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.
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