Little game, Big ideas, Planet of possibilities

By Brian D. Crecente, Special to the Rocky

Published October 23, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Photo by Sony

1. In this series of photos, the Sackboy creates a crocodile.

Photo by Sony

2. Sackboy cuts out pieces for the crocodile's body.

Photo by Sony

3. Sackboy puts the pieces together and stamps them with a green, scaly pattern.

Photo by Sony

4. Sackboy adds the crocodile's jaws.

Photo by Sony

5. The finished crocodile

Photo by Sony

6. The menacing crocodiles are put into action as part of a game level.

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LittleBigPlanet is as much a tool chest as it is toy chest.

Although the stylized world of sackcloth puppets, automatons and spongy backdrops provides a fun place to play, it also offers an electronic backdrop in which you can create your own virtual playgrounds.

In LittleBigPlanet, everyone is a gamer and a game designer, with both roles rolled into the same rewarding package.

The title, created for the PlayStation 3 and in stores this week, represents another key piece in the move toward giving gamers the chance to shape the virtual world in which they play. While Spore, the PC game released last month, allows users to mold their own creatures, LittleBigPlanet hands over the ability to craft entire game levels.

"The game is the act of creation," said Alex Evans, co-founder and technical director of the title's developer, Media Molecule. "We didn't really separate play and create, we saw them as almost the same experience."

LittleBigPlanet opens on a lunch box rocket ship dangling in front of a piece of cloth painted with stars. Through the front window of the ship, three planets bob on strings, each representing one of the three key elements of the game: Play, Create and Share.

Here's a look at how each element could help make LittleBigPlanet a star in the PlayStation constellation:

Create

My 7-year-old is obsessed with LittleBigPlanet, but it's not the button-eyed, big-headed sackcloth puppet that draws him to the PlayStation 3 every day. He's there to create.

Within minutes, he makes a metamorphosis of play, transforming from a passive gamer to an involved creator.

He spends hours sitting in thought, brow lined, as he ponders how to give substance to the colors of his imagination. His level, once a clean slate in front of a colorless backdrop, now shimmers with life.

Sections of stone and sponge grow out of the once-unbroken horizon. The crags of his creation jut up from the ground, forming towering steps that wobble with each hop. A wrong turn can leave a Sackboy, your central character in the game, electrified, singed or trapped in dark pits filled with snapping claws.

This thing, this place of floating castles and flaming mountains, comes straight from my son's imagination. It came to fitful life, expanding in spurts as the hours passed.

"Part of the joy of creating is that cycle of test, play, test, play, test, play," Evans said. "We got huge kicks out of it as game creators. To be able to give that to a 7-year-old is amazing.

"The actual process of creating, is part of the fun."

Indeed, the power of LittleBigPlanet's creative palette comes not from its seemingly limitless options of tools and material, but in the way it simplifies the very act of creation.

With a couple of button pushes, the game gives you a visual menu of things you can drop into your blank world, from bits of sponge and rock to fully formed automatons. With your thumbstick you can rotate each object, change its size, drop it to the ground or anchor it to something else.

Once you have it in place, Sackboy has a set of tools that can color the object, coat it in a wallpaper of images or even trim it with a shaping tool. Other menu options allow you to set objects in motion or modify the way they behave or influence their surroundings. You can also make them dangerous by setting them ablaze, giving them electrifying power or filling them full of noxious gas.

This streamlined, push-and-play method of creation makes making things not just easy, but as much a part of the game as gaming itself. But what really sets LittleBigPlanet apart from other games that give users creative control is that you can do it all in real time with as many as four other people.

"Playing together is much more cool than playing separately in games or real life," Evans said.

There were times when I joined my son, my own Sackboy working side-by- side with his character. We spent hours stamping colorless stone with red brick patterns, shaving bits of sponge from his jagged walkways, building and testing a giant ramp for a giant skateboard meant to be ridden by players through a section of the level.

It was like the modern-day equivalent of working on a model car or a rocket with my son. But unlike in previous generations, this father-and-son project put the control in his hands, not mine. I was helping, but there was no mistaking whose ideas were driving this digital diorama.

Play

While LittleBigPlanet's ability to let gamers create their own content will grab most of the attention, the title comes with enough prepackaged levels to keep the creatively-challenged busy.

Using the same tools available to gamers, teams at Media Molecule created 51 levels ready for play, spread out among 17 different areas.

"These levels have to adhere to the same rules that the player-created ones do," Evans said. "The users had to be able to build all of our levels, so we weren't allowed to cheat."

Once you remove the act of creation, LittleBigPlanet taps into the most traditional of gaming genres: The platformer.

Similar to titles such as Super Mario Bros., gamers guide their Sackboys over, under and through dangers by running and hopping along the landscape of the virtual worlds. Your Sackboy runs when you push the thumbstick forward and jumps when you push the button, but can also grab hold of moving objects. He can even be flung up and across the screen if you time the release correctly.

Another interesting twist: by holding down one of the controller's triggers, players can anchor the Sackboy in place and use the thumbsticks to move the character's arms around.

Using the PlayStation 3's motion sensing controllers, player can also move Sackboy's head or body. Press the four buttons, and you can make Sackboy smile, frown, cower in fear or scowl in anger.

These controls essentially turn the Sackboy into a digital puppet that can mug for the camera or smack around other Sackboys.

As players make their way through the pre-created levels, the difficulty ramps up considerably. Evans said he hasn't actually been able to beat the game without cheating.

"The final levels of the game, they will destroy you," he said.

Share

If playing with and creating in LittleBigPlanet will get gamers hooked on the title, the ability to share what you've created and play the creations of others will give this game a long life.

"You go onto the community level section on the beta trial, and it's insane," Evans said. "It is totally melting my brain."

Twenty-four hours after releasing a small section of the game to 10,000 people in Europe, more than 2,000 levels were created.

"I had no idea," Evans said. "I'm really surprised by the quality of the beta levels."

Once you create a level in LittleBigPlanet you have the option to add tags describing your creation and then sending it out to the PlayStation Network for other gamers to download and play.

The interface for finding new levels is similar to Google in its simplistic approach. The game finds the levels with the highest ratings from other users, but it can search for levels that match your preferences, too. The game also allows you to follow specific gamers, to keep track of what levels they have created.

"You see a great level and you love it and you save that creator and now whenever that person publishes a new level you get these pop-ups," Evans said. "You feel kind of connected.

"It's almost like an MMO, and that's really satisfying."

Although gamers can't gain access to them yet, LittleBigPlanet also tracks an individual's creations. Media Molecule eventually hopes to make those stats available to gamers so they see how often others have downloaded their creations or played their levels.

With the game just hitting stores, it's too early to start talking about sequels, but Media Molecule already is looking into how they can get more creative tools into the hands of their users.

"We can release new levels, new stickers, new content," Evans said. "It's pretty clear to me that we have to move in a fluid direction about what's a sequel and what's not a sequel."

Do-it-yourself gaming

Working with your characters in LittleBigPlanet, you have the ability to move, shape and stitch together just about anything and make it part of the game.

Maximizing creativity -- even in death scenes

LittleBigPlanet may look like an idyllic setting peopled with doe-eyed Sackboys and girls, but that doesn't mean there isn't a taste of danger as well.

While building your own levels, you can snap a glass-enclosed brain onto just about anything and instantly turn it into an enemy.

Once you've given life to your bad guy, you have three sliders you can adjust to affect the way it behaves.

With the flick of a thumbstick you can control how aggressive your creation is - whether it stays put or runs away when confronted - and adjust an invisible radius around your critter to decide when exactly it notices an approaching Sackperson.

These creations aren't just decoration; they can turn a Sackboy into a puff of smoke in an instant. A rundown of the different ways death can catch you in LittleBigPlanet, be it from enemy or surroundings:

* Squished between the endless machinations of moving scenery.

* Crisped by burning scenery.

* Electrocuted after brushing against an electrifying object.

* Poisoned by the noxious green gas adrift in an area.

* Ventilated after being skewered with spikes.

* Blown up by an explosive.

Sackboy can also die if he gets too far behind the other players in a multiplayer game. Also, given a setting where Sackboy is stuck, frustrated or just can't take LittleBigPlanet anymore, the little creature can hold his breath until he explodes into a puff of vapor.

Singing a different tune

LittleBigPlanet quickly sparked controversy when some Muslim gamers reported that a background song included some expressions found in the Quran. Sony acted quickly, recalling the games and readying new copies without the lyrics. The long-awaited game, which had already been frequently delayed, will be in stores Monday, Sony said.

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