Sony’s Biggest Little Secret: LittleBigPlanet
March 7th, 2007For the first time, I finally see something on the PS3 that piques my interest enough to potentially warrant a purchase. In short, LittleBigPlanet, revealed today at GDC, looks great. Vibrant, crisp and colorful with a catchy (albeit slightly repetitive) soundtrack, stunning animation, and what appears to be some potentially interesting physics-based platforming with 4 players, Sony could have a winner on its hands.
To be honest, this is the kind of game that Nintendo probably wishes, and potentially should have in its lineup. The game is probably targeted at a younger group, but it actually looks like it might capture some of that old-school Nintendo magic in a fresh (and HD, I might add) quasi-3d environment. From the clips, it looks like there may be some simple co-op puzzles to solve. Hopefully, there will be lots of clever puzzles that require all 4 players to solve and advance, and won’t just be basically a single-player game that happens to let you run through with three other players. At the same time, I’m hoping that Sony figures out a way to let gamers take on the game themselves, either with the ability to control the other characters (like in Zelda 4-Swords) or with AI (like in Gears of War). Otherwise, the game could lose it’s luster after awhile once most of the people are “over” it.
Obviously, nothing is a sure thing, but hopefully this game will come together and play as good as it looks right now throughout the whole game. If Sony is able to out-Nintendo Nintendo itself in full HD and multiplayer, how will Nintendo respond?
Check out the clip below to judge for yourself.
*UPDATE* It’s even better than I thought… The game also provides tools for a fun and easy way to make your own content that you can upload to the internet and have it voted on. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that Sony will skimp on their own single player game, but this could really extend the life of the title. This is way beyond anything that Nintendo is doing right now. Check out the second video as well.
Posted in Jeff, PS3, Sony |
March 8th, 2007 at 10:53 am
“Excellent”
I know that’s been said elsewhere by both PS3 fans and haters, but my voice will be drowned by the thousands of post on every other blog and web site. This site maybe the last refuge for constructive conversation, that doesn’t get lost in the void of fan boys and cranks, (damn you).
My two penny’s is this; even though I have only seen a few minutes of it I can already tell it’s a winner. How? “Captivation” my first thought was of how me and my sons could play this together for 10 minutes or 10 hours. It strikes me as though you could just put it on and go exploring, then when the wife starts denouncing you for wasting time, just turn it off until her backs turned; and then turn it on again.
Even the frustrating part of the critter/spaceman not being able to get up on the star would provide dad (being me) to follow the level back to help him; dad and son team work. I have four boys, so this to me, will be a total winner if we can all play at once. The only games that I have ever come across that involve this type of team work were Pikmin (looks similar don’t you think) and Lego Star Wars. Yeah I’m sure there’re some other games out there, but I didn’t get them.
Captivation is what it’s about. . It’s been said elsewhere that it could have been done for the Wii, but some nit wit would decided to use the wii mote only (Sega sonic secret rings anyone) The wii motes for innovation in games not current genre’s, don’t try to implement it into games that don’t need it, games that struggle with current controllers should just be enhanced by it where possible. If Sega had done Sonic like little big Planet; along with his entourage of critters, imagine how many they would have sold. And what’s annoying is that the secret rings would have been harder to code than this 2.5D effort.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I like the way you put it: Captivation. This is, after all, the key to so many of Nintendo’s greatest games like Zelda and Mario. Certainly, a lot of things go into making something “captivating”, but something as imaginative as this game currently looks appears to have it.
One thing that I may have misjudged is whether the game will have an online multiplayer feature. For some reason, I just assumed it would have it, but it occurred to me that the gameplay video may have actually been from just a single PS3 after I watched the second video. I really hope that they manage to get an online mode in there as well, as it’d be a blast to fly through these levels with other people from all over the world.
The other thing I’m curious about is whether the game will be entirely user-content created. While the user-content seems like a fantastic way to extend the life of the title, I’d still really like to see a “core” game here for people to play through. As a general rule, user-content typically isn’t quite as good as the developers own game (there are a few examples that prove otherwise, like Counterstrike, but these are just the exceptions that prove the rule). If it’s completely user-driven, it’d be interesting to see if it can achieve the “classic” status that we hope it can achieve.