Reviews// LittleBigPlanet

For me, the winning factor in all of this is the inclusion of a physics engine, in fact I'd go so far as to say that the game would be nothing without this feature. Instead of having to script interactions between various parts of your levels, you can rely on gravity, weight and rotation to do what you would reasonably expect them to. Imagine the Source engine's Gary's mod but with items you can build from scratch.

Of course the presentation helps immensely with all of this. Sackboy is just so cute it's unbelievable. Stephen Fry is perfect as the narrator and guide, riffing on both his role as the voice of the book in the Hitchhikers movie and his own acid wit. The music is exactly the right level of fun and bouncy. And the basic levels present new concepts at a very well judged rate.

However, nothing is perfect and there are a few faults with LBP. The controls for configuring mechanical devices (or tweaking as the game calls it) are fiddly sometimes, especially when changing the settings of an existing item. The jumping controls when playing the game can be imprecise, especially when moving in and out of the screen.

These faults are really just minor niggles with an otherwise excellent game. It's easy to get started and very difficult to put down and it's as challenging and involving as you want to make it.

This truly is a landmark game, I'm expecting a mod scene as large and vibrant as any on the PC to spring up as soon as the game launches. If the levels produced by the beta are anything to go by, we're going to be playing this game for a long, long time to come.

[b]Take 3
The Young Gamer - Ms Edwards[/b]

So, how does LBP go down with the kids? Not the menacing, be-hoodied gaggle of spotty knife carrying miscreants that seemingly populate every street corner - or so the media would have you believe. No, just young, innocent children.

We put LBP under the nose of a six-year-old girl ... once we could tear the DS from her hands. Having already primed this little one with several teaser trailers featuring SackZilla and the like, news of the LBP beta saw the post-DS tantrum fleetingly replaced with sobs of joy and copious jumping up and down of a much more pleasant variety.

The first thing that became abundantly clear was that LBP isn't exactly accessible to those not experienced with at least the most basic platform games - hardly a skill nurtured by Cooking Mama 2 or Tamagotchi Connexions. Running around and jumping was about as far a we got, not helped by small hands having difficulty gripping the controller while trying to hold down a shoulder button and control the left stick. This is more of a failing in either controller or child design than it is a fault of LBP.

Similarly, although the Popit is cute by name, it's far too unwieldy for a girl who'd rather play with the toy at hand than go digging around the toy box for a favourite. Still, playing Sackperson dress-up proved very popular.

Bunny-tailed Sack Princess completed, we tried out some of rather astonishingly good online creations. Whether the fruits of a Creator Curator or shared by another LBP player, the game's shenanigans make for an excellent spectator sport for kids and adults.