File this one under “Perfect Sequels.”
In the late 2000’s, a magical game called LittleBigPlanet released for the PS3. On the surface, it was a cute 2.5D platformer with a simple Story Mode where you go through themed obstacle courses to make it from point A to point B. The visuals were beautiful and the sense of the world’s grand scale made your tiny hacky-sack person all the more endearing. Everything in the world looked like it was hand-crafted which made it apparent that they wanted you to tap into your imagination to fully enjoy the experience. You got to customize your little SackThing however you wanted and make them emote while you goofed around with your friends. You even got to customize the little ship that your character uses to select the levels you wanted to play.
While all of this was a great foundation, the Story Mode was simply means to an end: the developers wanted YOU to make your own levels like they did. Everything stated above is only a third of the game. Another significant part of the game is the Create Mode, which is the entire point of the hand-crafted theme that the game flaunts. In LBP, players could easily make their own levels using the powerful, yet easy-to-grasp level editor using all the goodies they collected in the Story Mode. The level editor seems overwhelming at first, but literally every aspect has a short tutorial. This might sound tedious, but each tutorial is optional, yet is narrated gently and delightfully by Stephen Fry who makes it fun to listen and learn. Afterward, you could go online and play all sorts of levels made by other users, whether it was a platformer, some sort of roleplaying map, a tech demo, a shark survival, monster truck rallies, fighting games with silly physics, PvP races, and the list goes on. Despite its primitive restrictions, people were capable of making truly magnificent things that wouldn’t seem possible at first glance, like working calculators or tic-tac-toe with an AI. Plus, the general concept of an online UGC video game was pretty novel at the time, especially on a console. Suffice to say, LBP was a fun, impressive game that really wanted you flex your creative muscles.
And then LittleBigPlanet 2 came along and obliterated LBP1 in every single aspect.
LBP2 takes everything that was great about LBP1 and cranks it up to11. Not only were there quality of life improvements across the board, but they did an exceptional job of filling in all the missing bits and pieces that you could possibly ask for. In the level editor, they added Logic Gates, which were little computer chips and other gadgets that gave you far more control over how anything and everything in your levels functioned. No longer did you have to rely on overly-complicated, yet primitive solutions to do something simple, you could just plop down a few Logic Gates and get it done in a minute. Plus, they gave you even more development tools at your disposal to make your levels more like a true video game. Enemies were easier to make, bosses were easier to make, multi-level narratives were easier to make and string together. There were lots of customizable power ups at your disposal that made creating your level around an interesting central mechanic easier. The new Story Mode was far more intricate and advanced than the old one, once again showcasing what was possible in the level editor. You could even make your own custom soundtrack with MIDI-like instruments if you wanted. You had SackBots which were NPCs you can change the behavior for, making them perform specific actions or just speak to the player. You could use a gadget called “the Controlinator” to make advanced vehicles, massive machines, or completely custom characters and bind it to your controller inputs. Players could now make things like Battleship, top-down racers, horror games, puzzles with serious depth, spectacular boss fights, collect-a-thons, survival gauntlets, and so much more. There were even people making feature length films with the new NPC system and cutscene tools, it was absolutely insane. To top it all off, if you had LBP1, you got to transfer EVERYTHING you obtained from LBP1 to LBP2. Music, clothes, building materials, objects, stickers, DLCs, your character’s outfits, everything. The amount of things you could do and how easy it was to build and play was truly mind-blowing. There's no doubt that this game has inspired people to pursue game development in their future.
Truly my only real complaint was the seemingly endless onslaught of DLC. It was cool that you could dress your character like Solid Snake or Ratchet or Jak or even Sonic with official costumes, but the prices would add up sort of quickly. Then there were level kits, where it was fairly common for them to lock an entirely new game mechanic like anti-gravity, wall-jumping, and gliding behind a paywall. By comparison, it was usually more worth it to get level kits, as they would have a small story mode, tons of new materials to work with, new music, a new central game mechanic, and even a few costumes thrown in for only a few bucks. Otherwise, they actually gave out quite a few free things from time to time.
Despite the years of experience between all the developers at Media Molecule, having LBP1 and 2 be their first games after forming a new company is astounding. When you play these games, it’s obvious that so much thought, love, and care went into them. For quite a few years, you could tell when Media Molecule made a game just based on the consistent quality, how detailed everything was and how there tends to be an emphasis on letting your creativity flow. Their mantra for their studio was to keep the amount of staff small so everyone could be tightly-knight and focused, which is a mentality that apparently inspired Hideo Kojima of all people when making his own studio. Their focus certainly shows in their games and LBP2 is easily my favorite game to come from their studio. Quite frankly, it’s also in my top 10 favorite games of the 2010’s.
In the late 2000’s, a magical game called LittleBigPlanet released for the PS3. On the surface, it was a cute 2.5D platformer with a simple Story Mode where you go through themed obstacle courses to make it from point A to point B. The visuals were beautiful and the sense of the world’s grand scale made your tiny hacky-sack person all the more endearing. Everything in the world looked like it was hand-crafted which made it apparent that they wanted you to tap into your imagination to fully enjoy the experience. You got to customize your little SackThing however you wanted and make them emote while you goofed around with your friends. You even got to customize the little ship that your character uses to select the levels you wanted to play.
While all of this was a great foundation, the Story Mode was simply means to an end: the developers wanted YOU to make your own levels like they did. Everything stated above is only a third of the game. Another significant part of the game is the Create Mode, which is the entire point of the hand-crafted theme that the game flaunts. In LBP, players could easily make their own levels using the powerful, yet easy-to-grasp level editor using all the goodies they collected in the Story Mode. The level editor seems overwhelming at first, but literally every aspect has a short tutorial. This might sound tedious, but each tutorial is optional, yet is narrated gently and delightfully by Stephen Fry who makes it fun to listen and learn. Afterward, you could go online and play all sorts of levels made by other users, whether it was a platformer, some sort of roleplaying map, a tech demo, a shark survival, monster truck rallies, fighting games with silly physics, PvP races, and the list goes on. Despite its primitive restrictions, people were capable of making truly magnificent things that wouldn’t seem possible at first glance, like working calculators or tic-tac-toe with an AI. Plus, the general concept of an online UGC video game was pretty novel at the time, especially on a console. Suffice to say, LBP was a fun, impressive game that really wanted you flex your creative muscles.
And then LittleBigPlanet 2 came along and obliterated LBP1 in every single aspect.
LBP2 takes everything that was great about LBP1 and cranks it up to11. Not only were there quality of life improvements across the board, but they did an exceptional job of filling in all the missing bits and pieces that you could possibly ask for. In the level editor, they added Logic Gates, which were little computer chips and other gadgets that gave you far more control over how anything and everything in your levels functioned. No longer did you have to rely on overly-complicated, yet primitive solutions to do something simple, you could just plop down a few Logic Gates and get it done in a minute. Plus, they gave you even more development tools at your disposal to make your levels more like a true video game. Enemies were easier to make, bosses were easier to make, multi-level narratives were easier to make and string together. There were lots of customizable power ups at your disposal that made creating your level around an interesting central mechanic easier. The new Story Mode was far more intricate and advanced than the old one, once again showcasing what was possible in the level editor. You could even make your own custom soundtrack with MIDI-like instruments if you wanted. You had SackBots which were NPCs you can change the behavior for, making them perform specific actions or just speak to the player. You could use a gadget called “the Controlinator” to make advanced vehicles, massive machines, or completely custom characters and bind it to your controller inputs. Players could now make things like Battleship, top-down racers, horror games, puzzles with serious depth, spectacular boss fights, collect-a-thons, survival gauntlets, and so much more. There were even people making feature length films with the new NPC system and cutscene tools, it was absolutely insane. To top it all off, if you had LBP1, you got to transfer EVERYTHING you obtained from LBP1 to LBP2. Music, clothes, building materials, objects, stickers, DLCs, your character’s outfits, everything. The amount of things you could do and how easy it was to build and play was truly mind-blowing. There's no doubt that this game has inspired people to pursue game development in their future.
Truly my only real complaint was the seemingly endless onslaught of DLC. It was cool that you could dress your character like Solid Snake or Ratchet or Jak or even Sonic with official costumes, but the prices would add up sort of quickly. Then there were level kits, where it was fairly common for them to lock an entirely new game mechanic like anti-gravity, wall-jumping, and gliding behind a paywall. By comparison, it was usually more worth it to get level kits, as they would have a small story mode, tons of new materials to work with, new music, a new central game mechanic, and even a few costumes thrown in for only a few bucks. Otherwise, they actually gave out quite a few free things from time to time.
Despite the years of experience between all the developers at Media Molecule, having LBP1 and 2 be their first games after forming a new company is astounding. When you play these games, it’s obvious that so much thought, love, and care went into them. For quite a few years, you could tell when Media Molecule made a game just based on the consistent quality, how detailed everything was and how there tends to be an emphasis on letting your creativity flow. Their mantra for their studio was to keep the amount of staff small so everyone could be tightly-knight and focused, which is a mentality that apparently inspired Hideo Kojima of all people when making his own studio. Their focus certainly shows in their games and LBP2 is easily my favorite game to come from their studio. Quite frankly, it’s also in my top 10 favorite games of the 2010’s.