LittleBigPlanet will be out in under a month, giving the PlayStation 3 its first truly unique and innovative title. Other games on the system have been fantastic, but nothing holds a candle in terms of truly evolutionary concepts applied in a way likely impossible on any other system.

The graphics, obviously, are awesome. Everything looks realistic and much like whatever it is the developers tried to make it look like. Stone looks like stone, metal like metal, cardboard like, you guessed it, cardboard. Adding stickers onto different object allows you to color pretty much anything in the game, but the game consistently reminds you that creating awesome looking environments isn’t the real goal of the game. On the contrary, the levels are supposed to look low budget and adorable. It’s very hard not to make something look cute, no matter what the goal is, from creating a massive monster to a cardboard spaceship.

Level creation is…complicated, but rewarding. On the one hand, it’s very easy to unlock items by completing all of the tutorials, which are narrated by the brilliant Stephen Fry. On the other hand, it’s inherently difficult to create a 3D object, and it isn’t long before you’re able to feel the pain of game developers when things just don’t freaking work. Trying to create literally anything will be problematic at first, but with enough time and effort, the finished project is always worth it. Thanks to the PlayStation Eye allowing you to bring in pictures of objects nearly anything is possible, and it’s hard to think of something that couldn’t be created in LittleBigPlanet. I’m sure there are limitations, walls, and other insurmountable obstacles, but I haven’t found them, and it doesn’t look like anyone else has either.

Already, in the early days of the beta, the servers are filled with fantastic and wonderful levels. There was a translation of Space Invaders, with aliens moving down screen realistically as the sack boy must run around, firing weapons. There was a rocket-powered roller coaster that screams around the level, bouncing off the walls and following a track. There was a level where you need to fire a cannon at a dragon as it tries to attack back.

They managed to make level creation and sharing so easy that everyone who plays the game will likely do something and share it with friends, giving LittleBigPlanet the largest collection of levels in a platformer far before it comes out. I can’t imagine the insanity that will follow the game’s release – it will be something that the industry has never seen before. I'm not 100% sure if this will take Game of the Year from Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War 2, or Grand Theft Auto IV, but it definitely has a shot.

Oh, and check out the level I made above (or download it, search Tastykake).

 

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