The basic idea of LittleBigPlanet was to enable people to “Play, Create and Share” their ideas, creations, and games with other people, while also playing a platformer/story-based game using stickers, physics-based items, and more. On the surface, the game is a cute platforming game that lets you make custom levels and play with friends, but each game’s storyline revolves around a different part of humanity and emotion: LBP 1 explored loneliness and friendship, LBP 2 on negativity and flaws, and even the racing spin-off LittleBigPlanet Karting explores the whole concept of greed. Never has a video game ever had such an impact morally on my personality, and yet they do all this through whimsical platforming levels and lovely sound design. Media Molecule (the developers), alongside Stephen Fry (the amazing narrator and tutorial guide), beautifully explain to an audience that by working as a team, we can help get through hard times.
On the surface the game is a cute platforming game that lets you make custom levels and play with friends, but each game’s storyline revolves around a different part of humanity and emotion.
Each ‘world’ focuses on different parts of the globe, for example “The Wedding” is a Hispanic area using themes from the Day of the Dead festival, or “The Progress Emporium” using aesthetics, gadgets and characters centralised around 1950s American Consumerism. For a game aimed at such a wide audience (kids-adults), the way the game immerses you using concepts like this helps us gain a wider understanding of different cultures and history. Speaking of the soundtrack, not only does the game have original music and charming sound effects, but also music from real-world global artists like DEVO, Passion Pit, and Kinky.
While the game used to have a thriving online presence with people being able to join other players’ lobbies or publish custom levels for other people to try, Media Molecule unfortunately shut down all online servers due to repeated intense server hacking. While this is a set-back in the overall review of its current state, it does not take anything away from the tone or quality of the games. I remember playing so many community games while trying to collect ‘pins’ to show off on my profile, this probably explains why I’m such a massive achievement hunter now.
My favourite memories from this game definitely include forcing my Nan to play with me when everyone knows how terrible she is at gaming, playing the same levels over and over in “The Wilderness” just because I liked the soundtrack and weirdly going through all the “Bomb Survival” variants or ‘scary’ games like “Jeff the Killer” on the community section.
LittleBigPlanet isn’t perfect technically, LBP 3 is a buggy nightmare thanks to Sumo Digital. But the franchise is something I will always come back to if I need cheering up. Still waiting for LittleBigPlanet 4…