It’s out! After over a year of being pushed back LittleBiGPlanet (reffered to from now on as LBP) has graced us with it’s presence. Developed by Media Molecule, LBP is a basic side scroller. However unlike most side scrollers this one comes with a level editor and a robust online component. LBPs light atmosphere and art style make these features very approachable. You can read in depth about the title at the wiki.

There isn’t enough praise in the world to heap on this title. It may not be graphicly superior to MGS or as Deep as Mass Effect, but it is by far the most engrossing title to hit ANY console since Oblivion. It is so engrossing that everyone in the office has gotten caught playing LBP instead of working, including the boss. In fact we have a few bugs that remained unfixed on our newly launched forums because our webmaster was too busy playing LBP with our graphic designer and boss, to fix them. But that’s enough talk of ooffice antics. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Physics: 8/10

The entire game and the level editor is based on the physics of the world. This in turn interacts with each type of material and it’s properties. Smoke, decorations, and objects all react in a highly realistic way. The hang up however is with your movement. Sometimes the game has problems detecting the environmennt and you end up hovering in the air above a platform until it can figure out where you are and what is underneath you. Another issue is when your hanging from an object. While your in the air you have the ability to push an object left or right without swinging.

Graphics: 8/10

The art in this game is fantastic. No it isn’t realistic, it is highly stylized. In fact the styles change as you play through different sections of the game. One that stands out in particular is the india based levels. They were simply mind blowing. There are issues though. Many costumes blatantly clip through your sack boy. While this is exceptable at the mod level do to the high complexity of changing meshes and collision detection, this is straight from the developer. While some is to be expected in any game, you will see it fairly regularly on both your character and in the environment.

Controls: 8/10

LBP has very basic controls. Analog jumping and movement with grabbing. That is it. Menu navigation is ads only wing buttons for quick tool surfing and L3 & R3 for editing options. Like what has been stated previously in other reviews there is problems moving between the 3 axis of the game often the movement doesn’t register. The solution is to let the game do it for you when navigating through the environment.

Sound: 9/10

The sound effects in this game are pretty standard popping, zapping, boinking. The game offers a wide selection of sounds to incorporate into any level you edit. The glaring issue here is the lack of ability to upload sound files (or any file for that matter) to LBP. This seems like a no brainer since the game only comes with a handful of tracks, Really good tracks. This is another example of the PS3 needing in game music customization. It took roughly 12 hours to make our first level, that is a lot of time in dead silence as after the first hour and a half we shut off the games music due to repetition.

AI: 0/10

AI is non existent in this game. Sure you can edit in some basic behavior and pattern movements, but you are not going to see anything more advanced than what is in Super Mario Brothers.

Content: 10/10

This is where this game is king. The level editor ensures you will be able to play this game far into the future. Apparently Media Molecule plans on regularly updating LBP with DLC with levels, tools, and items to help create more diverse worlds. What is even better is you don’t have to start from scratch you can remix the games levels and player created ones provided you have permission. There are few things to nit pic about. First no ability to upload image or sound files. While I can see the exclusion of sound files due to copyright concerns I don’t understand the lack of image support. The best the game offers is PS3 Eye support (we’ll be doing that review tomarrow) which is substandard. Another issue is the capacity for the level. While it is substantial it is not limitless. Simply spelling out LittleBigPlanet with effects and decorations took up 25% of the thermometer. This forced us to reel in our aspirations of an uber complex levels. Even the relatively simple level we created took up 75%. The trick here is to be efficient. You can make things highly complex but you will have to keep your designs tight.

Online: 10/10

Online just went live today and it is extremely easy to use. It is intergrated with the PSN so you will get updates on how many people have played your level, keeps track of your PSN friends, mark favorites, and allows people to leave comments on your levels.

Gameplay: 8/10

Playing the game is only about 30% of the fun. The real fun lies in being creative. Level editing can be as quick and dirty or complex and detailed as you want. And the style of the game’s art work doesn’t make you feel penalized if you choose to do so. When staff sat down to create our first weekly LBP level none of us wanted to spend a great amount of time doing it. The learning curve for the tool set is steeper by definition. Our level took 12 hours total between everyone. This was largely due to creating everything from scratch and becoming familiar with the tools. Once user generated content builds up it should take no time to throw a level together.

Environment: 8/10

Like was mentioned previously, enough cannot be said about the art choice of this game. It would have fallen flat trying to be anything else. That does not mean the game doesn’t get monotonous at some points. Aside from several controller throwing worthy levels, there is no swimming, flying, or piloting. You are stuck marching or swinging to the right. While this makes the game and editing more accessible for the experienced gamer it may becoming boring. That is until you happen upon a level that is a gem. Namely the rotating levels, the top down scrollers and the indian zone levels will draw you back in with a “That is F*)K!ng cool!”

Conclusion:

Buy this game. Don’t own a PS3? Buy one, and then buy this game. Whether your into customizing, casual gaming, or collecting items this game has it, and it will never stop. Users have the ability to put their creations as prizes in the game and lock them. This prevents people from taking credit for something somebody else made. If you see a cool item in a level you may not be able to win it off that person. Instead you will have to go find the original creator and play his level that it is in. Brilliant! In short. This is a shoe in for Game of the Year.

If you would like to play the first HornyMelon.com weekly LBP level. Login to LBP and search for Horny Melon LBP Review: LittleBigPlanet, or you can look up user name Mr.Flesh. That is our web designers account as we have a temporary PS3 due to our’s drive failing to eject. This is the first of many levels to come. While simple, it was mainly an exercise in the toolset and office collaboration. HornyMelon.com has also launched forums to go along with LittleBiGPlanet. These forums are meant to help the LBP community show off their creations network, and ask for help in how to make complex objects. All you have to do is register and you are in. Editors Note: Right now there is a bug in communications between our forums and website. You have to login to the site and forum seperately. If you our having issues logging into either make sure you log out of both and try again. We hope to have this resolved shortly. See you on LittleBigPlanet.