Reviews// LittleBigPlanet

Why? Well, in LBP you have physics to contend with. So, if you do create something that is 98m tall with three wheels at the back, none at the front or the sides, a huge slab of granite at the front, covered in stickers and provided with motive power by piston rods and elastic bands... it'll fall over. It will crash.

You will laugh and start again. Next time, your creation with shake itself to pieces because your gear ratios were laughable. Unless you are seriously in danger of taking a weapon to school or work because something inside you has snapped (possibly due to a childhood wasted in the hope that Rise of the Robots or Epic would be more than filthy hype – that kind of betrayal does things to a person), you will laugh again.

See what I've done there? I've nearly succeeded in making LBP's Create level sound dull what with mentions of gear ratios. Forget all that. Here's your basic LBP equation:

Platform Game Play + Imaginative Creativity + Excellent Physics Engine = (Logical Extension of Gaming into 21st Century) * Lots of bloody huge belly laughing fun.

Every single element of LBP would appear to have been created not only with attention to PS3 owners' needs but also with the marketing department firmly outside the development rooms doors. It is a game made for people who not only understand platform games and love them, but have on several occasions said, “What a rubbish level. I could do so much better.”

In terms of the gaming aspects one thing that stands out to a crusty oldster like me: you use more buttons to make the ever-pliable Sack-person (I call mine Ziggle) dance, gesticulate, gyrate and frown or smile than you do in playing the game. Yup, game-play (and Creation mode) are largely a case of right analog, [X], Right-Shoulder and [O] to go back. Not complicated. Not difficult to pick up. Not difficult to master. No daft patterns to recall (well, press [X] longer if you want to jump further). No mashing. Okay, so actually making your character negotiate the levels can – at first – be slightly annoying. LBP uses three 'layers' from back to front of the screen (in 2.5D) and it is all too easy to disappear behind the second layer when you think that you're leaping into a cart on the first. But that soon passes.

In terms of playing the game with pals on one screen – LBP is a revelation. Because you know that the items you pick up along the way will come in useful later on, when Mark, Gareth and myself played through (yeah, simultaneous three-player plaform fun, brilliant!) we found ourselves collaborating easily once Mark had stopped putting stickers on everything and stating “That's mine... that's mine... and so is that!”

The collaboration entailed ensuring that no 'team' member headed off into the wild blue distant right-hand side of the screen while others were scavenging or problem solving. This teamwork soon became natural (despite initial sulking from Sticker-Kid) and we proceeded in an orderly fashion to collect more stuff.