Switching between his big bruiser and tiny alter ego forms is awesome, and it’s used to play with the reactive physics of the game in thoughtful ways. Odd Sock is an extra fast little pup who can run up walls and jump off them for neat platforming challenges, while the winged Swoop frees you from the ground, feeling more maneuverable and smooth than Sackboy did with LittleBigPlanet 2‘s jetpacks. Sackboy gets a host of new tools, like boots that let him jump then dash around, a helmet that lets him slide down ziplines, and a gun that shoots little balls that teleport him if fired at special glowing surfaces. Once you start digging into the ’50s B-movie hodgepodge, every stage overflowing with rotting pieces of film and curling old posters, Sumo starts throwing in new ideas. Sumo Digital continues Tarsier’s good work on LBP Vita in giving the series campaigns that can stand on their own, something the original Media Molecule games struggled with. Little sack bird Swoop, burlap doggy Odd Sock, and a cool size-shifting golem named Toggle – series newcomers with abilities that complement Sackboy’s – wait to be found in three themed hub worlds. House Bulb evil crazy, Sackboy sets off into the wilds of Bunkum to wake up the land’s three hibernating heroes and save the day. After Newton dupes you into unlocking the Titans, little balls of concentrated creativity so powerful that they drive ol’ Dr. The story does open up once you push through the first of four multi-stage maps. This still feels like a physical place, but LittleBigPlanet 3 constantly stops you from touching it. But the learn-by-telling-rather-than-doing pattern flows through both LBP3‘s story and the Poppit Puzzles, its other pre-built game. Sumo Digital, the studio taking lead here alongside Tarsier ( LBP Vita), had a chance to break from the cycle of over-explanation and handholding that made the first two LittleBigPlanet games hard to penetrate. Sackboy moves with the same speed as he did in the wonderful LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, the speechifying from Fry and Laurie is full of warmth, and the patchwork look of the game remains nicely palpable. After all, when he lands and meets the light bulb-headed Newton, voiced giddily by Hugh Laurie, it’s time for a tutorial level where you’re stopped constantly and taught how to play.Īll of these scenes, first steps, and tutorials are quality stuff taken on their own merits. Stephen Fry lulls you into a stupor going on and on about the potency of the Imaginarium that it barely registers when little Sackboy is sucked into the junk closet world of Bunkum. There are multiple introductory vignettes standing between you and actually playing the game, from a short live-action film of kids gleefully coloring to a whole monologue about your personal pod, the launching pad to LBP‘s campaign, online community, and creative suite of game-making tools. That question is the confused heart of LittleBigPlanet 3, a well-intentioned pastiche of different activities that is simultaneously too restrictive and too open-ended to achieve greatness.įrom the start, LittleBigPlanet 3 lacks conviction. After five Sackboy-starring games, after Minecraft created a set of creative tools that people responded to on a scale far bigger than creator Media Molecule ever managed, what is the promise of LittleBigPlanet in 2014? When you hear Stephen Fry’s woolen voice launch into yet another monologue at the beginning of LittleBigPlanet 3 about the power of creativity and how you, the player, are such a special snowflake, it’s impossible not to wonder what could possibly be different this time. From the start, LittleBigPlanet 3 lacks conviction.
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