LittleBigPlanet
Out of this world
As lovable as LittleBigPlanet star sackboy is, I have to admit to being one of those few people left a little cold by his original PS3 outing. Don't get me wrong, I loved the idea, admired the technical achievement and I could see how lots of people fell head over heels in love with it all, but as an actual game, something I was supposed to enjoy playing, it simply didn't work for me. Despite this I found myself intrigued by the idea of taking the same blueprint and applying it to the PSP. Will the move to a handheld console provide the gameplay spark the PS3 version seemed to lack?
For those who've been living under a rock the last year or so, LittleBigPlanet is a physics-based side scrolling platformer staring sackboy, a kind of hand-knitted soft toy with a fetish for playing dress up. While the game's levels were loosely grouped into themes the unique art style that ran throughout the whole experience gave everything a kind of Blue Peter-esque feel, painted cardboard and curiously shaped cushions making it seem like you were exploring an ultra elaborate classroom display crafted by a particularly enthusiastic primary school teacher.
The big thing LBP did differently from other less adventurous platformers was to shift the focus heavily towards user-generated content. While there was a bundle of impressively designed levels that shipped with the game they were very much just the tip of the iceberg. The game's continuing longevity has instead been completely tied up with the user created levels that the game allowed you to create and share online.
Onto this new PSP version then and we soon find that little has changed in the imagination-fuelled world of LittleBigPlanet despite it having to now shoehorn all its bits and bobs onto Sony's handheld. The central game mode remains the same, although levels have now been grouped and themed by continent meaning you'll find kangaroos in Australia and fire breathing dragons in the Orient for example (in a particularly nice touch the levels based in the Orient flow right to left). Thematic changes aside you'll still essentially be travelling through the game a level at a time, trying to find and collect as much as possible from each one, unlocking new levels as you go and returning to repeat earlier ones aiming to best high scores if the inclination grabs.
As with the original game, levels are generally beautifully surreal and full of inventive touches that bring a smile to your face. Whether it's using a cannon to lob fire logs at a dragon while riding a rickshaw, or exploring every nook and cranny to figure out the combination of switches you need to flick in order to progress, it doesn't take long before you realise developers Cambridge Studio have taken the baton handed to them by Media Molecule and run with it impressively. The core platforming action feels almost identical to the PS3 version, which is either a blessing or a curse depending on your stance on LBP's notoriously floaty controls. There's no denying sackboy still lacks the precision jumping Mario fans are used to and there's a tendency for him to get a little stuck in the scenery at time but more often than not it just about works and fits in perfectly with the rest of the physics on display in the levels.
The impressive physics that gave the original such character also make the transition to the PSP without any noticeable loss of, well, physicyness. Things fall, bounce and generally react to whatever stimuli they encounter pretty much as you'd expect, a major plus since the believability of the game's world was one of the core achievements of the original. The main highlight on the audio front is Stephen Fry who (take a break from Twitter to) once again provides the narration, proving beyond doubt that he could read pretty much anything and still make it sound like the quotable bits from a Douglas Adams novel.
One niggle from the PS3 version that seems to have been improved during the transition to the PSP is how moving between foreground and background paths is handled. Since levels are crafted in 3D despite the fixed side-on view you'll often need to move Sackboy into and out of the screen to get around obstacles or jump onto platforms. On the PS3 this was a fiddly process that seemed a tad broken at times, on the PSP it works much better (perhaps because there's only two paths this time), a simple pull up or down on the analogue nub moves Sackboy into or out of the screen while the game elegantly handles automatic depth changes when you're jumping for platforms, et al.
Much like last time you'll find numerous bubbles ripe for collecting littered around the levels. As well as bumping up your level score larger examples also reward you with goodies in the form of stickers, costume parts, creation items and access to bonus levels. A quick tap of the square button pops up your Popit where you can equip collected costume items (they serve no purpose but its fun to create your own stylised sackboy none the less) and use any stickers. Stickers are exactly what they sound like, graphical stickers that can be rotated and zoomed before being stuck all over the game world to your heart's content. As well as stickering for the sheer joy of it there are certain places within levels where a specific sticker will fit perfectly. Finding these and using the correct sticker on them will generally unlock a reward or two in the form of extra collectables.
As I mentioned earlier, key to the PS3 game's longevity was the vitality of its online community and the content they produced. The same looks set to be true of the PSP version with the PS3's creation and community tools recreated impressively on the handheld. While it's possible to go online and download (and then rate) other gamers levels from the word go you'll have to wait till you unlock the Moon before you're able to try your hand at creating anything yourself. The flexibility of the level creator is once again genuinely staggering and you'll be glad of the many tutorials that aim to make the creation process as pain free as possible. To a degree the complexity of what you can do makes ease of use an almost impossible dream, but once you know what you're doing you'll be glad of the depth on offer. If you're willing to put the effort in though there's practically no limits to what you can achieve and this air of possibility will be what sustains you when you've finished the bundled levels, even if it's just seeing what others have done with the tools provided.
Graphically this new LBP has obviously had to be scaled down a little for its PSP outing; however, the changes are actually harder to spot than you may have been expecting. Gone is the majority of the fancy lighting and special effects but the basic elements, the environmental and level details, along with sackboy himself all make the leap largely intact. Doing a screenshot comparison would no doubt reveal a lower polygon count and texture resolution but on the PSP's screen the overall effect remains impressive to say the least.
As someone who's bemoaned the number of ports in the PSP's library as much, if not more than the next person, it comes as something of a shock to realise that by being exactly that, a beautifully accurate port, LBP somehow becomes a better game in the process. Its core concept of an ever expanding universe filled with bite-sized platforming chunks dovetails perfectly with the pick-up-and-play nature of handheld gaming to the extent you start to wonder if it was actually always meant to be played this way. Obviously if you loved the original then this fresh slice of near identical pie should delight you once again, if however, you loved the ingredients but were left a little nonplussed by the whole thing last time then this second helping could convert you.
90%
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please let me win