OLD POST: LittleBigPlanet Thoughts

LITTLEBIGPLANET: One Man’s Confusing Stumble Through an Array of Shapes 


LittleBigPlanet is a game for Sony Playstation 3 computer entertainment system. I am not sure how I feel about it. Within the writings and thoughts presented in this essay, I hope to conclude why I am not cascaded by feelings of enlightenment with rainbows shooting out of every orifice and vomiting pure liquid epiphanies from my mouth when I play it. I also hope the results will be less graphic than the previously listed results, and something much more calm and scientific without projectile emotions will be the result. 

After two years of anticipation, and weeks of chattered excitement amongst my friends, LittleBigPlanet, along with at least (Rough estimate, relatively accurate)3 million and 8 other games, was unleashed on the world. I myself managed to obtain the game two days before it’s official retail release, perhaps due to some divine intervention on the part of some celestial force such as angels, or perhaps just confused Gamestop employees(One and the SAME?). I ran home and popped it in and had quite a delightful time discovering the wonderful world of these small Sackboy creatures, playing through the environments and listening to the clever witty instructions from British funny man Stephen Fry. The game being out a few days early, the servers were not quite online, so other people’s creations were not quite yet available to me, so I played through a good deal of the story mode, messed around with multiplayer with my friends, briefly tried the creator mode on a whim but decided to leave it alone for a while, placing it gently back on the shelf like a smile child who discovered something shiny and fragile on the shelf at an antique store and eagerly grasped it with both hands only to find several small parts clinking loose from it and crashing to the ground leaving the original product in disheveled shambles. I returned it back to it’s place on the shelf hoping no one would ever notice or be aware of my eager frivolity with the beautiful toy, only to destroy the very thing I coveted. 

To cut a long adventure short, a few days later the servers came online, 
I played a lot of fun creative levels, I played a lot of not fun, crappy levels quite resembling the misguided classic children’s toy and less popular relative of hoop and stick known as rock, stick, an old shoe sole and a bag of grass. After understanding the game a little further, I dared to brave the tidal wave of tutorials required to perform the tasks critical to creating a LittleBigPlanet level. I found all of the information a tad overwhelming and was unable to memorize all of the contents. Creating my first two levels was mostly a series of trial and error along the lines of: “oh this does that, so if I put this on this, maybe it won’t fall down this time! …Oh damn, rewind…NO, PAUSE!! PAUSE!! Oh fuck this.” I grew to admire the other users whom had already published their own levels and had received rave reviews from myself and other players. A lot of sacrifices, such as time, food and physical/social contact are simply vital to reach creative nirvana in this world. I made a short fast level with limited success, and then a longer much more fleshed out world that many people enjoyed, hearted and played which was quite a rewarding experience. It took about four to five hours to construct the whole thing. After I had done this, I found the only experience I had whenever I turned on LittleBigPlanet was playing my own level I had created over and over, meanwhile waiting for OTHER people to play my level so my play or heart count would get high enough for me to receive the related trophies. I couldn’t get up the energy to create another level or find enough creative spark to have an interesting idea worth devoting 5 hours or so to the process, or perhaps more, now that I had a greater understanding of some of the basic pulleys and levers, and would perhaps explore the remaining plethora of gizmos presented to me. I will admit that originally I was intimidated by the level of creative freedom presented to the player before purchasing the game but once I had screwed around with it enough I found creating to be a fun experience, but exhausting by hour two or three. At this point I had grown tired of the story mode, one thing led to another and at this point in my life, I will sign in, look at the first two pages of cool levels, maybe play my level, and turn the game off. 

The thing that bothers me about this is that I don’t feel as though I’ve been handed down the Ten Commandments from on high whenever I pop in the game, which is pretty much, although admittedly an exaggeration, what everyone or at least myself expected from this easy to use game creation side scrolling extravaganza of a game. This is by no means a bad game, its beautiful, well put together, extensive and endlessly creative. It’s just not very much fun after a few days. I have run out of fun things to do with it. Today instead of popping it in, I revisited Bioshock briefly on a higher difficulty(Which was ridiculously difficult) and as I descended back into Rapture and heard the old 50’s music and the voice crackle over the radio: “I AM ANDREW RYAN.” I smiled and quietly chuckled to myself. It was like visiting an old friend. And curiously enough a thought occurred: Why is it THIS is still fun and yet I have quickly grown tired of LittleBigPlanet? I realize it has nothing to do with the two games formally, because they are two very different games, it’s purely a personal situational issue, but perhaps with a deeper more universal theme. I don’t know that the content presented has enough substance for me personally. It’s a bit like comparing the game with a pile of Legos, the difference being, the Legos could last me for years. (And very well did in reality.) Perhaps, on a very basic level, it’s simply that the Legos are more intuitive and are never bigger than the basket presented: you stack them, connect them, and a larger concept is created. With little big planet, how big the blocks are is your choice, how they function is up to, and there are 50 or more options to that end and each has it’s own unique way of working, so that is to say it’s a bit like if there were 50 unique and different ways to connect Lego blocks, and the Legos came with a large colorful manual to explain in a clever extensive way how to use them, rather than simply, the parts(which anyone can understand by simply blindly bumping them together for a few minutes until they connect. A properly trained Otter could perform the task, assuming he didn’t try to consume the blocks.) and a manual with a larger concept to jump right into. I believe that if you have the time to really devote to memorizing, learning the ins and out of, and down-right living the different pieces of LittleBigPlanet you will have a worthwhile experience on your hands; but if you don’t have the energy or attention span to really get to know and understand each of the different properties each object presents you with you will come out thinking, “well that was clever and held my attention for a moment.” Much like a very shiny high end special effect drenched buddy comedy. At the very least, after messing with it you can run back through the story or play some of the better creator levels and have a basic understanding of what went into it and think to yourself: “Wow…it’s amazing to think that these people will never know what the touch of another human feels like!” 

To conclude: I think personally what I really like out a game, in order for it to truly be great for me personally, is a wonderfully crafted story, a vivid creative appealing environment with a fleshed out cast of characters. Basically, I need an idea and a story, or an interesting mythos to surround something. I need meat on the bone. At the end of the day, a game has to be fun to bring you back, and LittleBigPlanet is fun, but the gameplay it self is a tad shallow, and the downloadable content based on what I’m seeing now leaves something to be desired. I’m sure down the road there will be fun new stickers and pieces and music, etc, but at this point it’s something like signing on for a few moments, enjoying the new hat you’ve downloaded, then you turn it back off. There’s nothing surrounding the world to bring me back. I don’t want there to be a clever tome of ancient tongues and scribes chronicling how the Sackboys came to emerge from the primordial ooze and a hand descended from the very heavens themselves and delivered an ancient message from on high that had been waiting since the very dawn of time scribed in the very mind of god to be delivered to 
the first holy deserving ear that ventured a listen and so the message was pronounced from the heavens: “And lo thou shall be, and thou shalt stack and glue and publish to thy yon community with thy threaded stubs and let it be done until the very hills themselves perish into the sea, amen.” and thus the Sackboys purpose was delivered, and so he carried out his duty until the end of his days, etc, etc. because I feel that would be forcing something on the game that it doesn’t need and pushing the bounds of believability. (God? What an absolutely rollicking joke! Ha ha! Guffaw, etc.) I just feel like I need a little more motivation to keep coming back other than feeling downtrodden at seeing more and more amazing levels created by people on a plateau of ingenuity that I myself will never reach? Completing the lackluster story mode? (If you can even call it a story mode. It’s something along the lines of: One of the shapes, the BAD shape, took some of the other shapes and it’s up to your shape to shape things back into shape. Those rascally shapes, always stealing the other shapes.) I think by now I have made peace with the fact that LittleBigPlanet will never be the revelation that I truly wanted to be, and nothing more than a briefly fun diversion. Perhaps one day I will return to it’s quarters to venture another throw of the coin into the well of level creation, or perhaps to check up on the cool levels page, but I believe I will quickly grow tired of it again and put it away for something a tad more immersive. I do not have any suggestions for whatever depth that the game is lacking needs to be replaced with to satisfy my hunger, I will leave that suggestion or choice up to the reader. The only thing I could come up with was that the game caused the Play Station to dispense fruit-flavored candies from it’s disc drive whenever the game is fired up, but we all know that in this current-gen, this is not physically possible unless you have a friend stand behind your set and throw starburst at you while you play LittleBigPlanet and I would never suggest such a ridiculous idea to a friend in fear of losing said friend out of fear. (ALTHOUGH A TRUE FRIEND…nevermind…) 

I believe that LittleBigPlanet is a little TOO big. It almost feels empty despite it almost bursting to the seams with options out of the box. Unfortunately, I do not enjoy watching random players fall to their doom and the camera falling after them as I desperately try to complete a level while they goof off, or being yelled at by other random players as I plummet to my doom, not on purpose, but out of pure lack of skill on my part. I am also not the biggest fan of the three-level system, although I understand it’s purpose it can be a tad frustrating when Sackboy decides on a whim he wants to be closer to the viewers at home and plummets fifty feet into a pile of green gas, flames and general doom. LittleBigPlanet delivers on options, but not so much on how to use them. I believe the easiest, fastest, and most beneficial way to fix the issue it has would be to slowly bring you through the level creator, gently presenting a few concepts at a time, then using all of those concepts to build a small contraption, level, etc. Then introducing a few more concepts, perhaps bringing back a few old ones for the next review, etc etc. I know this sounds a bit like homework, but for the few of us that didn’t get enough out of the main tutorials which were brief and less than informative occasionally or interesting to keep you listening to the instructions, it might be beneficial, and leave the user with a far more retained knowledge of the parts presented. You have to understand, there is a lot going on in this game, maybe other people grasped it more naturally but I could benefit from a slow, or perhaps personally passed procession through the process of creating using and utilizing the objects and tools, because the one issue I continuously had was coming upon an object a didn’t recognize how to utilize or thinking “I wish I could do that, I wonder if there’s an easy way to make that happen?” and if I had been presented with a much more intuitive way to put things together, I might have remembered a tool that could bring my idea to life with more ease. It’s the same as learning a subject in school such as math, when you’re first piecing it together it can be a little overwhelming but when you can put it together on your own in can be incredibly rewarding, it’s all in how it’s presented to you, and while I loved Stephen Fry’s LOVELY witty commentary, I really felt like I needed something much more comprehensively along the lines of “Now if you use the grab switch on a sponge, you’ve created a thing for your character to latch onto that will activate a chain to pull you up to a higher surface! Make sure your object has supports so it won’t fall down!” etc etc. The reason I stress this is because at the end of the day, the largest part of LittleBigPlanet is creating the levels once you’ve run through the story, because it’s only so much fun to play other people’s levels. If you don’t understand how to do it, you’re going to find yourself either very bored, or very frustrated, or having to revisit the tutorials constantly and make notes, or giving up altogether. 

The thought that occurs to me is I’d spent three days and many hours trying to recreate my favorite game in recent memory, Bioshock, within the confines of the level creator as accurately and respectably as possible, and today I realized: “You know, instead of struggling and failing to find another way to recreate the game I love, which has been fun and all but is wearing thin, I could just PLAY it again. It wouldn’t hurt.” And that’s what I did. It was difficult, and I got an adrenaline rush from fighting the Splicers, and I recited Andrew Ryan’s opening monologue, and I understood things I hadn’t previously grasped before due to not having beaten the game, and I jumped when the monsters jumped out at me, and I said “GOD DAMNED SPLICERS” along with Atlas, and I ran around picking up other people’s junk they’d left lying around, and guess what: and I loved every minute of it. 

…But that’s just me.