Little Big Planet 2 Hands-On

In the mood for a Rolesporting, First-Person-Side-Scrolling, PuzzleMcAction Shooter Race Fighter? You’re in luck, as Media Molecule and Sony are back with a brand new sequel to their 2008 hit. Little Big Planet 2 is being touted as not just a platform game, but also as a creator for crafting any type of genre players can imagine.

Players begin with a standard Sackboy and are able to fully customize their character’s appearance from an array of choices. Our Sackboy would better be slated as Brickhouseboy, textured with layers of stone bricks. We further outfitted him with a strawberry hoodie, dark shades, laser boots, arm guards, a lance, and matching kite shield. There were already a plethora of other characters by default or created by previous players, including Television-Face Winged Sackgirl, and Fish-Bowl Overlord. TV Face was recruited as our “Best Frwiend” and used as Player 2.

While we didn’t have access to the level creator, our demo included four premade levels for us to try out the new features of Little Big Planet 2. The first, a cooperative story mission dubbed Tower of Woop, armed our characters with a grappling hook and tasked us with ascending a tower. The grappling hook could be fired with a simple tap of the R1 button, while both swinging and retracting was controlled with the left stick. While the hook was mostly used to grab on to ledges and ascend, it could also be used to ensnare the other player. This allowed us an edge against Player 2, by trapping him under a difficult jump and then scurrying off so that the camera scrolled away from him. However, he quickly reappeared once we passed the next checkpoint.

The tower itself had the outward appearance of a majestic forest; however, most of its interior was decorated with stained glass. Further, every few inches there were jump pads, platforms that would propel our character to great heights, across jumps, and several times into electrical traps. The jump pads whisked us across the level and turned out character into a sackpinball.

The second level type was Crashy-Bashy, which placed us in a bumper car demolition derby. Movement remained the same with the left stick, while the X button caused a short burst of speed. Smashing an opponent into a wall caused him to explode and awarded us 10 points. As the competitors spawned from the middle of the arena, we were able to camp the spawn and prevent them from returning to the match, allowing us a stranglehold on our point lead.

The third level we tried was Super Block Race, a Simon Says with the controller's face buttons. We alternated between the X and O buttons and quickly synchronized with the columns of blocks that appeared. With the more successive hits, the quicker our score racked up. However, a simple mistake was costly enough to take our combo meter back down to zero.

Finally, the last level was Rocket Funland, which armed the characters with the creatanator, a helmet-mounted cannon that fired missiles. Aiming used the right stick, and firing was manned with the R1. While trying to take down the other player, we weaved between shooter tactics, such as moving quickly or sniper camping. The creatanator isn’t just limited to an offensive weapon. As the name implies, it can be used as both a tool of creation and destruction. The head-mounted creatanator can be used to fire any object: paint, pizza, shoes, swords. Sony claims that it will be an essential tool used for the finished level editor and will be able to generate anything the player can imagine.

The final released game will have a huge populace of user-generated content, as Little Big Planet 2 will be backward compatible with all levels from its predecessor. With the game’s creation tools, Little Big Planet 2 seems like a game with endless possibilities. We’ll find out if this is truly the case when it is released in winter 2010 for the PlayStation 3.