Review: Little Big Planet 2
By Wayne Webb
My 5-year-old son loved the charm and initial ease of Sack boy’s first outing in Little Big Planet. It’s a ubiquitous game for good reasons. It came free with PS3 package deals, it went to platinum pricing quickly and its appeal is across the board for all ages.
Any sequel therefore would have a lot of live up to and Little Big Planet 2 delivers everything you want in a sequel and more. The calm reassuring voice of Mr Stephen Fry guides you through what you need to know and brings the gentle humour of the series to the fore. In the story part of the game, similar to the first, “sack thing” is now non-gender-specific but again has a number of worlds to chase a storyline through in level after level of sumptuous graphics and witty pun filled dialogue. The difficulty of gameplay has eased somewhat, perhaps reflective of it’s appeal to a younger and entry-level audiences. However the side scrolling platform jumping soon becomes an oddity rather than the norm. There are throwbacks to old games like space invaders, defender and even top down racing games like grand prix.
This is where Little Big Planet 2 really excels, the ability to “creatinate” pretty much anything you can imagine. Go into “Community” online and you will find so many user created levels that bring to life games of the past and themes of the present. Use the search function and you can find levels based on things from Spongebob to Harry Potter. Or play levels based on the old arcade machines of youth, Donkey Kong and Pacman.
Whenever you are accessing these games online you have to play them while connected. And the loading times vary wildly from level to level – but always seem to take too long to open up. Also when given the option to play with people online, this frequently ends in you being rejected or denied access to a current game. But these are small things, the game progresses and it’s still 100% fun locally.
It is a very good game and a brilliant execution of next generation console gaming. While I have a few niggles around the multiplayer/online levels – they’re not enough to make the game in any way bad, just a couple of things I don’t like. None of it stopped my son picking it up and forgetting the first one ever existed.
Pros: Beautiful graphics, fun storyline, accessible and varied gameplay, create mode versatility.
Cons: Online loading times, multiplayer rejections.
5 Shacks out of 5
Brought to you by CyberShack.com.au
