Sackboy: A Big Adventure is incredible — solo or with others. It has an amazing amount of content for a game that most will write-off haphazardly. It’s an example of fun creativity that comes with people who are passionate about bringing a good experience to gamers of all ages.
I know that a lot of people have their sights set on Miles Morales, Call of Duty, and Demon’s Souls for the PlayStation 5. Would I blame them for focusing on those? Not at all. Those are three phenomenal launch titles. That said, you need to refocus yourself a bit. Look at that small game in the background that you didn’t know you should be excited for and go get Sumo Digital’s Sackboy: A Big Adventure because it might be one of the best games to grace next-generation consoles this year. Yeah, that is a hot take.
Let’s discuss.
A Simple Story, A Big Adventure
It’s a $59.99 game. The others are $69.99. At that price it must be an afterthought and something Sony wasn’t entirely focused on, right? Oh…my…Lord — NO! This is a real deal sorta game. It is indeed a BIG adventure and it’s more akin to the size, structure, and fun of a…forgive me, Nintendo people…Super Mario 3D World. No, I’m not kidding, the game has all the lovely pieces of that game’s structure and it has the girth of it. It has been quite unexpected.
The story starts with Sackboy bearing witness to the large, incredibly creepy Vex invading Craftworld and kidnapping all of the residents of the world. He forces them to build Topsy Turver and challenges Sackboy to do something about it. The adventure spans a large number of themed worlds that contain a lot of smaller levels for Sackboy to traverse. He must gather Dream Orbs to progress from place to place, kind of akin to Mario and crew collecting green stars. The more orbs that he collects, the more places he unlocks, and the closer he gets to rescuing his craft crew.
The story is delightfully horrifying, though set for a younger audience. It won’t scare young kids, but that doesn’t make Vex or the bosses any less creepy. You’ve got a lot of bosses to get through including a lizard frog, a large millipede, and a few other craft-based animals that are both cute and terror-filled. There’s a lot to be impressed about when it comes to a variety of enemies and a solid journey for Sackboy to go on. Staying with the story, it’s good, it’s enough, and it’s lovely.
Gameplay for Sackboy’s Adventure
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is an impressive display of level design, good music, and demanding controls. It is built for the entire family to enjoy via co-op, while also catering to seasoned gamers that want to find help online (the option to go solo is there).
The strongest aspect of this game lies within its level design. I haven’t felt a rush of appreciation and joy for this type of level design since Titanfall 2, a title that I’m positive people unappreciated. Sackboy: A Big Adventure builds its levels around two aspects: theme and music. The themes are expected, as you get a variety of themed levels that range from monkey-filled jungles, insect led levels and even an underwater experience of epic proportions. The levels do everything in their power to emit fun and happiness, while also sticking to their theme and building some design trickery to their construct. You’re going to find each theme bringing unique patterns of gameplay with them, so you don’t get the same type of level every time while making sure to challenge everyone appropriately. Again, it’s a balance that has to be done right to work and Sackboy does a great job with themes in terms of visual creativity and level creativity. It all works really well.
On the music side, it’s the flipside of the level design coin. There are songs from David Bowie, Britney Spears, and even Mark Ronson with his Uptown Funk. The songs are the layout for the themes, which make the levels that much fun to play. Music seems to drive the creativity of the levels. You will hear some actual songs being sung (like the ones I just mentioned) and then background instrumental songs, such as Madonna’s Material Girl and A-ha’s Take on Me. It’s good to be king of media and own a music group. Anyway, you will find yourself mesmerized at times with how well the music works with the level design. It’s so much fun. If that wasn’t enough to get you excited, the haptic feedback will reinforce the music at times, so welcome to the PlayStation 5, folks.
The backend functioning of the game is pretty light, but that is to be expected with a Sackboy adventure. Since the dawn of Little Big Planet, the focus has always been on creative levels and costumes, and nothing complicated on the backend (like RPG elements or anything of the sort). The developers, Sumo Digital, took what made Media Molecules’ series great and translated it perfectly into Sackboy: A Big Adventure. They have a ton of costume choices at your whim, plenty of accessories and costume pieces to gather/mix/match, and nothing beyond those aspects. They don’t try to go beyond those backend details and try to avoid changing the expected gameplay, all while enhancing the usual through level design and delivery to make this a fun adventure and experience that you would expect from the series. If you’re coming to see costumes and customization of one’s character, while having a fun time with unique and beautiful level designs, then you’re in the right place.
Staying with levels, you will run into a variety beyond just the usual story-based levels. You will find levels from a salesman named Zom Zom, who might be your best salesman when it comes to costumes. He has some levels like a ‘magic lamp’ themed one that are solely used for collecting bells, which are costume currency. Think of it as one of those dollar wind machines that you would step in to collect money and you have the idea. It’s a nice break from the usual in the game and it guarantees you that you won’t lose.
There are also time trials called Knitted Knight Trials, where you are competing to get through tough obstacles in order to score a good time and score you some dream orbs, which as mentioned above are important. These trials are unlocked by collecting cool looking golden Rubik’s cube objects located in levels as you progress. The time trials are challenging as hell, but not too frustrating. By the seventh one of these it becomes a tricky deal and definitely difficult.
The last type of level you’re going to run into is going to be partner levels, where you have to have at least two people playing to get through them. The amount of Dream Orbs in this type of level is usually lower than the rest and the adventure can get demanding and sometimes straining on a partner relationship in the game. Maybe in real life as well. It’s fun, though.
Outside of trials, story levels, partner levels, Zom Zom, and the boss fights, the only thing left to do is beat the game, then perfect your efforts. Much like Super Mario 3D World, you can go back and achieve more goals once you complete each level. You can revisit them and simply do better, which is what my wife and I have done for the past few days. Once you get seasoned on a stage, it’s more fun to revisit it knowing what to expect. This is one of the best parts of the game.
PlayStation 5 wows
The PlayStation 5 version of Sackboy: A Big Adventure looks freaking amazing. The ray tracing is on point, as you can see from the first time when the game zooms in on Zom Zom to show off the reflection of his environment around him. You’ll be amazed to see how much of the ray tracing comes into play with the level design, as there are real ‘showoff’ times the PS5 pulls off to match the theme and action of the level. It’s breathtaking. Finally, the loading times for the game are as quick as hell. Each level takes about 2-3 seconds to fully load, and those levels are stocked full of details and design, background, mid-ground, and foreground. There are lots of details that are happening all around Sackboy as he moves through levels. It’s incredible how much of a difference that SSD makes in a game. The future is certainly bright with this system.
Let’s wrap this thing up.
Conclusion
Overall, Sackboy: A Big Adventure is incredible — solo or with others. It has an amazing amount of content for a game that most will write-off haphazardly. It’s an example of fun creativity that comes with people who are passionate about bringing a good experience to gamers of all ages.
