The first Little Big Planet was unique, innovative and a joy to play. The second is even more random and crazy than ever. There are dozens of story levels to complete and thousands of community levels to play through, all created by other Little Big Planet players. The create mode contains even more items, materials and tools to utilise than the first game.
The main story path is remarkable stupid but in a good way, it’s childish, daft and funny but can be enjoyed by all ages. The aim of the story mode is to defeat the Negativitron, which has brought destruction to Craft world. This sees you travel to a huge mechanical factory, a space centre and a large cake factory to recruit new companions in the fight against the Negativitron. Throughout the story you can control animal type vehicles and use new features such as the grapple hook. Overall the story is great fun, and it can all be played in either offline or online coop with up to 4 players or just on your own.
New features on the game include the grapple hook as previously mentioned and also a host of other new tools which you can use. The grapple hook is a great addition allowing you to grab on to pretty much everything from a distance, and also allowing you to swing and move in or out from a target. You will be thinking your Sackboy is actually Spiderman. The next new feature are these power gloves which allow you to grab and throw large objects, a few examples include throwing pieces of cake at enemies and small objects at buttons out of reach. Also there is the Createinator, which is basically a gun that will fire any object you want it to, whether it be water, fire, bombs or even point bubbles. Lastly is the in game controller which allows you to make any object move, jump or shoot. All the new additions are great, they are all fun and easy to use and offer something new to the gameplay.
Where Little Big Planet 2 really shines though is the community levels and create mode. Both can provide hours of playtime. First of all there are thousands of community levels all created by other users in create mode. They are all completely unique and captivate the imagination of other users. Some great levels include shark survival and bomb survival levels which are really fun to play. Others can include LBP style Total Wipeout courses and Assassins Creed levels. There is so much variety, and with many new levels being posted each day it is something you will never get bored of playing.
The create mode is simply amazing, you can create anything you want. There is so much you can do it is too difficult to put down in words so I can only mention my favourite feature. This is the in the game controller, which allowed me to create a huge spaceship which could fly at immense speed and fire rockets in all directions. I could also make a Crazy Taxi level using this feature. It allowed me to make the car jump and change layers. Also I could make a tank and any vehicle which popped to mind, which opened up so many opportunities for new levels to post to the community. By far create mode is my favourite part of the game and makes it stand out from the first Little Big Planet due to the fantastic new additions and the ability to use hundreds of objects.
It is really difficult to find any flaws with this game. The online servers are of a good standard and joining other players is a smooth and fast operation. However, you may find the frame rate can dip occasionally when there are a lot of objects on screen and sometimes the leader boards may mess up at the end of a level. Apart from that its pretty much perfect which is hard to find in any game these days.
Overall Little Big Planet is a brilliant game which has to be the most unique games ever to hit the shelves. It’s crazy and completely random which makes the game really fun to play. As for the create mode it is really just a case of where your imagination takes you.
