Little Big Planet 2 Updated Impressions

Guildford-based developer Media Molecule burst onto the development scene with its free-form platformer-cum-building-block-game Little Big Planet. Two years on, the team is hard at work on a follow-up, but while the game’s title clearly identifies it as the second iteration in the series, this is more than a simple lick of fresh paint and some bonus stickers. We joined a roundtable panel with MM cofounder and technical director Alex Evans to find out just how much the game has evolved.

Previous Coverage: This year at E3 we had the chance to get hands-on with the game, and we used the opportunity to explore some of the new game types that can be built with the technology. Check out our full impressions from the show here.

What's New: Alex Evans chaired the panel, steering the audience through some of the cosmetic and functional changes present in Little Big Planet 2. The most obvious were the changes to advanced mechanics. As shown in the pre-E3 teaser trailer videos, the game has completely overhauled the mechanics of machines. The most interesting new piece of tech we saw was the direct control seat, a premade seat chip creators can embed in their vehicle or other object that allows for easy wiring of key functions. Want to map movement so players who download your level can steer the vehicle you’ve made by simply tilting their Sixaxis or Dual Shock controller? Just select the functions represented on the onscreen controller silhouette, and drag the lasso to the item you want to link. The team concedes that while the new option will make wiring and creation of basic items considerably faster, there is potential for confusion without a universal approach to button mapping. They don’t envisage it to be a major cause of headache though, since designers can create custom audio, text dialogue boxes, and tooltip pop-ups.

Our demo included a look at a smattering of content from the single-player story mode and levels created over a 24-hour period by handpicked members of the LBP community. The results were amazing, showcasing scrolling shooters, an isometric Rambo homage complete with cutscenes, and a working prototype of a real-time strategy minigame complete with unit selection and AI routines. A host of new camera angles; a handful of new tech elements like antialiasing, volumetric lighting, and transparency; and more direct control over what players see as they race around the environment will help you create more unique experiences. Player perspective can now be changed on the fly simply by tapping directions on the D pad.

What Has Changed: While Media Molecule is staying fairly mum on the details regarding the game’s PlayStation Move integration and the gameplay it will bring with it, it did drop some tasty news on community support. Evans said that while the audio team continues to create new assets for the game the way it did previously (on computers) before importing them into the title, the rest of the dev team now works exclusively on consoles. This is being done to ensure a level playing field with the community and sees both sides working with an identical palette.

They also used the opportunity to take the wraps off some of the game’s planned online features. Aimed squarely at the social jugular, Media Molecule is poised to release its own tinyurl service called LBP.me. While not live yet, the portal will be available with or without a PSN account. Logging in with your PlayStation Network credentials will unlock additional features, such as personalized static URLs with your username, which other uses can access to browse your original content. The free service will also allow you to queue LBP levels directly to your console, downloading and making them available in-game the next time you fire up your console. There’s even talk of using QR barcodes to allow for augmented reality-style features--holding a code up to the PlayStation Eye camera so it can read the code, navigating to a particular user or his or her creation. All this before the team is ready to talk motion-sensing integration.

Final Word: Even with the constraints of the original game, the caliber of content that surfaced was amazing. If the additional functionality and user-friendliness is any indication of what we have yet to see, then we’re excited for what will undoubtedly be made when its more robust sequel ships later this year.