s just an absolute joy.

I really can’t speak of it highly enough.

And that’s without mentioning the hours I spent on Sunday morning making my own level. I haven’t published it, because it’s not very good, but I loved making it. First, a football with a face, sombrero and fine moustache welcomes you to the level. I mde that character. Then a heart-shaped multi-legged creature takes fright when you come close and jumps away. I made that creature, too. Then you find a a spotlighted area with some prizes in it. Then you come to a bit with some flaming mountains (which I made) and some very tricky jumps past some bats. (I didn’t make the bats, I just used some I’d picked up in one of the story levels.) That’s hard, though I have made it easier. At one point during the jumps it takes your photo and adds it to your Photo Booth photos. And then there’s a short race over some spikes. You have to grab a balloon and fly over. And then the level ends. You unlock some nice photos for completing it. And if you somehow manage to do it without losing any lives, you win the creatures and mountains I designed for the level to use in your own levels.

As I said, it’s not very good, but it’s a proper, working level that I had great fun messing around with.

And I still haven’t gone back and finished the user-made Castling level I downloaded a few days ago, or gone looking for any more levels.

Now, after all the gushing praise, we come to the problem. There’s only really one and it’s not a big one, but it’s a problem.

Little Big Planet is more-or-less 2D in gameplay terms, but takes place over three planes. You can manually move between the three planes, but the game is intelligent enough to work out where you’re jumping and automatically adjust your plane as you go through levels. At least, that’s the idea. And it works for me. I can move planes when I need to and let the game take care of it for the rest of the time. It’s fine. My wife, however, has terrible problems moving between planes and we can’t work out why it works fine for me, but not for her. It doesn’t spoil the game for her at all, but adds some extra frustration that I don’t have.