LittleBigPlanet 3 Review - As Wonderful and Janky as ever

I'm not sure why I even bothered playing LittleBigPlanet 3 before writing this review, I could have just as easily drafted this entire thing 5 months ago when the game was shown at E3 2014 as part of Sony's press conference. Those first 5 seconds of that trailer sum up the entire experience: feelings of hope as the logo pops up, a beautiful colourful world bursting with personality appears...then Sackboy does his goofy floaty jump, and hearts worldwide sink to the centre of the Earth. 

So yes, LittleBigPlanet continues to be the most frustrating series in videogames. It ticks so many of the right boxes and scratches so many itches but it's continually brought down by this one huge flaw it has. I've played all three home console LittleBigPlanet entries and it still baffles me just how long Sackboy floats in the air before he lands, it's simply wrong. It still drives me nuts that there isn't a button to run yet there's a button to cover the level in stickers for no reason. It might be even worse in LittleBigPlanet 3, which adds depth perception issues to the clumsiness, as well as changeable weapons/items that you fire with the same button you use to grab, making it ridiculously easy to accidentally shoot the thing you're trying to grab out of reach. 

It's so hard to be mean about LittleBigPlanet, it continues to have decent and occasionally great level design, it's looks fantastic, the concept is wonderful and the physics of all the different materials and objects gives it world and objects some true weight and meaning. But you know what, all those things have been praised to death in reviews for the first four LittleBigPlanet games and there's no getting away from it any more...the game feels like garbage. It's floaty, flaky, unnatural feeling vile trash which insults the senses of anyone with a history of 2D platforming. It's kind of a big deal.

There are signs of life within LittleBigPlanet 3 however, as well as the returning Sackboy there are three brand new characters with their own controls and playstyles! Now you can be sack-dog, sack-fat-guy or sack-chicken (they have real names but who cares)! Sack-dog can run fast and jump off walls, sack-fat-guy can switch between large and small while sack-chicken can fly around. Their addition is pretty interesting, especially considering this game was developed by Sumo Digital instead of original creators Media Molecule. Maybe this new team also thought Sackboy was kind of rubbish but were too scared to change it so they injected their own characters to the mix.

The new characters are welcome additions as their inclusion opens new possibilities for level creators to base levels around all or one of them. They're not enough to save this game from its fatal flaw however, the best of the three is sack-dog just because the platforming begins to actually have some genuine flow when you play as him. Even then, you don't have enough control over his speed (run button please!!!!) and he gets stuck to walls without the slick slide of Super Meat Boy, so we're still not quite there yet.

Probably the funniest part of the new characters is they have the side effect of making Sackboy feel even more crap. In the main story mode you collect marbles in several levels as Sackboy to unlock one of the new characters in each world, then you play a tutorial level and a boss level as those characters to get a feel for them. However, as soon as you proceed to the next world it's straight back to Sackboy with his jaunty run and floaty hop, and boy do you really miss that wall jump when that happens. 

Let's talk about the story mode a little bit first though, because I've never understood this aspect of LittleBigPlanet and it makes even less sense in 3. I understand why you would want a story mode in there, get some on-disc professionally made content in the package which shows off what's possible to do within the level creator. But what is the deal with having the objects for the level creator locked and hard as balls to obtain within these levels? There's objects you can only get if you have a second player and there's objects you can only get by perfecting a level by not dying and finding all the hidden objects within the stage. Even worse, LittleBigPlanet 3 includes one of the classic platformer-sequel sins of having some collectibles only obtainable via characters and items unlocked later in the game, forcing repeat plays and backtracking.

What is the thought process here? If I'm the sort of player who's just here to run through the levels on-disc and maybe community created too then I don't care about collecting all the object for the level creator anyway. But on the other hand, if I am the sort of player who wants to dive head first into the level creator, then I want to be designing and playing my own levels, so why I am so thoroughly encouraged to play the on-disc levels over and over and over?

Of course we haven't actually discussed the level creator itself yet, the main event when it comes to LittleBigPlanet, and we're not going to either because I haven't tried it out.

...oh don't look at me like that.

Look here is the issue that just shoots this entire franchise through the head for me and a lot of people like me. LittleBigPlanet is wonderful, it's so close to being one of my favourite games, I'm sure the level creator is great and has had its interface improved and all that good stuff you would expect from a sequel, but I don't care. I don't want to make levels in LittleBigPlanet because I wouldn't want to play anything I could make in LittleBigPlanet. There is a reason why there's a thriving Super Mario World ROM modding community and there isn't a Cool Spot one, level creators are only exciting when the game you're creating for is interesting. Also, with Mario Maker heading to the Wii U next year, I'm finding it even more difficult to entertain the possibility of ever making a level in LittleBigPlanet again.

Having said that, if you are someone who had each of their fingers smashed in with a hammer as a child and think LittleBigPlanet is a great platformer, Sumo Digital have done a mostly good job with this new one. It's a bit glitchy and stuttery which is a first for the series, but the new characters are at least better than Sackboy, the level design is still good and it still has all the charm that makes LittleBigPlanet a game we all really want to love. Also it has Hugh Laurie in it.

For everyone else who's been put off by the LittleBigPlatforming already, rest assured it still blows and there's nothing in this new one that'll change your mind. Ah well, it's not all a loss Sony, the level editor in the new Smash Bros isn't that great so at least you won at something.

The Contradiction of Wrestling Videogames

Well it's that time of year again; the WWE are plopping out another "videogame" into the cultural landfill. At time of writing WWE 2K15 is already out on previous generation consoles with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions on the way and they sure have a LOT of graphics. I haven't played the game and never will; the WWE 2K games are the equivalent of taking two wrestling action figures and smashing them together in your hands. Wait no scratch that, they're more like telling your little brother how to smash the action figures together until eventually you both break down in tears from the bleakness of your own existence.

There's no doubt about it people, WWE 2K15 is god-awful, as was WWE 2K14, WWE 12 was embarrassing, wrestling games sure have sucked for a while now. This is normally the part where people start gushing with nostalgia regarding the old Nintendo 64 games or something, but to be honest I'm starting to question whether wrestling games have ever been good. But let's not get into that now.

Wrestling games often get dumped in with other sports franchises, especially with the WWE games being long established as a yearly franchise now and are also accompanied with all the stats and licensed crap you would expect from an official Madden or FIFA release. Here's where the problem with these games is rooted; "real" competitive sports are already games in themselves. Whether it's soccer, or tennis, or even something like Mixed Martial Arts or sumo wrestling, they all have set rules and the participants are attempting to win within said rules. So a videogame based on a competitive sport transfers nicely (most of them) into a competitive videogame where you take the same rules but replace the athletic participation with game mechanics. The design philosophy of both entities is identical, you have the same rules and everyone involved is still trying to win.

Professional wrestling however is it a different beast. Not to be the guy who tells kids that there's no Santa Claus, but wrestling isn't actually real and the vast majority of the fanbase understands that. So what you have is two (or more) participants pretending to have a competitive contest with a pre-determined result, but the actual goal is to work together to entertain the audience with the best match possible. This is not to say the audience doesn't care who wins or how, but wrestling uses dramatic elements from more conventional forms of storytelling to make you root for one character over another. Scripted elements and structured storytelling (when it's done right anyway) combine with the appeal of live entertainment and athleticism to create one of the most unique shows on the planet, and even though everyone knows it's "fake" it still works due to elements of realism that come from the personalities of the real-life performers. It's a lot of fun to get into when it's good, and just about as much fun to laugh at when it gets really stupid.

But here's where the contradiction of wrestling videogames comes in; at their core almost all of them are competitive multiplayer games, but they are simultaneously attempting to come off like the real thing. This has got out of control with the recent WWE games, there's an absurd amount of focus on replicating the real television show's camera angles, and in emulating specific chains of moves. Some grapple attacks actually include a sequence where your opponent counters you multiple times mid-animation with no input or control from either player. So what you end up with is basically a fighting game where both participants are trying to beat the other, but the rules and mechanics are defined by design principles that the game should emulate a staged contest where the emphasis is to entertain. A real fight (or even something cartoony like a Street Fighter fight) doesn't look anything like a wrestling match, no-one punches each other in the face for 45 minutes and keeps going on adrenaline fuelled comebacks. 

Here's the worst example from a recent game that I can come up with which illustrates this point. In WWE 2K14 (and to be honest, I'm just going to go ahead and assume this is still a problem in WWE 2K15) it is possible to completely curbstomp your opponent for the entirety of the match without taking any damage, receive a finisher for the momentum, have your finisher attempt countered which now gives your opponent full momentum, then get hit by a finisher and lose because the pinfall mini game is more difficult to beat after a finishing move. The thought behind this is that:

• The climax of a wrestling match should always be exciting and involve crucial reversals.
• A wrestlers marketed and long established finishing move should always be harder to recover from.
• If a wrestler attempts his finishing move, chances are it's a part of the climax so an attempt at a finisher by the other guy shouldn't be too far behind.

The result of this is you end up with scenarios that both fail to represent a real physical contest, a scripted wrestling match and the balance of a well-designed competitive videogame. I don't think it's any coincidence that the majority of the more fondly remembered wrestling games (the Nintendo 64 ones, the early Smackdown games, WWE All Stars) hold a closer resemblance to arcade button mashers than any kind of attempt at a "simulation". Most modern wrestling games try to walk the line between simulation and competitiveness, and the result is pretty much always complete garbage.

So what can be done to improve wrestling games and if not entirely remove, but at least subdue this fundamental contradiction? I think wrestling games need to focus more on what actually makes wrestling so fun in the first place, the personalities. Now, that's not to say I think there should be Guitar Hero minigames as you bash buttons in sequence with your wrestler spewing catchphrases in a backstage interview, but something can definitely be done to encourage the player not just to win but win in the coolest way possible.

The Smackdown series of games has dabbled with this in the past; in some versions mashing the punch button or reusing the same move over and over again will cause the crowd to boo you and take away your momentum. That's the kind of mentality we need more of! Only it needs to be plastered over the entire engine, imagine if instead of trying to reverse a guy when he tries to pick you off the floor, you're encouraged to wait until he has you to your foot when you can respond with a punch to the face because it gives you more momentum. Encourage combo attacks too, if you're Daniel Bryan and you dropkick someone out of the ring, then you sure as sugar should be wanting to go for an outside dive immediately following that. 

That's just more exciting I tell you! It's far more interesting than the reverse-fest farces the current games have turned into, and since wrestling matches usually feature a lot of moves it's going to require some re-education of the player to strip them of this problem. People who are still buying the WWE 2K games every year have been so mellowed out by its blandness by now I don't think they know how to feel things any more other than occasional rage.

Wrestling games simply need to embrace something like this to make them more special, they can't keep going for realism because that's not something wrestling is synonymous with in the first place. They need to become fighting/grappling games where the focus is on spectacle and drama. NOT the spectacle and drama of the television show, you can't recapture that and all attempts to so far have been embarrassing. Let the games breathe with their own special moments and interesting situations. 

I guess I'm referring to the same sort of drama that high level Street Fighter play has, where the excitement comes from crazy comebacks and micro stories regarding the players and the characters they pick which takes the audience on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. Wrestling games could easily be encouraging their players to emulate that excitement in as many matches as possible. Wow, my idea of a perfect wrestling game is one that does what professional wrestling does to real fighting to other fighting games. That wasn't even intentional, but it's not really that surprising! 

Bottom line; drop the "it's just like the show!" stuff and make a real videogame already, gosh dang it.