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CES 2008: LittleBigPlanet

by: Chuck -
More On: CES 2008
I keep wondering why I love Little Big Planet so much.  I mean I'm a guy who loves blowing stuff up, wiping orc blood off my boots, and setting up turrets in the basement of 2Fort...how could a cute game like Little Big Planet drive me to distraction.  I'm not sure if it's because the little sock dudes give me such a warm fuzzy or the deep level editor but I'm really looking forward to playing the game when it's released this fall. 

On Tuesday afternoon I waited for about 20 minutes in line to get a glimpse at the developer demo of the game.  I was taunted by the community team for a rival platform about waiting in line to see a game at CES but after getting taste of the game at E3 I didn't mind waiting a bit to check out the game. 

The demo was only about 30 minutes but chock full of new information about the game.  The game features three modes, Play, Create, and Share.  As you would expect that means you'll be playing existing content, creating new content, and then sharing that content with other people.  Since we saw the game last the developers have added death to the game so as you play through the game your little sock sude can die (and then re-spawn at later checkpoints).  This really adds a lot to the game as it's pretty funny to smack one of the little guys into a burning pit or under a crushing block. 

The game still looks amazing and the pictures after the jump really don't do the game any justice.  The developers also showed off the new emotions for the puppets.  Using the D-pad you can set their mood to happy, angry, sad, or nervous.  There are three levels of emotions which you can access by pushing the d-pad in the same direction multiple times.  While this makes the little guys moodier than my ex it is amazingly cool way to quickly express yourself with the game.

After a quick play through we got to see more of the content creation angle and then the mechanism you use to share your creations with everyone else.  Basically you have your LittleBigPlanet where the games are stored.  Your works in progress are stored in moons around the planet and when you want to share a level you can push the levels from the moon to the planet.  People can then play and rate your levels and leave you comments about what they liked and disliked about the level.  It's an amazingly cool and innovative way to store and share content.

What's cool about the content creation system is that it's collaborative.  Sure you can create a level by yourself but it's more fun to create them with one or more friends.  I can almost see groups of people having Little Big Planet parties where they spend a few horus working on a level and then an hour or two playing it. 

This is easliy one of the more innovative titles of 2008 and the only downside is that we have to wait until the fall to get our hands on it.