LittleBigPlanet Water - Impressions

By Olly East

A description of LittleBigPlanet Water in a nutshell – water.
Like the rest of LBP, water acts like you would expect it to: whether it’s smooth or rippling, objects that are heavy will sink straight to the bottom of the level. Lighter materials, such as sponge, float. That said, to put how important water is into perspective, it opens up an entire new way of building and designing a level.

Think of LittleBigPlanet without sponge or glass, without sponge you couldn’t create things you grab onto, and lacking glass would mean you couldn’t make things slippery. Water now sits with the two in importance; it adds an entire new material to the game allowing players to make levels before they wouldn’t have even dreamt of.

There’s a good balance of materials that sink and float to make creating with water simple. With the use of a “Global Warming Tool” you can raise and lower water, fix switches to the water tool; you can also let the player of your level make the water rise. Changing the colour and the visibility though the water can help you dramatically change the theme of your level. An obvious example is to use ice cold-looking water for snowy ice levels. However, you can also turn warm beach seawater into a blood like substance that could be used for levels resembling a spooky Halloween scene.
 
With the joys of water also comes the new peril of drowning your Sack-person. Bubble machines can be placed to keep the player with enough oxygen to stay alive, or the player could wear the scuba gear to breathe underwater.

One thing to take into account when level building is that, from the moment your Sackchap bobs underneath the water, a timer starts.

The last water-related object is the water switch which activates once submerged in water allowing the player to let things only happen once the level is flooded or the water has rise to such a height.
From playing in the beta I can honestly say it’s worth the £4.79 / €5.99 / US $5.99 / AUS $ 9.95 / NZD $11.50 price tag when it releases tomorrow (December 22)..