It’s a logical progression, one that sacrifices personal moments of professionally crafted clarity, but in their place is a tidy collection of tools and concepts masquerading as purpose-driven levels – and the hope that talented players will embrace enough of them to fill in LittleBigPlanet 3’s considerable gaps in content.
The functional endpoint of LittleBigPlanet as a generation-spanning concept is interesting. In 2008, the dream of user-generated content was alive and well, uncorrupted by endless trophy/achievement generating levels along with the dregs of talentless work and unfinished projects. It was a novelty, and it was working. Awesome levels made their way out of LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2 – but over the last six years similar work from user-friendly game development suites in Unity and Game Maker (not to mention Microsoft’s own Project Spark) have leap-frogged LittleBigPlanet’s creation tools. LittleBigPlanet may be more friendly and relatable, but in 2014 you no longer have to make a game in a game; you can just go out there and make a game with reasonable effort and dedication.
While LittleBigPlanet’s place in gaming may be less important and influential than in years past, LittleBigPlanet 3 undoubtedly brandishes the strongest and most refined set of tools of any entry in the series. It’s also home to a significant divergence in basic play styles and overt level presentation, itself the likely result of fresh blood behind the development wheel. While Cambridge and Double Eleven + Tarsier handled the PSP and Vita editions, respectively, LittleBigPlanet 3 is the first numbered entry not to be authored by the folks at Media Molecule. Sumo Digital, another thoroughly British studio most recently known for their excellent work with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, has taken the reigns – and they’ve pushed LittleBigPlanet 3 in some bold new directions.
The scope of LittleBigPlanet 3’s adventure mode has changed. While it retains outlandish personalities backing precious handfuls of thematically harmonious levels, the means by which they are accessed has undergone a complete shift. Rather than a linear progression of levels, LittleBigPlanet 3 sets the player in a grand hub world spackled with doors to different levels. Each of LittleBigPlanet 3’s three worlds offers three or four traditional levels and compliments them with just as many smaller, specific-challenge focused levels. Once a level is discovered it can be accessed from a more basic menu, but exploring the ins and outs of the adventure hubs – and discovering costume-buying currency in every nook and cranny – is part of its newfound charm.
Transitioning LittleBigPlanet 3 from a linear start-and-stop through levels to an open hub doesn’t change that much from the perspective of the player, but it’s a huge boon to its creative community. In previous iterations players could technically string series of levels together with a proper playlist, but they lacked the connective tissue of a thematically cohesive game. By creating a hub that branches off into a dozen different levels, more diverse and (in theory) deeper experiences suddenly become available. LittleBigPlanet 3 gets closer to allowing the player to make a whole game, rather than just a neat one-off level.
LittleBigPlanet 3 also sees the addition of divergent playable characters. In past games both Media Molecule and the creative community shoehorned their physics-based-jump-person-extraordinaire Sackboy into some fairly creative vehicles, but they didn’t offer the precision or diversity of entirely different characters. LittleBigPlanet 3, however, unloads a new character in each of its three adventure hubs. Oddsock is an adorable dog (of sorts) perfect for quicker, more Super Meat Boy friendly movement, and comes with the ability to run up curved surfaces and wall-jump. Toggle is actually two characters, allowing the player to toggle (get it?) between a huge bruiser and a more nimble tiny runner. Swoop, a delightful little bird, represents the greatest change in player control, boasting the ability to fly and dive-bomb at will.
Ol’ Sackboy also sees his share of new mechanics, all kept in a handy new menu called the Sackpocket. The Pumpinator is a blow/suck gun thing used to push objects in and out of selective puzzles. The Hook Hat is LittleBigPlanet’s take on grind-rails, affixing Sackboy’s head to glide-friendly segments of quick movement. Boost Boots, aside from being terribly fun to say out loud, function as a multi-directional and slightly erratic double jump. Blink Ball is probably the coolest new mechanic, allowing Sack Boy to fire translucent marbles at specially marked areas and instantly teleport to that area. Combined with Velociporters, color-coded portals that act as, well, portals from Portal, countless opportunities arrive for players and creators to shuffle Sackboy around at will.
What’s strange is how little LittleBigPlanet 3’s boxed content seems to be interested in any of its new mechanics or characters. Compared to LittleBigPlanet 2’s robust offering of six worlds and dozens of levels, LittleBigPlanet 3 breaks down into three worlds and fewer than fifteen full levels (not including the largely instructive Prologue sections). Furthermore, there’s only one level designed to specifically test each new character. It’s a startling lack of traditional content, exacerbated by numerous prompts to access the PlayStation Store and presumably buy additional, professionally made adventure stages somewhere down the line.
I am of two minds about LittleBigPlanet 3’s seemingly deliberate shift in initiative. For a numbered, $60 entry on a new console, the content inside the box feels extremely light on curated substance. Its insistence on repeatedly showing me the store didn’t sit well, either. Sumo Digital is positioning their content to inspire and provoke level ideas from LittleBigPlanet’s creative community, and clearly stepping away from anything other than easily digestible and largely challenge-free content with their own levels. From a cynical point of view, it can feel like they’re tossing in a bunch of new tools, skipping out on creating most of their own content, and crossing their fingers that the player base will pick up the slack.
A more forgiving and rational observer may see LittleBigPlanet 3’s levels as basic invitations to greater ideas. There are a couple challenge levels that task player with assembling vehicles, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts style, to meet certain goals. Midway through the game there’s a top-down Gauntlet-styled level out of nowhere, suggesting incredible possibilities for similar 3D platforming. Other levels flirt with gravity, rhythm-based timing, and multiple Sackboys like those Double-Cherry Super Mario 3D World levels. All of LittleBigPlanet 3’s ideas are founded on solid design principles and tools seemingly fit to carry them out, but neither pushes any of its limits nor offers much of a reasonable challenge. It feels like they’re there to say, “Look at all the cool stuff you can do with our game.”
And if someone really puts their time and energy into it, LittleBigPlanet 3 could easily be a venue for some incredibly creative levels. The game never has the wherewithal to combine Sackboy with any of his new cohorts, leaving room on the table for a Lost Vikings style romp through a level. Likewise, with sixteen levels of depth compared to the original games’ three, there’s literally more room for different objectives inside a traditional 2D space. More intimately designed creations may be off-putting to those looking for a simple stroll akin to the packaged levels, but function as an endless well of potential for properly motivated players.
On the presentation end, LittleBigPlanet 3 retains the madcap British humor that defined other entries in the series. Its unflinching dedication to surreal landscapes and ruthless personification of garbage and other household objects remains unmatched, and this time it’s pushed harder than ever. My favorite moment, by far, was when I was platforming on some salmon rushing up a river. Not actual fish-form salmon, mind you, but half of an uncooked filet persistently driving itself up a river. Oddsock, Toggle, and Swoop couldn’t be more adorable if they tried, and even in my harshest judgment of the final product I’d still look at their goofy demeanors and smile. Outfitting them with tons of ridiculous accessories only made them feel more silly and enjoyable.
Several changes have also come to the creation side of LittleBigPlanet 3. Chief among them is the Popit Puzzle Academy, a restructured version of Create Mode’s tutorials. In previous games, the player would watch a short demo of a lesson before being challenged to replicate the same process. The Puzzle Academy builds proper levels out of basic tutorials, introducing a lesson and challenging the player with a variety of ways to implement it. It’s fairly easy to wing it through each of Puzzle Academy’s fourteen levels with a bit of intuition and some requisite trial-and-error, but there are a handful of extra prize bubbles that require a better understanding of the Puzzle Academy’s lessons.
While the Popit Puzzle Academy might be a better way for newcomers to learn the basics of LittleBigPlanet 3’s creation tools, it’s largely remedial for returning players. Only toward the tail end of the second series of lessons, when they started introducing Velociporters and some new Sackbot actions, did I feel like I was learning something new. Wenches, pistons, buttons, connectors, materials, and other tools were still in the back in my head from the last six years.
Popit Puzzle Academy is vaguely disappointing because of how quick it is to ignore the incredible amount of tools new to LittleBigPlanet 3. One look at some of the levels inside the closed beta and you’ll probably find yourself convinced that anything is possible with the game’s robust creation tools. Literature that accompanied my review copy declared over seventy new tools were in place, but for whatever reason most all of them appear to be contained inside instructional videos in a different menu. Why LittleBigPlanet 3 spends its time rehashing old lessons in greatly accessible levels, all the while ignoring similar measures for more advanced concepts, is lost on me.
Like so much of LittleBigPlanet 3, its power is in its potential and not necessarily in the content delivered on day one. Not only are all the previously created user-levels accessible, so are all the materials and music used to construct them (assuming your profile has LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2 play data). More is more and combined with all of its new tools, materials, and concepts, LittleBigPlanet 3 wields all the power of those that came before it, along with a bunch of new stuff on top. Generating the impetus to access any of it still up to the player, but what LittleBigPlanet 3 under-delivers in original content it makes up for in the sheer quantity of stuff available to its audience.
Maybe this is what LittleBigPlanet is in 2014. With the rise of streaming services and the PlayStation 4’s built-in Twitch functionality, maybe LittleBigPlanet’s lack of hands-on instruction is actually keeping with the times. Maybe other players spent more time scouring the hordes of user levels and didn’t care for levels hand-crafted by the game’s development team. In any case the things I most loved about LittleBigPlanet seem to be out of the spotlight in LittleBigPlanet 3, and while that may be good for its long term health, it left me feeling like I was on the sidelines.
(It’s also worth mentioning that opening the Popit menu in LittleBigPlanet 3 caused the game to hitch for around five seconds every time. A reported day one patch used language stating it would address the matter, but for now I feel it’s pertinent as a post-script for my review. It made going through the Popit Puzzle Academy, where the player constantly has to open the Popit and shuffle things around, into an annoying chore rather than an instructive sequence. Additionally, hitting the triangle button to try and bring up the Organistron guide didn’t even work half the time. For now I’ll give LittleBigPlanet 3 the benefit of the doubt because I don’t see how such a disruptive inadequacies could make it into the final product. If the problem persists past launch this paragraph will stay in the review. If it goes away, I’ll delete it later in the day).
