LittleBigPlanet

It’s a brand new year and with it comes a brand new crop of hopes and dreams. So what do we all dream of in 2008? Sure, there’s the obvious stuff like world peace and new episodes of MXC, but there’s also the expectation that 2008 will herald in something ground breaking and intriguing from the gaming industry. LittleBigPlanet may just be it.

To begin with, and at its most basic, LittleBigPlanet is a platformer. You take control of adorable animated hacky sacks and direct them around numerous levels by solving puzzles, teaming up with other players and battling, or avoiding enemies.

The characters are totally customizable, with an amazing array of costumes and accessories. This lends each creation not only an impressive rating on the cute meter, but also a nice degree of personality. Soon you will be pushing, pulling, grabbing, jumping, and riding your way though stunning environments in an effort to build impressive scores and add to your skills and tools.

The cuteness factor is further enhanced with the use of the Sixaxis control to direct the character’s head and hand movements, it is through these movements that characters, and through them gamers, communicate with each other within the game.

However, in LittleBigPlanet you don’t just take control of the characters, you take control of the entire world. As you play you will be introduced to all the techniques needed to create your own levels. Menus will give you access to shapes and materials that you can use to get through levels, but they are also the skills and tools you will use to manipulate every aspect of the environment.

Also, depending how well you play the levels there, will be plenty of unlockable content to enhance both your gaming and modding ability. After a while you will be ready to create small, personalized spaces, add objects to larger environments, or build massive, complex levels that deserve to be shared with the world. Ultimately, if Sony’s expectations are to be fulfilled, you will be jumping headfirst into a global on-line community.

This leads to perhaps the most ambitious and innovative element of the game: LittleBigPlanet is designed to initiate and support an online community along the lines of Bebo or Facebook. Your entry point into the world will be a globe, across which will be a patchwork of user designed levels. Each level will be totally tagged, rated, pinned, and stacked.

You will be able to filter the hundreds, maybe thousands, of levels through any combination of criteria. At the top of the stack may by your friends’, the highest rated, or the most recent created levels. Each level will be totally unique, from complex and challenging professional standard environments, to small, personalized 3D chat rooms.

LittleBigPlanet is one of those games where you struggle to find a reference point. Initially coming across as a hyper-charged Lemmings for the new millennium, the ambition and scope of the game kicks in as more is revealed of developer Media Molecule's vision.

Although its success may ultimately rely on the number of people willing to contribute to the online community, in itself it should prove to be a highly polished and engaging game. Simply judged on these terms early demos have shown its graphics and design to be both stunning and inspired.

So, later this year we will find out if LittleBigPlanet’s success will be big or... not so big.