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Posted by Raine Hutchens on Aug 23, 2010

Little Big Planet 2 Preview: A Little Sackboy Goes A Long Way

Since Little Big Planet’s release in 2009, the Playstation Network has been a buzz with user-generated content for this much favored title. Little Big Planet has created a large fan base, or even more a family, and has instilled within us all the love for an animated hero, Sackboy.

So naturally, when I heard about the release of Little Big Planet 2 I was excited. Media Molecule announced that they had a lot of fancy features in the works for this sequel, and they plan on keeping the LBP family alive and on their toes with this new release. The sequel is packed full with exponentially expanded upon features and abilities for even more great user-created content.

At this year’s Gamescom we had the chance to see a bit of LBP2 in action. One of the first things that was shown to us was the new grappling hook ability. With this new ability you can grapple onto any soft surface and swing your heart out, shortening or lengthening the amount of rope used. And being soft material himself, Sackboy can be grappled onto by players in co-op for a hilarious fun time.

The controls for the sequel show a lot of promise for new players, and old players alike. They are fluid and much less floaty as in the previous titles. All this while the grappling hook adds a brand new batch of variety on the platforming genre. To us it seems that Media Molecule have done quite a great job of tinkering on every level of the game’s design, all while keeping that LBP feel that we all have come to love.

If you’ve played the LBP title previously then you would know that a game is just not LBP without some crazy trinkets and gadgets. One of the new gadgets shown during the preview was the Cakeinator, which essentially is a miner’s helmet that can propel any object or material from the lamp attached to the top of the helmet. From what we were shown of the preview, the helmet fired out big gloops of frosting, which were used to defeat evil cakes, while at the same time was used to build walkways and even clog gears to allow you to pass to higher platforms.

Toying and tinkering seems to be a great asset of Media Molecule’s design plan. It is apparent that in LBP2 that the company has picked up the expectations of players and ran with it, literally. The new title includes a new sequencer system. The system was originally built to allow players to create and mix their own music, but the developers quickly saw that the sequencer could also be used to build anything the player wanted, especially entire levels. Using this new found realization, the developers put the feature into motion, even though it meant reconstructing entire parts of the game using the sequencer only mere months before the game’s release date. Now not only can you time events, dialogue, music, and camera moves, but you can also set entire sections of levels to appear or disappear based on precise timing.

This now means that players have the absolute creative power to control every aspect of their levels. This makes it easy to wrap your head around how players can use this tool to create brand new games in the LBP2 world. Surprisingly enough, the team at Media Molecule built the entirety of LBP2 using the same tools available to players in the game! The first title was made using a combination of PC and the PS3, however with this title it was done completely on the PS3 itself. This time around there was “no cheating”, as the game’s Techical Director Alex Evans puts it.

The only place where Media Molecule was forced to “cheat” was with the Playstation Move controls. The game was originally going to ship with Move support, but this is no longer the case. The game will include several Move-based demo levels to hold players over until an update can be released to support proper controls.

I suppose in order to fully appreciate what LBP2 has to offer, you need to see it for yourself. The new title brings a sort of “whimsical” feel to it that I really enjoy. If you are a fan of the first LBP, then you are absolutely going to be blown away by this release.

Be sure to check out Little Big Planet 2 when it releases this November.

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