Jordan Hearring, Life Editor

The LittleBigPlanet video game franchise was a huge part of my childhood and served as an escape from reality for me. This open-world creation-based platformer is what sparked my interest in video games as a child and I watched the game grow as much as I grew with it. The seemingly endless opportunities presented to the player in the LBP universe promotes creation and individualism as well as sharing a piece of yourself with the rest of the world. I will be reviewing LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet Karting. While there is a LittleBigPlanet 3 and various spinoffs of the series, I didn’t play these enough to form an opinion or a substantial review.

LittleBigPlanet (2008): The game begins with a spotlight on the main character Sackboy, who is the character the player navigates throughout the game. You can dress him up, make facial expressions, grab and punch things and jump. The Popit was a feature that would allow you to customize your Sackboy, place stickers and decorations and text chat with other players. The Story Mode brings you through various levels that involve helping the communities of the various worlds such as The Gardens, The Savannah, The Weddings and more. The main characters, or Content Curators, give Sackboy a series of story levels and minigames to play to earn points, unlock costumes and materials of your own to design your own level with. While the Story Mode gives a great start to the game, the main focus is MyMoon. MyMoon serves as the level creator for the game and you open each new spot with a blank slate. The Popit in MyMoon is slightly different, allowing you to place materials and objects and customize the level. You could even place music in your level! If you can think of it, you can probably do it in LittleBigPlanet. Before the online servers were shut down in September of 2021, you had the option to share your created level with the world and allow others to experience your level. This was a great way to connect with other players around the world and to see what others were doing within the game. While LBP was one of the main games of my childhood, there were definitely some awkward aspects of the game that I would’ve liked to see change for the future. A Playstation Portable version of LBP was released, but not only was it nothing like the console version, but it was just complete garbage to operate and not even worth mentioning.

LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011): The sequel release to LittleBigPlanet is by far one of the best games I’ve ever played. Media Molecule, the developers, completely revamped the aspects of the game and introduced so many new concepts while retaining the adorable Sackboy and the creation-based concept of the game. With this, your save data and everything you accomplished in the first game carries over into the second allowing you to continue your progress and keep track of your belongings. Your experience as the player changes in that not only could you experience platformer levels but you can create movies, participate in races, create your own music for your levels and control Sackbots, which function as robots you can program yourself. The Story Mode introduces a plot connecting all of the levels together: the mission to destroy the Negativitron befores it destroys the world. You venture to help out characters such as Larry Da Vinci, Clive Handforth, Avalon Centrifuge and more on a quest into space to defeat the menace and restore peace and creativity to Craftworld. The Story Mode retains a lot of the features from LittleBigPlanet such as the ability to play with others online or play alone, unlock minigames, costumes and materials, and provide a fun story to play without searching for player created levels. You can also publish your own levels, play in others’, and meet and connect with players from around the world. The amount of effort put into the sequel is very prominent and the success of the first game really helped the second to be as successful as it was. When the release of the game was announced in 2010 I was super excited after how much I enjoyed playing LittleBigPlanet and my expectations were exceeded. With the online server being shut down I don’t get the same experience I did when the game was at its peak, but I still enjoy playing it nonetheless. 

LittleBigPlanet Karting (2012): The concept for LittleBigPlanet Karting was very similar to that of ModNation Racers, a karting game released by the same developers for LBP Karting, while maintaining the creation-based aspect of the LBP franchise. There are various modes of karting the player can experience while playing the game such as Battle Mode, Treasure Hunt, Score Attacks and more. The Story Mode continues after the defeat of the Negativitron, Sackboy races The Hoard, who wants to steal Craftworld’s items to hoard them for himself. The Sackbots follow Sackboy in the quest to take back the items The Hoard stole from Craftworld. The features of Story Mode are similar to the previous LBP games and to ModNation Racers, where the conflict of interest continues to outrace you and creates tyranny and discourse in the racing world. The MyMoon on LBP Karting is similar to the previous LBP games except you can create race tracks instead of levels. While Karting wasn’t my favorite game, I played ModNation Racers considerably more, I was still very pleased with it and found a part of myself falling in love with Karting just as I did with the main LBP games. 

According to Media Molecule’s website, they are no longer making LBP games and are focusing more on their future with Dreams, a creation based game released in early 2020. The newest LBP universe game Sackboy: A Big Adventure was released in late 2020 as a spinoff to the main LBP games and is likely the last game featuring the beloved Sackboy that will ever be created. With the shutdown of the LBP online servers in 2021 and the takedown of the community site LBP.me, it seems as though LittleBigPlanet is dead, immortalized as a fond memory that cannot be revisited. 

Categories: Arts & Entertainment