A game comes along once and awhile that has raised a lot of hype in the gaming industry. Some of these games are Halo, Metal Gear Solid, and the Mario Series. However a surprising game named LittleBigPlanet has caused quite a stir. Why you may ask? Well LittleBigPlanet must be the most unique videos games of the decade.

From the start you can see the unique style of art in the game. I find it quite pleasing and the some of the best graphics I have seen from any game. It’s very cartoonish, but do not let this make you think that this is a kid game, it can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike.

One quick little thing that it tells you in the beginning of the game is that it does make use of the motion capabilities of the PS3 controller by controlling your head by tilting it. Also by holding down L2 and R2 and using the R and L analog sticks you can control your hands. You can also customize your ‘sack boy’ as they call it. You collect items and costumes through out your travels of LittleBigPlanet. My costume currently is a Lion. Roar.

Before getting into the multiplayer elements of the game (we will get to that in due time) you must go through the first stage of single player. The single player in LittleBigPlanet is, to be honest, lacking in depth. It is very repetitive and easy, I completed it upon the first day of getting it with ease. But you must complete single player because of the benefits you come across. By completing levels you find objects that help you customize stages later in the game. The story line is a bit weird, and I didn’t pay much attention to it. Without giving away much, you basically are going around helping random people through out LittleBigPlanet. Nothing that special there.

The soundtrack is nice; it includes that catchy song we heard on those commercials that I still love for some strange reason. It also includes sounds that you can put in your levels, for instance, if you have a dog, you can put in a speaker and set it to play a dog bark when in proximity of it, but we will get more into that later.

After completing the first stage of single player you have more choices from your ‘pod’ (Your pod is basically the menu screen that you can customize with stickers and such). From the ‘LittleBigPlanet’ option I highly suggest you go into the ‘Cool Maps’ sub-option (You must have an Internet Connection and a PSN account). There you will find community made maps. I found a highly interesting one today made after the Japanese game show that is shown on G4, Ninja Warrior. It wasn’t hard really, but it was really fun to just go and play about in a stage from Ninja Warrior. There are many other maps out there, thousands of them, you just got to look for those gems in there.

Skateboards are just one of the tens of thousand of vehicles you can build.

You can also team up with up to 4 other people from the LittleBigPlanet universe on any map. Its fun to play with other people, just make sure its someone that you know can actually play a video game, other wise you will have camera problems and you will end up waiting for said player, like I made this poor guy wait the first time I played. Also, be prepared for at least a little lag. I have not experienced much yet, but it is a big factor in the game.

Finally we get to the most hyped over element in the game. The map editor. At first you will not have much to play with, just keep playing the story mode and gather tools and such. Eventually you will be able to create a wide array of things in your map. You can make vehicles, animals, buildings, and much more. I am very impressed in the map editor. Only a few of the many, many tools are the rotating bolt, the winch, the piston, the race tool, the fire tool and the list goes on and on. It has a tutorial for each tool in the game making it easy for anyone to learn how to create a map that will be praised by the LittleBigPlanet community. Don’t let it suck you in though, you can easily spend hours creating a map, it is very time consuming.

In the end, LittleBigPlanet is a game anyone can pick up and easily play. With in depth tutorials and a wide array of things you can do in the map editor to thousands of community made maps already out there, the game can easily take up hours of your time a day. Just don’t play too much or it does get very boring, or like me, you will fall behind on school work.

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