PixlBit

I have to hand it to MediaMolecule, developers of LittleBigPlanet 2. They've created something truly amazing – a game that makes games is a pretty wild idea, and when you see what some people have made, it's only that much more impressive. Here's the thing though: while LittleBigPlanet 2 makes for an impressive specimen, it doesn't make for all that great of a game. The majority of the main levels are uninteresting and anything community produced, while potentially impressive, is just a one-time affair.

I don't mean to knock the game so hard, because it honestly is an impressive product. I'm completely blown away by what I've seen – one person completely recreated the first dungeon of The Legend of Zelda from the NES. That's mind-blowing. I was speechless after seeing it, but I own the original Zelda probably four times over, and at any point I can grab it out of my closet and play that dungeon in exactly the way it was supposed to be played, with the exact right assets and controls. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Because the tools of LittleBigPlanet 2 aren't built for anything in particular, everything feels kind of hacked together. It's hard to describe without seeing it for yourself, but things just aren't right. Textures and objects pop in and out, collision detection isn't quite right, and in general things aren't perfect. Of course, no one is expecting it to be either. It's not like a developer was working on it, making things look and act perfect, and augmenting the functionality of the engine if it wasn't quite prepared to handle what was to be thrown at it. Herein lays the issue of LittleBigPlanet 2.

Nothing is made to be specific to a single purpose, so nothing can work just right, no matter how much it's tinkered with. Platforming levels are really the only exception to the rule because LittleBigPlanet 2 at its core is a platforming title.

The main quest has players completing a variety of platforming levels with a few extra levels tossed in that break the mold. Given the fact that MediaMolecule themselves were behind these creations, it's obvious that the level of polish here is up to snuff. There were some small issues here and there, but most were infrequent enough that they didn't have a huge bearing on the game.

If anything, the game's biggest problem is its core platforming mechanics. There's something weird about the game's jumping. It never feels quite right and given the situation, it never behaves consistently either. Maybe I just couldn't identify the pattern, but each and every time I jumped, I seemed to reach a different height. Sometimes I'd barely come off the ground, which at times became problematic.

The game features a grappling hook as a part of its core mechanics that honestly couldn't be worse if they tried. It doesn't really produce a good swing, which in my opinion is paramount to its functionality. Nobody wants to grapple around without swinging happening naturally. You wind up having to force the functionality by letting go of objects and re-grappling them from a further distance to get the necessary momentum to swing. It's awkward and completely unenjoyable. Whereas I'll often love to grapple in a game and look forward to any levels that feature it, I always dreaded having to perform the task in LittleBigPlanet 2.

As the game presses on, things do start to come together through the use of other mechanics. Vehicles and other tools are available to players and these can often be fun to use. Sometimes they produce frustration because, like most things in the game, they just don't work as you might expect.

There's an entire world based on bot Sackboys that must be rescued from a plant and these levels were consistently enjoyable. Most often they involved puzzle solving and diligent and careful level progression, which was an interesting twist on the typical design.

When not focusing on progressing through the level, players can collect a variety of items, including articles of Sackboy clothing, items to use in the creation mode, and stickers, which can be used to solve puzzles and collect more items in the levels. Collecting these things is probably the biggest focus of the game and the best excuse to replay the game's main levels.

Players will often encounter special rooms that hold more of these prizes, but require multiple players in order to enter. These force players to eventually partner up with up to three other local or online players in order to complete the tasks at hand. Thankfully, the rooms are some of the best parts of the game as they are almost always based around solving a unique puzzle that may take the collective intelligence of the group to solve. These sections demonstrate just how great LittleBigPlanet 2 can be given the right context.

In general, LittleBigPlanet 2 just feels very hit or miss. The main quest has some high highs and some low lows. The user generated content is very much the same way, but due to the long load times to get into a given level, it's often not very much fun to bounce from user level to user level when the quality is not always there.

Part of what impressed me from the beginning with the user content is just how good it is given the fairly cryptic tool set and big learning curve to actually start creating something. I know I could actually program and create a real game myself if I wanted to do it, but something about the tools here made that task seem almost impossible. Given what players have accomplished, I'm that much more impressed they did it right with the tools provided. I think the game would've benefited greatly from a very simple level creation tool ala Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Simple enough for anyone to use, but enough complexity to make unique and enjoyable levels.

Like its predecessor, I really wanted to like LittleBigPlanet 2, but in practice it's just not as much fun as it seems it would be. The main quest is fairly brief and not all that exciting, and the user content is of spotty quality with long load times. All in all, I think the game is best passed on, with players seeking out a game that was built to be a game and not a creation tool.