Get to close to the side of a step or object and Sackboy with just half jump in play and fidget a bit in mid-air before coming back down again, unable to make it up onto the object with out backing up and and trying from a greater distance. A jump you make once that safely puts you in the middle of the next platform may very well drop you into the gap between the the next time you play, despite having jumped from the exact same spot. When I played Mega Man 2 back in the 80s, I could make a jump, and intuitively now when to turn in mid-air, where to jump on one platform so I’d land on the right spot ont he next, and so on. Its exactly the same as in the first game: twitchy, floaty, and somewhat unpredictable due to the physics engine. They didn’t do a thing to fix the jumping mechanic. I’m going to make this as short and sweet as I can. A good number of them are holdovers from the previous game, but that’s to be expected. The sound effects are all crisp and easily distinguishable from one another. He doesn’t need one, especially since, when playing online, the player’s words come out of his mouth. I’m glad they chose to keep Sackboy silent however. The voice acting is very well done, and in a style that fits the overall sense of whimsy to the game. When it comes to video game music, for me anyway, originality always wins out. There are music tracks here as well, but it seems like there’s a lot more orchestral composition than in the first game, and that’s good. Sure, there were some great songs, but it just felt like a bit of a cop out to me licensing music instead of composing a score for the game. I wasn’t really all that enamored with the soundtrack to the original game. it’s one of those games that other people come over and enjoy watching it as much as joining in. This is definitely the best looking platformer available on any system this generation.ĭespite the fact that you’re looking at what appear to be elementary school dioramas brought to life, the effects and visible wizardry of it all is just head and shoulders above much of what passes for “great graphics” these days. The lighting effects seems to be more dynamic, and there just seems to be even more going on at any given time than there was in the first game, and in spite of that the game runs better. There seems to be less horizontal screen tearing than in the original. The graphics are just are jaw dropping as they were in the original, but some improvements have been made. It’s not the most original storyline out there, but its a definite improvement over the original. Most of the characters, short of Sackboy himself, are now provided lines by voice actors, which also adds a new element to the game’s story telling.
Sackboy meets new characters along the way, and each level builds upon the storyline of the last. Sackboy has been recruited to help save LittleBigPlanet from the evil clutches of the Negativatron, an evil vacuum cleaner who is systematically sucking up every dream and idea and corrupting them to his own nefarious purposes. Events that occurred in one level had little to do with what happened in the next, for the most part. You were on a mission to save the thoughts and dreams of humans from someone called The Collector, but the levels themselves seemed thematically disjointed.
The original game didn’t really have much in the way of a storyline. So here comes Little Big Planet 2, with an expanded set of creation tools that gives players the ability to make almost any kind of game they can imagine, and that’s just great. But I still think its a pretty crappy platformer. I think it’s a fantastic educational tool for kids. I’ve watched my kid build some pretty hilarious stuff with it, and after giving it to him, his scores at school went through the roof in reading, writing, problem solving skills, and communication/cooperation.
My opinion of it over the past two plus years has not changed much. But from a pure gaming standpoint, I thought it was generic and had really horrible jumping mechanics. I appreciated the artistry, the originality, and the potential of its online community and creation tools. I was not the biggest fan of the original Little Big Planet.