I posted a while back that I was rather unimpressed by what I had seen of LittleBigPlanet. One of the common replies I got was that I couldn’t make a proper judgement without playing it first, which is a reasonable response. I was loath to spend $50 to buy a game that I wasn’t sure about, though, particularly when my gaming backlog is already a mile long.
Well, Sony released a LittleBigPlanet demo on PSN last week, and I downloaded it and finally got to play through some of the levels. And…
(cue drumroll)
…I still don’t see what the big deal is. The platforming is pretty slippery, imprecise even. I mean, I can compare it to Sonic Unleashed and confidently say that even that game has tighter controls in its 2D sections. I can make precise jumps reasonably easily in Unleashed, whereas LBP’s ‘on ice’ movement and floaty jumps mean that I tend to be slip-sliding through levels rather than navigating through them with precise timing.
Stephen Fry’s voiceovers are great, though.
And for anyone who would retort that I’m missing the point because I haven’t played any of the levels online with four players – attaching a collaborative level design toolkit to Daikatana doesn’t magically turn it into Half-Life.
With that said, I suspect that’s the last I’ll have to say on the subject of LBP. Unless a copy ends up falling into my lap.
As numerous comments in your previous blog entry said, the big deal was the content creation tools, not the actual platforming. Hell, look at Sony’s advertising for the game – they focus more on the creation aspect of the game (and what you can do with it) than the actual platforming gameplay.
On a semi-related tangent, I got a PS3 a few weeks ago in the wake of the price drop. Valkyria Chronicles and Ratchet and Clank are plenty fun.
I can accept it being a big deal from a marketing point of view, but stuff like that doesn’t matter if the basic mechanics aren’t fun to play around with.
VC is definitely on my to-buy list, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Hopefully sometime soon.
If there’s anything I’ve noticed about your gaming preferences, it’s that aesthetics and character have little appeal to you. It’s not a slight, just more of an observation. I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum where substance and excecution mean far less to me than style and concept.
Eh, I don’t think that’s accurate. 😛
I like aesthetics as much as anyone – they were a big reason influencing my purchase of TF2 and Oboro Muramasa for Wii. And I was blown away the first time I sat down at a BlazBlue arcade cabinet just because of how awesome the game looked when it filled my view completely.
But good aesthetics are nothing more than icing on the cake that is game design – the fact that Jet Set Radio looks amazing is a nice bonus to the fact that it’s a well-designed platformer. Contrarily, God Hand has rather plain graphics, but the depth of the fighting system and the genius of the level system more than make up for the lack of aesthetic flair.
You said good things about JSR
I approve this blog entry
If anything, what you said kinda makes what I said more accurate, for you aesthetics are just icing on the cake, whereas for me it’s the basis for purchase! But when I talk about aesthetics I’m not talking about graphics, I’m speaking more of the style of the game and what it invokes when you play it, as well as the concepts that fueled the game design. After all, I did say it was “little appeal”, not that you don’t care at all. Though admittedly I don’t consider gameplay icing on the cake, but I do consider intuitive controls and ease of playability icing on the cake. Generally if the game plays and does what it should do, albiet in a clunky manner it’s good enough for me.