LittleBigPlanet Catch-all

*Legion* wrote:

(1) Is it indeed not possible to rate a level unless you've COMPLETED it, even if you've played it? So, if something is a near-uncompleteable piece of crap, I have no way of telling people it's a near-uncompleteable piece of crap unless I do the impossible (and undesirable) and complete it?

Duly noted, but compared to having some ignorant players judging levels based on shallow prejudice, this is probably the lesser evil.

*Legion* wrote:

I love this game.

I am very unimpressed with some of the menu stuff, though.

Someone clue me in:

(1) Is it indeed not possible to rate a level unless you've COMPLETED it, even if you've played it? So, if something is a near-uncompleteable piece of crap, I have no way of telling people it's a near-uncompleteable piece of crap unless I do the impossible (and undesirable) and complete it?

Not so, by opening up the menu for a level then clicking R1 all the way to the last panel you can leave a comment on a level you've never played.

(2) WTF is with all the blank tags? "Pick a tag for this level: (blank) (blank) Annoying (blank)" ??

I dunno, it is nice being able to pick a blank tag if you don't have any strong opinions about the level, or just want to quickly get through the tagging screen. However there souldn't be more than 1 per page.

(3) There's no way to search for "most hearted" or something like that?

That would be a really good feature.

My second creation.

The fuel tank.

Now with 100% more "real" David Caruso. The PSEye is a wonderful contraption.

AmazingZoidberg wrote:

Not so, by opening up the menu for a level then clicking R1 all the way to the last panel you can leave a comment on a level you've never played.

That's good to know, but I'd still prefer to be able to tag it.

I dunno, it is nice being able to pick a blank tag if you don't have any strong opinions about the level, or just want to quickly get through the tagging screen. However there souldn't be more than 1 per page.

Yeah. I don't mind a blank tag existing, but having tons of them is annoying.

So when does the beta end? I thought it was supposed to be up already.

Got in beta. Roommate digs it.
He went and got a PSeye on friday just to for LBP.
Some other people got codes in our apartment complex and playing together is tons of fun.
Running through levels by your self is neat, experiencing what other people came up with, but with friends its a blast.
Dragging people off edges, slapping them around to get ahead, starting a vehicle and killing the rest of your team, not going for objectives just to be the first to get to points, its great.

I had a blast with it the couple of days I got to play it. And I was sad for a minute when i turned on the ps3 at 8pm tonight to see it was expired I'd never researched the "time" it was going to expire, just the day. As luck would have it, I got into a game with our fearless boss today and about 3 minutes into it, my daughter woke up from her nap and I had to hand the game off to my little brother... who quit and started making an "oogaba" car in the creator...

Also, was there a way to stop people from just popping into your pod? my nephew was playing around in there and 2 guys showed up and just started spam slapping him and blocking the screen with an enlarged sticker stamp thing.

Under the start menu there is an option for manage players (if you are the host/leader at the time). That should allow you to kick anybody who's being unruly. Also if you are following someone else you can leave the online game and return to your own pod from the start menu.

Yeah I knew about those. and i quickly kicked them both from the pod. It kind of upset my older brother that someone could just pop into your personal space like that and grief you.

My wife is still playing LBP, as she hasn't turned the game off since it closed! She's still able to get into new levels and stuff.

Though she reports that the "cool levels" only show 3 pages worth now.

We're gonna see how long this lasts.

OK, so the beta is now closed and I've had some time to collect my thoughts on the experience. So here's my LBPB debrief with some things I'm really excited about and some things I hope to see change in the retail release.

Lets start with the gripes:

-I want a way to import sounds in some fashion. Even if that means I need to record them myself with a microphone. I understand this introduces a huge avenue for copyright infringement but I really think my fellow level creators would really appreciate added tool.

-I want some form of party system. Online works really well, being able to quickly join/invite a buddy from your friends list is intuitive and quick. The downside is that I believe you have to play levels online together. If you don't already have four friends linked up, then you will find yourself randomly matched up with other players. I would rather be able to run around with 2 people I know than have a full game where I don't know half the people.

-I want some tweaks to the menu system. The menu system that exists is functional and intuitive for the most part. It was clearly designed so that gamers of all experience levels can quickly jump in and begin playing with as little text as possible interfering with the experience. However this means that certain, more sophisticated functions are non-existent. I would love to see slightly more complicated menu system (possibly designed to mimic a web browser) that allows for searches by rating, key word, author, date published etc.

-I want people to get headsets. I know that I'm just as guilty of this as others. PS3 gamers tend to be a quieter lot than our 360 brethren. However this is the first game where I truely feel that I want to be in constant communication with those I'm playing with, especially on levels that are cooperative in nature. To this end I've been toying with my own headset (which is finicky) and I got a PSEye (which has a built in microphone that seems to work quite well).

OK on to the positives:

-Creation is awesome. I did not enter the beta intending to do a ton of level creation. In fact the philosophy I approached the game with was that I wouldn't make much, but I would gladly enjoy other people's work. That didn't happen (as evidenced by this thread). Creating and publishing was simple enough that I really got into that aspect of the game, and I logged more hours in the creation mode than I did in the gameplay mode. I spent two nights awake till 4am toiling on the two levels I've shown you guys, and I'm sure I'll be working hard on some more when the retail product ships.

-The tutorials were fun. I think this was the reason I enjoyed creation so much. The designers went out of their way to make learning to use the tools just as fun and charming as learning to play the game.

-The Media Molecule levels are very well put together. They introduce you to gameplay and encourage replay by providing you with materials for creation. They're smart, cute and often funny. I can't wait to see more.

-There are very creative people out there. In the time I did put into playing other peoples levels I saw a ton of really clever/funny/ingenious/touching levels out there. Everything from a recreation of the key set-pieces form God of War to a rocket car that played a player-piano style rendition of 'Sweet Child of Mine.'

-This is just the tip of the iceberg. The beta showcased what several thousand motivated people can create in a matter of days with a limited tool set and few basic materials. I cannot wait to see what the LittleBigPopulous can create with the full retail tools and all of the unlockable materials.

So those are my final thoughts. I hope to see everybody's wonderful creations online once the retail release hits stores.

Got my wife to play LittleBigPlanet with me this afternoon and she loved it. She said that things that typically would frustrate her in other games, like missing jumps, etc. didn't bother her at all because there's no real pressure to complete levels in the game. If you aren't having fun with something, just mess around with the level by slapping stickers and objects down until you tire of it and move on to a new level. That sort of casual atmosphere really appeals to her.

I'm curious to see how much is different between the beta and the final game. Will there really be many changes to the online system or did we pretty much see the real deal? I do have a few minor issues with the game, especially the auto-jumping backwards, but overall I find it works incredibly well. I didn't even get a chance to play around with the level editor even though I went through a bunch of tutorials. Most of my time was spent exploring the MediaMolecule levels and stuff users had made. I'm impressed at how much replay value/hidden content is in the premade levels. Those alone should be fun to work through, especially coop.

I sort of have a feeling this may be one of the most "important" games this generation. It ushers in a whole new concept of community creation and the MM guys really seem to have nailed the controls and the aesthetics. The simple control scheme but impressive depth to the creation tools is something all developers should experience and learn from.

Neato, a marriage proposal in LBP

Well, that just convinced me to buy LBP. My wife and I preordered it from Amazon yesterday.

I wish I'd have thought to record my level (Dr. Horrible's Copyright Infringing LBP Level) for youtube. I even have one of those USB converters that I bought for transferring VHS home movies to DVD. Oh well, it's gone now. At least AmazingZoidberg played it.

The level creation was amazing, but I had a few problems.

First, I was unable to figure out what conditions needed to be met to get an object to be fixed to the floor. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, and I never figured out why.

Second, I couldn't get the creature legs to work. When I was trying to recreate the "brand new day" scene, I built a giant Dr. Horrible and wanted to put legs on him to make him walk, but I couldn't make him move at all. I tried legs, I tried wheels, I put extra eyes and brains on it, I tried shrinking it so it wasn't so huge, but nothing worked. I'm sure I was just overlooking something, but the tutorials weren't all that helpful.

For some reason I had a hard time figuring out wheels. I tried putting rubber wheels on a metal car with the bolts, but they wouldn't turn. I was able to get other materials working as wheels, though. Does the rubber have a high coefficient of friction in the game?

Finally, I hated the text entering system. This is not a PSP game. We've got a whole screen to work with, so why am I entering text as if I were on a cell phone? Next time I'll hook up my wireless keyboard.

But let me not go all Gaald here, and list some happy thoughts :

I was agreeably surprised how easy it was to get into online play. I haven't done a lot of online play in any of my games (the last time I did was, I believe, Half Life Deathmatch. The first Half Life, mind you. Not HL2), so I wasn't sure what to expect. LBP made it painless, like pretty much everything else in the game.

I'd like to second AmazingZoidberg's comment on community creativity. I went in expecting to largely avoid the online levels, because I was sure there's be fifty levels that revolve around genetalia and a handful of of other levels consisting entirely of pyramids made from various materials. Not so. There were some truly excellent levels out there, a number of which doing things that I couldn't even figure out how they did what they did in some places.

The Missus and I are definitely going to have to spring for the second controller at this point. Coop play was a lot of fun.

I can see in-game speech being important, and I even have a bluetooth headset. Unfortunately, the only time I have to play the game is when my daughter is asleep, and she is really sensitive to sound (It doesn't help that the apartment has some weird acoustics that funnels any little sound directly at her room) so I probably won't be making myself heard.

I am really looking forward to the release game. I want to make a train that uses piston driven wheels. I'm pretty sure it's possible, even though I had no luck making it happen over the weekend.

Oodles of potential there. I hope this game does big numbers, as it surely deserves to.

Idunno, the beta just kind of confirms my prior thoughts, which is that while this is probably really a great buy for people who want to nurture dreams of being a game designer, it's not really for me. After 2-3 days of playing through the levels I sort of felt like I saw all there was to see. I mean, the MGS level has codec messages (witty), the wipeout level has a rocket car (gotcha), the colossus level has a horse (alright). While the concept that some one else had put these levels together on their own was interesting, once you get past that you realize none of the levels are all too entertaining. I'd consider a $20 LBP lite with no creation tools just to play through the occasional brilliant level that comes about, but that's really it. I'll just keep an eye on this title and see what comes of it, but if I do end up purchasing it it'll probably be when I can find it on ebay for 30-35ish used.

Sidenote: after doing just about all my multiplayer on live it's aways jarring to come back to the dead silence of PSN. Sony really goofed by not just including at janky usb headset at a minimum :-\

DeeVoc wrote:

Idunno, the beta just kind of confirms my prior thoughts, which is that while this is probably really a great buy for people who want to nurture dreams of being a game designer, it's not really for me. After 2-3 days of playing through the levels I sort of felt like I saw all there was to see. I mean, the MGS level has codec messages (witty), the wipeout level has a rocket car (gotcha), the colossus level has a horse (alright). While the concept that some one else had put these levels together on their own was interesting, once you get past that you realize none of the levels are all too entertaining. I'd consider a $20 LBP lite with no creation tools just to play through the occasional brilliant level that comes about, but that's really it. I'll just keep an eye on this title and see what comes of it, but if I do end up purchasing it it'll probably be when I can find it on ebay for 30-35ish used.

To each his own, I suppose. But there were quite a few non-themed levels that were pretty good. I thought World of Color was excellent, and there was a horror level in a language I didn't understand that was pretty good.

I think most of the levels we saw during the Beta were proof-of-concept levels. I suspect a number of people slapped some stuff together to get it published under the deadline. I know that's what I did-- if I'd had another week or two to work on the level I published I know I could have done better. Given that, I'd say the beta was a great success at showing the potential of the software.

Once things really get going, I'm sure there will be some crap, a lot of mediocre levels and a few really awesome levels. Bell curves are like that.

For me, this is a rare day-one purchase (Actually, it's a day -9 purchase, since I preordered it yesterday from Amazon). I like to reward game designers for trying something that's actually interesting and has potential to be good. I have never been disappointed, even if the execution left something to be desired, which doesn't look like the case with LBP.

DeeVoc wrote:

Idunno, the beta just kind of confirms my prior thoughts, which is that while this is probably really a great buy for people who want to nurture dreams of being a game designer, it's not really for me. After 2-3 days of playing through the levels I sort of felt like I saw all there was to see. I mean, the MGS level has codec messages (witty), the wipeout level has a rocket car (gotcha), the colossus level has a horse (alright). While the concept that some one else had put these levels together on their own was interesting, once you get past that you realize none of the levels are all too entertaining.

Did you try any multiplayer, online or local? I think that's when the game really starts to shine. Yeah, the mechanics are fun, but having another person to share the experience with and interact in the worlds with you really adds a lot of fun.

Some of the enjoyment comes from making your own fun, too, which is what my wife said she really likes about it. For example, on one of the premade levels with Humpty Dumpty, we knocked him over but then worked to put him back together again with me inside. We managed to pull it off and had fun doing it. Sure it was goofy and pointless but the fact that the game lets you play around with it like that is what I think will attract the more casual player. There's no reason to get frustrated because you can always just go try a different level.

Also, given the relatively short nature of the beta period (yeah, I know some have had it longer) I think the amount of good user-made content was downright impressive. It was also nice to see the number of users having tried some levels over 100,000... if that's just for the beta then this bodes well for the success of the game.

The horror level was in spanish. It was fun.
I think that we are going to see a lot more levels and a lot more play styles.
Look at the player controlled zeppelin.
Look at tie jumping.
These are areas where LBP has jumped out of being a platformer.
Its a great platformer, but it can be other things and do other things and that's where the opportunity for growth comes from.
Also, I have a Rube Goldberg hidden inside me.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

Sure it was goofy and pointless but the fact that the game lets you play around with it like that is what I think will attract the more casual player. There's no reason to get frustrated because you can always just go try a different level.

I think this might be an issue - for me (and I believe a lot of gamers) the structure and the goal *are* the game. Without a set challenge or goal to aim for we feel lost. Just mucking about is fine for a while, but to sustain interest long-term we need some sort of sense of progression. I guess to some extent the standard linear game structure with a difficulty curve requiring learning new skills as you go is comforting.

I never bothered with anything outside the storyline missions in GTAIV, and the few times I've played the Sims 2 I've played it as a game with the goal of maximising the targets it sets you, without bothering with any of the toolbox/decoration aspects at all, which I know is completely different from the way my girlfriend plays it.

Maybe that's the wrong attitude to take, I don't know. Perhaps I'll pick this up as a fun game to play with the other half.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

Did you try any multiplayer, online or local? I think that's when the game really starts to shine. Yeah, the mechanics are fun, but having another person to share the experience with and interact in the worlds with you really adds a lot of fun.

Yes. By far, the most fun I've had with this game is when playing with my wife. Some of the best moments have been when our attempts at traversing a level have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Gut-busting laugh attack moments. Having a real physics model allows for interactions that don't go quite as planned...

Eurogamer: 9/10.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php...

IGN: 9.5/10 with some significant details on the tools and what they didn't like.
http://is.gd/3YSo

*Legion* wrote:

Yes. By far, the most fun I've had with this game is when playing with my wife. Some of the best moments have been when our attempts at traversing a level have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Gut-busting laugh attack moments. Having a real physics model allows for interactions that don't go quite as planned...

QFT a random guy popped into a level i was playing once and even though we couldn't talk i could tell we were both having a blast. it was one of those silly rocket car levels and sometimes it would hit a bump just right and send us and the car flailing around and end up splatting on the ground, shattering the car and usually squishing us. Good times with a random nameless, voiceless person...

I had a great time co-op with Zoidberg, I still have a flower around my neck that i don't know how to remove as proof.

Sivok and I also had a couple of levels, some crazy rocket car level, and the Italian horror level. So fun, I laughed out loud at least twice. My wife was concerned.

I thought I might be on the fence about this game, but the potential is fantastic. I then thought, why not wait a couple of weeks or months, to give people time to create levels, but I can't wait that long. I want to have some 4 player co-op today.

Day 1 purchase for me. Yesterday my daughter and I spent 4 hours building a level and I can't remember the last time we laughed so hard.

boogle wrote:

Look at the player controlled zeppelin.

Oh man! That level was awesome! "Follow the red tape!"

Was that the same level where you had to platform your way through a dinosaur's bowels? Because that level was pretty freakin' sweet too.

Jonnypolite wrote:

I had a great time co-op with Zoidberg, I still have a flower around my neck that i don't know how to remove as proof.

Har! He put one of those on the back of my head while I was selecting a level in my pod. I got back at him by putting the same flower on his face, and he retaliated by planting eyestalks all over my head.

I deleted the flower, but I resolved to keeping the eye stalks.

jonnypolite wrote:

Sivok and I also had a couple of levels, some crazy rocket car level, and the Italian horror level. So fun, I laughed out loud at least twice. My wife was concerned.

Yeah that was fun. The scared Sh**less faces we were both donning made it all the better. and the rocket car careening to god knows where was hilarious as well. I really need a headset though.

I believe it was Zoidberg who I joined up with last yesterday. he had found a truly awesome level with big block puzzle where you had to arrange the blocks to form a picture. THEN you had guide a ball through a series of holes by pulling levers back and forth to open and close paths... THEN you had to memorize stickers and put them in a certain order on the wall... thats as far as we got. We ran out of time... oh, did i mention it was a RACE? It was hard enough by itself.

Sivok wrote:

I believe it was Zoidberg who I joined up with last yesterday. he had found a truly awesome level with big block puzzle where you had to arrange the blocks to form a picture. THEN you had guide a ball through a series of holes by pulling levers back and forth to open and close paths... THEN you had to memorize stickers and put them in a certain order on the wall... thats as far as we got. We ran out of time... oh, did i mention it was a RACE? It was hard enough by itself.

That was awesome! I can't wait to dig into similar puzzle-oriented levels in the full release.

Did anyone ever find the star sticker?

rabbit wrote:

Did anyone ever find the star sticker?

I believe it was on the 3rd story level near the end of the level. Hanging from a bird.

There were a couple of annoying places to find stickers on the story levels, the one i had the hardest time finding and eventually found by accident was BEHIND a checkpont door on the second level.

rabbit wrote:

Did anyone ever find the star sticker?

I found it, but I can't remember where.

boogle wrote:
rabbit wrote:

Did anyone ever find the star sticker?

I found it, but I can't remember where.

So did I, and same here.