Review: Little Big Planet

Little Big Planet has been a smash hit for a while. I finally got to play it last month, and I fell in love instantly.

You play a little sack person, navigating through the world of Little Big Planet. You go through a wide variety of zones, each with 3 main levels, and numerous bonus levels. These worlds are lumped together into themes, based around a theme, related to the location and the "Creator Curator" of that subsection of levels.

You travel through levels based in Europe, Africa, South America, Latin America, USA, Japan, India and Russia, with a final boss level. The villain is the elusive Collector, who is stealing people from the other levels.

Throughout the levels, you have Goodies to collect. These include objects found in the instance, stickers, costumes and more. You can use these to decorate yourself, your home base, and create your own levels.

The story is loosely threaded, but really, the "Story" levels are just there to highlight what you can do. Everything you see in the levels can be recreated when you build your own levels.

Building your own levels is actually quite simple. Tutorials for every aspect can either be played through linearly, or the appropriate tutorial will play the first time you try to use a new tool.

Each of the levels (including bonus levels) offered on Story mode has 3 in-game trophies associated with it: Completion, All Goodies, and No Deaths (except for bonus levels that don't end until you die). This means that even after you've beaten all the levels, you have plenty of reason to go back.

Multi-player play is very well done. On your own system, you can play with those with their own account on your system, or as a guest. They just turn on a controller, select their account (or play as a guest if they don't have an account) and they pop in at the next save point. If they don't want to play anymore, then just turn off the controller, and they will disappear, without having to leave the level. Online play is supported where you can round off your group (you can play with up to 3 other people) with strangers from online. And very nicely, any goodies collected by one person is credited to all (which is actually necessary, as there are areas labeled with the number of players you need to move through the area and collect the goodies within.)

Replay value is very high. Between gathering all the goodies (which definitely requires multiple playthroughs of levels, as you'll find stickers to trigger the switches in later levels, or later on in the level), beating every level with no deaths, and a nearly unlimited amount of community-made levels, you will never get bored.

The faults in this game are few, but they do exist. First, the ending to the Story line is cheesily stupid. It reminded me of shows like Ni Hao Kai Lan or Dora the Explorer. While I get that the story levels are just to showcase what can be done, and that this is a very family-friendly game, it still was disappointing. Also, changing depth between foreground, midground and background could get a little touchy. But no so much so as to really interfere with the game. I ran into the issue primarily when trying to get a goodie that was hidden behind something else.

The game truly lives up to it's motto: Play. Create. Share. If you enjoy gaming at all, this is a must for your collection.