LittleBigPlanet Vita doesnāt come out for another couple of weeks, but Sony has decided that they donāt mind if we go ahead and talk about it now. How nice of them!
Iām taking my time playing itāLittleBigPlanet games have a lot of nooks and crannies, and Iād like to explore every one before I do a full review of the new portable version. Iāve played about six hours; Iām about halfway through the story, but Iāve also spent a lot of time playing minigames, going through downloaded levels, and taking a crack at making some levels of my own.
Here are eight things you might like to know about LittleBigPlanet Vita:
Itās very much LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet creators Media Molecule arenāt directly responsible for the portable incarnation of LBPāthat duty has fallen to Tarsier Studios. But LBP Vita still feels very much like a LittleBigPlanet game. Too much, at times, in fact. That may be why Media Molecule moved on; LBP 2 was in many ways the ultimate version of LittleBigPlanet. That game that featured so much depth and variety that there was almost nothing left to say.
Fortunately, if you liked LittleBigPlanet 2 (which I did) then youāll feel right at home with LBP Vita. It may lack a bit of LBP 2ās verve, but itās still got that great handmade feel, those goofy physics, and that lovely (though sometimes annoying) narrator.
It uses the whole Vita
You know how history teachers talk about how the indigenous people of the American west used āthe whole Buffaloā? Well, LittleBigPlanet Vita uses the whole Vita. Youāll use the front and back touch pads to move objects in the world, stretch back springboards, use the accelerometer to slide yourself around and even use the rear-touch pad to guide flying vehicles. It all even manages to occasionally (maybe even frequently) transcend that āWeāre doing this because itās a Vita game and we have toā feeling that so many of the Vitaās launch titles suffered from.
The touch-screen is a good fit for the LBP vibe
Some of the touch implementation is really well done and fits well with the lived in, physical nature of the LBP world. Other things do feel gimmicky, and some of the touch-screen stuff just isnāt responsive enough. But overall, the touch-screen controls feel organic and of a piece with the whole LittleBigPlanet āthing.ā This is particularly true in the menusāitās actually to the point that I donāt think about using touch controls anymore. There are so many menus and options and do-dads in the game, and navigating them with the Vitaās touch-screen feels natural and intuitive. Rotating the globe to choose a level, tapping on a level to load it, flipping through the pages in my poppitāthose things all work even better than they did in LBP 2, almost as though LBP 2 shouldāve been designed with touch in mind.
So far, the music is fine but not great
As much as LittleBigPlanet is ostensibly a game about physics-based platforming and user-generated content, itās always felt like a very musical game to me. I canāt think about LittleBigPlanet 2 without hearing its amazing hodgepodge of a soundtrack. It was one of my very favorite soundtracks of 2011, and I still listen to tunes from the game when I work.
https://lastchance.cc/the-best-game-music-of-2011-littlebigplanet-2-5868920%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
The community levels are fun, but Iām already doubting their lasting appeal
Thereās no question that LBP 2 spawned some fantastic user-generated levels. But even those, as amazing as they were, were sort of a larkāthey didnāt feel all that chunky, and for me anyway, they didnāt really extend the life of the game beyond some cursory āOh, ok, letās look at a few good downloadable levels!ā
Online discovery is still a bit of a chore in LBP Vita, by which I mean that like LBP 2 itās hard to find truly great levels and impossible to quickly preview them without spending a lot of time loading them and checking them out. That said, there are already a bunch of funny one-off ājokeā levels in the game, and Iām sure some enterprising souls will make plenty of even better ones.
Itās hard to play it directly after playing Mark of the Ninja
āItās very much LittleBigPlanetā also means āIt still controls like a wet sack of sand.ā The game still puts physics first and control second, meaning that youāre kind of throwing yourself through levels. After spending a bunch of hours guiding the empowered, cat-like protagonist of the stellar Mark of the Ninja, itās been hard to really enjoy coaxing silly ungainly Sackboy around a level. With all its bouncy physics and mechanical wit, LittleBigPlanet Vita certainly moves well, it just doesnāt feel all that good.
https://lastchance.cc/why-we-love-stealth-games-5942408%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
The touch-screen may well make level-creation easier
Juryās still out on this, since the level-creation is definitely one of the deepest and least accessible aspects of LittleBigPlanet. I think that when it comes down to it, Iām just not a level-maker, but I do enjoy looking at how LBP makes it possible for people to make their own levels. Considering how huge and ridiculous the game has become (see: The next part on the minigames), itās almost galling that theyād expect people to make workable levels using only the Vitaās controls and not a mouse and keyboard. But where thereās a will, thereās a way. The touch-screen is indeed the most versatile and useful new tool in a level-makerās arsenal, far more practical than the PS Move was on consoles. I may not be ready to make my own Mario tribute level, but the touchscreen stuff makes it that much more likely that I will be soon.
The included mini-games are surprisingly cool
LittleBigPlanet Vitaās āstory globeā contains a separate city called the arcade, which holds a group of mini-games. I havenāt unlocked all of them, but the ones I have unlocked are all touch-screen games, and theyāre all surprisingly fun. Itās almost like having a little iPhone-game factory inside your Vita. All of the games were made using some of the high-level new building tools, including the ability to track your progress and move you through a series of minigames level by level without losing your place. Itās all fun, and makes for a nice diversion from the platforming stuff. It does, however, remain to be seen if once the novelty wears off, weāre just looking at a bunch of knockoff iPhone games buried within a Vita game.
Iāll have more on LittleBigPlanet Vita , including a full review, before the game launches on September 25.
