LittleBigPlanet

Let it be known that from here on in LittleBigPlanet on the PS3 shall be known as BigLittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet on the PSP shall be known as LittleLittleBigPlanet. There are going to be a lot of comparisons between the two during this review and we don’t want to waste space writing ‘LittleBigPlanet on the PS3’ and ‘LittleBigPlanet on the PSP’ over and over again. Our alternatives might look a bit over the top, but we assure you it’ll be fine so long as you don’t try and read it out loud.

So, now that formality’s out of the way, how does LittleLittleBigPlanet compare to BigLittleBigPlanet? What’s been chopped out in order to fit it onto the smaller, less powerful platform? And does it still work? Well, first there’s the graphics. We’ve always loved how BigLittleBigPlanet manages to look eerily real. Obviously not real like Killzone 2, but the digital craft materials it’s made from do really look like craft materials. LittleLittleBigPlanet on the other hand doesn’t look real. It looks more like a cartoon, but that actually suits it really well so we didn’t really miss the photorealism. Sackboy is just as well animated as he’s ever been too, so visually the only thing notably absent is proper real-time lighting. Moody, atmospheric levels are going to be difficult to produce here, although we wouldn’t be surprised if someone somewhere figured out a way.

Like the graphics, LBP’s visuals have also had to be scaled back and made both less complex and less realistic, but we’d actually argue that this is a good thing. The physics still work well enough, but everything now feels a lot less unwieldy and unpredictable, which a blessing both for creators and for players. Sackboy bounces and slides a lot less, planting his feet firmly on the floor when he lands a jump, so you don’t get anywhere near as many of those frustrating moments familiar to BigLittleBigPlanet players where you can’t jump properly because Sackboy refuses to make proper contact with the floor on anything but an absolutely flat, absolutely still surface. This is the main reason that, purely as a platform game, LittleLittleBigPlanet actually trumps its PS3 forebear, but there are others.

One of these reasons is that all checkpoints offer infinite respawns so you’re not forced to go all the way back to the beginning of a level just because you struggle with a tricky bit near the end of it, and that improvement pretty much speaks for itself. Restart limits are for hardcore arcade games, not light-hearted, fun, collective experiences like LBP, so we can’t see anyone complaining that the game is now too easy.

The third reason that LittleLittleBigPlanet is a better platformer than BigLittleBigPlanet is that the number of paths (ie the number of layers of in-out depth) for each level has been reduced from three to two. When you’re playing, this too makes the game far more predictable and easier to control as you just have a much clearer idea of where you are relative to everything else at all times, plus there’s less of that awkward ‘lane switching’ to be done. We welcomed this particular chop-out but advanced creators who like to build multi-layered objects might find it a difficult change to get along with.

In terms of the ‘Play’ portion of LBP’s ‘Play, Create, Share’ mantra, LittleLittleBigPlanet is actually an improvement, and the ‘Share’ bit remains intact but for the absence of multiplayer gameplay. It’s in the ‘Create’ department that sacrifices have been made that do actually hurt a little bit. Corners have most definitely been cut in the level-making mode, which is ironic because cutting corners is one of the main things you just can’t do any more. While in BigLittleBigPlanet you could either place or cut using any shape, in LittleLittleBigPlanet the cut function has been, er… cut. And ‘painting’ with shapes is very restricted now too. You can only do it using a limited number of small shapes using a rigid grid system. So there’s no painting curves, just blocky angular shapes. The only way to really customise a shape is to use the corner editing tool, which is fiddly and cumbersome.

There are many other issues with the creation side of the game and we confess we had a difficult time adjusting. Hopefully though, others with more time and talent on their hands will overcome the teething problems and produce thousands of jaw-dropping new levels. Studio Cambridge has already proven that it can be done with a series of excellent new story levels, and there’s new music, new costumes and new objects on top of that, which really goes to show this isn’t just some hamstrung port. In order to really feel worth having, though, LittleLittleBigPlanet needs to be fully embraced by the LBP community and whether that will happen still remains to be seen. For what it’s worth, we certainly think it deserves it.