little big planet game review
LittleBigPlanetLittleBigPlanet is one of the most talked about games in recent months. Well Named ? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt even if we will have made a lot of false ideas about this UFO more twisted than his air of easygoing let us believe.
If the PS3 needed a flagship game, a standard capable of displaying a real personality and act as a mascot for the console, it has just found it. Starting from nowhere, LittleBigPlanet is truly a concept, a completely new little phenomenon that goes from the game to the most complete creation tool that one can imagine. The first step of your meeting with LBP will obviously be the game, through the Story mode and the levels designed by the developers of Media Molecule. Levels that will familiarize you with the very particular design of the game and its scrapbook side which is based on a DIY aesthetic allowing all styles. From a more playful point of view, despite its enormous richness, the basis of LittleBigPlanet's gameplay is excessively simple and returns us to the roots of the platform game. All Sackboy, your favorite rag doll, can do is go left to right, jump and hang on to something. Thanks to Media Molecule, everyone can remember that with little, we can do a lot. Already because each decor has not one, nor two but three planes, which means that the 2D painting in front of you actually contains three levels of depth and therefore as many possibilities of routes to follow or widgets to find. In addition, an action as simple as grabbing a surface has more varied implications than we think. This is where the genius of level design comes in.
Switches of all kinds, physics management, explosives, fire, gears, everything that can act and react is used to create devious mechanisms and give life to levels of platforms that are sometimes enjoyable and much more demanding than one might have thought, given the general orientation of the game. Some courses will make you think, others will test your reflexes by abusing vile traps and particularly sharp timings coupled with jumps requiring great precision to land on a narrow point somewhere between the void and an enemy bristling with stakes. It should be noted that even physics is under attack here and for once, we can qualify it as lunar without it being derogatory. If the effects of gravity and inertia are credible, they have this flexibility and this strange exaggeration from which emanates precisely this feeling of being on a planet where gravity would be slightly less strong. Precision is important because it is felt in the grip. Thus, Sackboy tends to float a little when he jumps and especially when he hits the ground again. The thing is double-edged. Consistent with the rest of the game design, this latency increases the challenge by forcing you to demonstrate devilish precision in the strength and the length of your jumps. But the flashback is that even once we have taken the fold, it is not uncommon for us to feel penalized by this lack of finesse of the controls. A point that may seem trivial, but which appears as the biggest flaw in the game as we see in some very demanding levels in terms of platforms. Unfortunately, it is combined with a concern for maneuverability which affects the famous three action plans between which it is not uncommon to evolve without really having wanted to.
The fact remains that, ultimately, Media Molecule returned to the foundation of the video game, which a lot of game designers keep repeating without ever doing it: reducing the number of orders and focusing on the environment and interaction natural to create gameplay. So, even if it is quite short, the Story mode is a richness that we had not crossed for a long time. Not to mention that each level offers real replayability. Each contains several passages and secret hiding places in which we will find the objects to collect for the editor but also sections reserved for multiplayer. Online or locally, up to 4 players can enter the game and wander on the screen and thus access certain areas requiring cooperative work. This is how you get to know the community aspect of LittleBigPlanet. An aspect that is expressed at its lowest level in the customization of its Sackboy that you can dress, style, accessorize as you please. Before even using the built-in chat functions, you can even communicate through the body by waving your arms, pelvis or head and using the facial expressions controlled by the directional cross.
Of course, this is not even a quarter of what LittleBigPlanet offers in the area of creativity. Once you have completed the levels included in the game, you can move on to the editor and sharing of content, whether it is whole levels or even scoreboards. It is therefore time to approach the level editor. As a reminder, the first thing to do is to collect raw materials by completing levels, those of the studio or those of other players. Materials, shapes, stickers, we will not have fun listing the number of gadgets that we can bring back to our workshop to simply explain succinctly the richness of the thing. It is enough to understand well to see what some patients were able to create during the beta of the game. Classic levels, 30 second jokes, a calculator capable of performing mathematical operations (!), The field of possibilities has already exploded. during this first phase and on the test servers, we could already launch into race-based levels or even play Space Invaders.
For once, we can say that developers have kept a promise, to provide a tool capable of doing everything. A multitude of switches can be configured and wired in various ways, motors will rotate wheels or platforms, bolts will make them tremble, speakers will play sounds or music according to your personal mix, some accessories will be used to make appear enemies or objects and you pass so much you get lost. Especially since each item can be configured through a multitude of parameters. You can even create a car if you feel like it. In the end, you are not only given the opportunity to design the architecture of a level, but even to create scripts that will make it dynamic, cause movement, sound, and various events. This editor, despite a simplistic interface a little cheap hides a real creation tool. Only regret, the impossibility of importing your own music, personal sounds or your own image files.
Only there is a snag. All this wealth has a price: time and work. Where Spore, an inevitable comparison, wanted to be hyper accessible and allowed the average player to broadcast correct creations, LittleBigPlanet is much less easy to access. The huge amount of objects and settings will quickly cool the less reckless and it will not only be necessary to be creative but also to be rigorous, patient and relentless to tame this incredible tool and the workspace which is offered to us. . Quite frankly, we don't want to make it a fault, just to warn players of two important things. The first is this difficulty, which comes from a simple reality: a tool cannot do everything for you. The second is that suddenly, we must expect that the levels posted by the community will be of very uneven quality. Inevitably, as the proof has been made both on beta and on test servers, we will find levels of questionable interest, sometimes nonexistent, or poorly constructed because not yet refined. This does not prevent us from also discovering constantly renewed nuggets of ingenuity, which again has been demonstrated throughout this month. With these simple ideas and its complicated editor, it is up to players to make the quality of LittleBigPlanet. And some have already done a brilliant job.
The notes
Graphics 18/20
LittleBigPlanet's graphic style is truly unique and fits its concept wonderfully. The characters all seem to be constructed like cardboard puppets whose members are pinned and the game evokes a skillful and improbable tinkering where completely offset elements are grafted, like the fire which sometimes seems to have been filmed for example. The levels created by the developers each have a very marked and well-inspired style.
Gameplay 17/20
Sackboy knows how to do little, move forward, jump and catch, but it's the environment that will make you perform a lot of actions and that makes what appears to us as a platform game become ... anything else. Unfortunately, we regret that the grip is sometimes so imprecise. As for the rest, the heart of the game is in the hands of the players. Note that the level search system of the test version was far from very practical. We doubt that it is final but in case ...
Lifespan 18/20
The basic single player campaign is quite short, but that doesn't really matter since the heart of the game lies in creating and sharing content. As long as there are madmen to swing surprising levels or indefinable "things", the game will be renewed.
Soundtrack 16/20
If it is a shame not to be able to import your own music into the game, it is clear that LittleBigPlanet has a lot of excellent songs even if the effects are a little behind.
Scenario/
Is LittleBigPlanet keeping its promises? Yes and in addition, he deserves the noise he may have made in recent months. Media Molecule has succeeded in a risky bet, immersing a character who knows practically nothing to do in a highly interactive environment driven by mechanics with simple triggering and complex reactions. Then comes the other side of LittleBigPlanet, its editor which gives free rein to your imagination but which you will have to learn to master by devoting long hours of work to it. Let it be said, creating the craziest levels will not be within everyone's reach but whether we are on one side or the other of the chain, player or creator, we are satisfied. And with such an irresistible design, frankly, how to fight?
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