61 Frames Per Second : little big planet

Survival of the Knittest: How To Make Better LittleBigPlanet Challenges

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet delivered on its promise of providing players with all the tools they would need to design their own dream stages. Unfortunately, we then all learned that building a satisfying game level is pretty damn hard. Thankfully, a few of the cool kids from Media Molecule's design team put together this very helpful tips video, reviewing everything you need to make your survival challenges successful as compelling game experiences. They even show a few examples of excellent user-generated survival challenges to show what those people are doing right:

So, lots more switches, basically.

That reminds me, I really need to finish that stage I started building with my sister over the holidays. I left off swinging from the biplane onto a rocketing unicorn... but how am I going to get li'l sackboy over to those shooting star cars before the dragon breathes fire all over the cloud platforms?

Related articles:
Mega Man 9: Powered Up and LittleBigGalaxyMan
The 61FPS Review: Little Big Planet - Part 1 & Part 2
If Sales Numbers Mattered, LittleBigPlanet's Commercial Would Be Appealing
Sony Might Just Hate You

Mega Man 9: Powered Up and LittleBigGalaxyMan

John Constantine — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Every now and again, I curse the internet and its countless paths. It’s easy to get lost in here. it’s easy to lost literal hours of your life on completely meaningless, mindless drivel. How many times have you, dear reader, fallen into a YouTube spiral, clicking related video after related video until the moving images no longer hold meaning? Every URL is perilous I tell you. Then I come to my senses and remember the all important truth about the 21st century: the internet is awesome. As is meaningless, drivel, and the access we have to it.

Despite my recent renaissance with the game, I probably wouldn’t have found out about this brave soul’s Mega Man: Powered Up adventures if it wasn't for aimless internet wandering. They've made a close-to-perfect recreation of Galaxy Man’s stage from Mega Man 9. Behold:

It does, however, show the limitations of Mega Man: Powered Up’s versatility as a device for recreating classic Mega Man. Mega Man 1’s levels are faithfully preserved in the core Powered Up game but it’s impossible to replicate the wide-open rooms in Galaxy Man’s stage without turning them into multiple areas. All the same, very cool.

And, internet spirals being what they are, this video led me directly into the arms of another Galaxy Man recreation, this time in Mega Man: Powered Up’s descendant, LittleBigPlanet. This one’s obviously less perfect, but is still swell. It also helps highlight the merits of Mega Man 9’s lo-fi presentation; can you imagine how lame a Mega Man platformer would be if it actually looked like this?

Related links:

Little Big Trailblazer: Revisiting Mega Man Powered Up, User-Generated Content Pioneer
Mega Man 9 Bosses Look Like Mega Man Bosses
More Downloadable Remakes! More, Says I!
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2

Star Ocean and the HD-JRPG Conundrum

John Constantine — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

After literal years of anticipation on the part of geeks across the world, Square-Enix will finally release Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope for the Xbox 360 on February 24th, 2009. It’s a momentous occasion for the genre. Star Ocean is the first A-list JRPG franchise to make the leap to HD consoles. You can argue that Tales of Vesperia earned the honor first, but Namco’s Tales franchise is more a brand/masthead than a bonafide franchise, one even more diluted than the Final Fantasy heading. I’ve never cared for the Star Ocean series’ battle system – Penny Arcade said it best when they described Star Ocean’s battles as “deciding which character gets molested by lizard men” – and its science-fiction narrative has always been more interesting in concept than in execution. I want to be excited about Star Ocean 4, but not because I feel like I’m missing out on a series that so many other gamers seem to love. I just want to be excited about an HD-JRPG.

JRPGs have been enjoying a renaissance on the DS, not unlike the one they had on the PS1 some twelve years back, but the genre has been woefully underserved on the 360 and PS3. Half-baked efforts like Enchanted Arms and Eternal Sonata, janky action-based experiments like Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant, lumbering traditionalist games like the aforementioned Vesperia, and the twin disappointments from Hironobu Sakaguchi, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, are all we lovers of leveling and melodrama have had to sink our teeth into since the 360 launched in 2005. Why? Why is it that the best JRPGs to come out in 2008 were either re-releases or games made on decade-old hardware?

The most obvious answer is Japan. Not a little has been written about the decline and stagnation of the Japanese games industry, so it’s no wonder that their number-one genre has suffered alongside the console market in the transition to HD. The answer is slightly more complicated though. The disintegration of traditional genres has defined console gaming over the past few years. Look at Call of Duty 4, a game that transcends the traditional first-person shooter mold by making RPG-style character growth an essential component of its multi-player modes. Or take Little Big Planet, a game which is a platformer at its core, but whose real appeal is in molding the game into whatever you want it to be. Shooters are no longer just shooters, platformers aren’t just platformers. JRPGs have yet to successfully transcend the boundaries of design tradition, and attempts to grow the genre, like The Last Remnant, have been underfunded.

I hope that the 360 and PS3 get a JRPG as exciting and adventurous as Persona 3 and 4, and I hope that game gets made soon. But I’m starting to wonder if videogames finally have their genre equivalent of jazz: an art form that’s also an evolutionary dead end.

Related links:

Why, God, Why: More SaGa Games on the Way
Your JRPG Narrative is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher
Pay-Per-Grind: Tales of Vesperia Let’s You Level With Cash
Whatcha Playing: Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Low-Rent RPGs: A Good Idea

Worst Christmas Ever?

Cole Stryker — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome back. Hope you had a wonderful holiday. Mine was great, except for one thing: This was the first year in my entire life that I didn't get a single video game!*

That's right, my 25th Christmas has come and gone without the sight of a familiarly rectangular box under the tree. My folks weren't feeling especially grinchy. There just was nothing new for the Wii that I was even slightly interested in.

I have always been a Nintendo apologist. I championed the Wii from the moment it was announced. I didn't like the direction Microsoft and Sony were headed. I thought Nintendo would be the console for hardcore gamers who weren't necessarily graphics fetishists. Boy did I turn out to be wrong. All the cool, quirky games like Nobi Nobi Boy, Little Big Planet, and Braid have been released for the Xbox and PS3.

And that's why my Wii is headed for eBay.

*I did get a set of Wustoff Ninja Kitchen Knives though, so there's that.

Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 3

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Catching up? Read part 1 and part 2.

5 - The World Ends With You (DS):
The insanely ambitious action-JRPG probably makes the most use of all the DS hardware has to offer of all DS software with the possible exception of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and even then The World Ends With You does it with so much more style and flair that the comparison seems woefully unfair. It's clear that Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts team put years of thought and research into what the DS could and could not do and the result is a game that breaks all expectations like so many angsty teenage hearts. It takes a truly great game to affect me outside of my gaming time, and much like Wii Fit got me thinking about jogging to the train every morning, The World Ends With You got me wearing pins on my bag for the first time since college, picking out just the right ones that may, someday, save my life in heated battle. Oh lord, did I love that dual-screened battle system...

4 - PixelJunk Eden (PS3):
2008 will go down in the history books as the year that downloadable games finally caught on. Okay, maybe not, but it sure feels like they finally delivered on the promise we'd heard for so long: fantastic independent games delivered straight to your home console, no retail environment required, at competitive prices. I loved echochrome and Cubello, and there is no denying the charm and brilliance of Braid and World of Goo, but the one that completely stole my heart and my thumbs was PixelJunk Eden. Not since Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol have I so enjoyed making flowers bloom. Not since Circus Atari have I so enjoyed soaring upwards into monochromatic point markers. Not since spring break have I so enjoyed atmospheric techno and pulsing colors.

3 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii):
The biggest-selling game of the year was easily one of the most anticipated, and while it may not be as fondly remembered as its Gamecube predecessor, Super Smash Bros Brawl delivered everything expected of it and then some. The frenetic multiplayer brawling was back, as always, with more characters than ever, including unlikely new faves like Lucas and Diddy Kong and first-time-ever non-Nintendo characters Snake and Sonic. Adventure mode came with an epic, if somewhat vague, storyline complete with luscious CGI cutscenes and gameplay and level design in no way dissimilar to the SNES classic Kirby Super Star (one of my all-time favorites). Classic, All-Star, Multi-Man, Events, Target Smash, pretty much every feature of Super Smash Bros Melee came back bigger and more beefed-up. Of course, the big feature of Brawl was access to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, being able to fight people from around the world, either total strangers or your own friend lists, sending your friends video replays of your greatest battles, receiving new stages that your friends built in the surprisingly engaging stage builder, even betting on the brawls of total strangers in Spectator mode. What was my favorite feature? Taking snapshots, of course:

2 - LittleBigPlanet (PS3):
It is hard not to fall in love with LittleBigPlanet. The art direction, the music, the narrative and general use-your-imagination, make-whatever-you-want gestalt is sometimes intoxicating. I've already written at length about the charming adventures of Sackboy, so I won't reiterate the points of my review found here and here. I will say this: LittleBigPlanet so far is the only disc-based game that has made me happy I own a PS3 rather than an XBox or PS2. The endless potential of user-generated content guarantees that LittleBigPlanet will always be exactly as fun and exciting as you want it to be, if not moreso.

1 - de Blob (Wii):
Yes, my absolute favorite game of the year is on the Wii. No, that game was not made by Nintendo. No, I'm not messing with you. de Blob is, without a doubt, the happiest a game has made me since I first played Yoshi's Island on the Super Nintendo and relished in its blatant disregard for flashy CGI and polygons in favor of engrossing gameplay and a unique and heartwarming aesthetic. As a young progressive, I rally behind its anti-corporate, pro-independent artist storyline. As an audiophile, I bliss out to the interactively escalating soundtrack, as I've mentioned before, twice. As a solo gamer, I delight in the variety of challenges. As a social gamer, the multi-player paint-fests get my teeth gritting in a ferocious grin. If you have a Wii and enjoy playing any games that do not involve simulating sports/exercise/music playing, get de Blob. There, that's my review, just flippin' play de Blob because it's the best damn game that came out all year, and 2008 was an amazing year for games.

Part 1
Part 2

Related Articles:
10 Games Nadia Played Instead of Working: The World Ends With You, Super Smash Bros Brawl
Bob's Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order: Audiosurf, Braid, Grand Theft Auto IV
Joe's Top 10 Games of 2008 - Special Jury Prizes
What Amber Didn't Play in 2008
Time Magazine's Top 10 Games of 2008

Little Big Trailblazer: Revisiting Mega Man Powered Up, User-Generated Content Pioneer

John Constantine — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

When I wrote up Where Is the PSP a few days back, I left out the fact that I’m largely responsible for the neglect of my own little Sony portable. Not because I haven’t been buying games, but because I haven’t taken the time to properly equip the thing to take full advantage of its potential. Up until yesterday, I had been using the same 32MB memory stick that came with my launch PSP back in 2005, pretty much cutting me off from any and all downloadable content available and, more often than not, limiting my ability to even update its firmware. Well, thanks to some good ol’fashioned Black Friday scavenging, my PSP has eight honking gigabytes to play with. I updated the firmware (I was a full version behind apparently), browsed the recently launched PSP PSN store (functional!), and grabbed some demos (Syphon Filter lives up to its reputation). But once the house cleaning and redecoration was finished, I moved on to the real impetus behind the upgrade: finally exploring Mega Man Powered Up’s DLC and user-generated levels.

This remake of Mega Man’s original adventure is really the unsung harbinger of the current gaming zeitgeist. Not only is it a lavish remake of a two-dimensional classic, not only did it lay the groundwork for Mega Man’s triumphant 8-bit rebirth, but it boasts one of console and portable gaming’s beefiest level creation tools. You can make all sorts of devious challenges, chock full of all the killer platforming, shooting, and bottomless pits any proper Mega Man needs, and then upload them to Powered Up’s easy to navigate web portal. Sure it sounds like a rote addition to any flagship game here at the end of 2008, but keep in mind that Powered Up came out almost three years ago. This is long before folks were singing the praises of Halo 3’s Forge, a solid year before people even knew Little Big Planet existed, and it’s all on a portable. The available levels, and there are many, are pretty swell after a random sampling. There’s even a token Super Mario Bros. 1-1 recreation.

Powered Up is also something of a cautionary tale. Capcom supported Powered Up with regular and free DLC, including asset packs for level creation (Ghosts ‘N Goblins level tools rule) alongside all sorts of extras like unique challenge course levels for every character in the game (every robot master is playable in every part of the game) and a plethora of, um, costumes for Roll (sexy kitty Roll? Sheesh, Japan…). But, after months of DLC, Capcom stopped because no one freaking bought Mega Man Powered Up! The lesson here is that, no matter how great your game, no matter how well you support it, no matter how great its ongoing features, it doesn’t mean people will play. Here’s hoping Media Molecule’s initial success holds for longer than a single year.

You can pick up Mega Man Powered Up for $12.00 on Amazon. Go. Go buy it now. If you do and make some levels, shoot me an email at johnc at nerve dot com, and I will play the bejesus out of it before posting the goodness right here.

Related links:

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2
Mega Man's Nightmare: A Hard Hat With a Strategy
Games We Will Never Get to Play: Mega Man Mania AKA Game Boy Anniversary Collection
Mega Man is a Dick
The 61FPS Review: LittleBigPlanet - Part 2
Four More Games That ARE Awesome Remade In LittleBigPlanet

The 61FPS Review: LittleBigPlanet - Part 2

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

My, what a difference a month makes.This time last month I was just about ready to proclaim LittleBigPlanet the late great hope for 21st century video games. Upon completing the on-disc single-player game, there was nothing left to do but explore the multi-player and user-generated options. This is where the game was truly supposed to shine, the "fun" that the advertising keeps referring to.

The good news is that local multi-player is pretty great. Most of the pre-made stages include optional challenges that require teamwork and cooperation and being able to turn to your friend and discuss strategies and enact them instantly is smooth and delightful. Playing online, however, is a tremendous crap shoot. There's no way to really communicate, so play goes from cooperative to competitive instantaneously, which becomes a problem when players share respawn points. If two players attempt to cross a bridge and both fail, they return to the continue gate with two "lives" lost and the game ends twice as quickly. Four players and you've got a recipe for instantaneous game over.

As I mentioned before, the user-creation tools are impressively deep and fantastically easy to use if you're willing to sit through a series of tutorials that rival the on-disc stages in length. If you can dream up a wacky contraption, odds are good you can make it if you're willing to think about all that goes into it. LittleBigPlanet promises endless replay value thanks to its community of constantly-updated user-created stages, and while the patchwork globe interface for finding these stages is novel and charming, and the game certainly can't be faulted for the fact that, as a rule, an overwhelming majority of all user-generated content will undoubtedly be garbage, there are still problems that prevent me from enjoying this key selling feature as much as I should.

Foremost is the method of "heart"ing stages and creators whose work you have enjoyed. While it's nice to see good work rewarded in some way, there seems to be no manner of browsing your hearted stages and creators, which begs the question why allow users to heart them at all? The "hearted" option in the ubiquitous popit menu only shows tools and objects you've hearted for use within stages, which seems redundant as no such object is particularly hard to find in the popit as is. Does anyone really love the bike handlebar with pink tassles so much as to add it to a second separate menu? Second is the incredible censorship and management of user-created stages so far by Sony. Yes, it makes sense that stages based on Mario, Batman and Ghostbusters will disappear eventually, doomed to the realm of copyright infringement, but what of The Azure Palace, the immensely popular user-created underwater stage that introduced complex play mechanics and a degree of polish virtually unseen in the on-disc stages that referenced absolutely nothing outside of itself? That stage was included in the massive cleanup a few weeks ago, much to the dismay of its creator and a large portion of the game's online community. Sure, the stage was soon returned to its rightful place, but it only proves that whomever is making the decisions of what is and is not suitable content is clearly not looking at the actual content.

The potential of endless fun provided by the user-creation tools and community is only as good as the people who use it, and I worry that gamers will grow tired of LittleBigPlanet and abandon it sooner than we'd all like. Just look at Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the biggest selling game of the year, a game that delivered on its promise of exciting new user-generated content every day via wi-fi, and a game that nobody is playing anymore. Still a great game, still great features, but if nobody's playing it anymore than those features are all running dry.

Obviously the second half of this review was much more negative than the first and we can probably pin this on the game's allure and shine wearing off over time. Make no mistake, though, LittleBigPlanet is still pretty damn fantastic. The sheer joy experienced the first time you do any of the hundreds of things you can do in this game is wondrous. While I would love to see the control issues (see part 1) and problematic "lives" system (much like Rock Band, this game would benefit greatly from a "no fail" mode) fixed in downloadable patches later on, LittleBigPlanet delivers on the fun it promises and then some. Even after the community has run dry, the stages already produced by the players, coupled with the intensely though-provoking variety of stages on disc, are well worth the price of admission and then some. Finally, somebody remembered that games don't need to be obtuse, gritty, wordy or pandering, they can just be fun for the sake of being fun.

Grade: A-

Related articles:
If Sales Numbers Mattered, LittleBigPlanet's Commercial Would Be Appealing
Sony Might Just Hate You
Sackboy vs. Muhammad
LittleBigPlanet is Insane
The Natural World of LittleBigPlanet
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem, Sackboy

61FPS Reviews:
LittleBigPlanet part 1
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

If Sales Numbers Mattered, LittleBigPlanet's Commercial Would Be Appealing

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:40:00 GMT

The Playstation 3's killer app, LittleBigPlanet, didn't sell a hojillion copies and save the pandas like it was supposed to. Quick! Everybody blame something!

The target that shall recieve my baleful glare is LittleBigPlanet's irrelevant commercial. "Oh shit you guys, you're going to have so much fun with this goddamn game. Fun! Yeah! Fuck yes, fun."

What, precisely, makes LittleBigPlanet a vacation on Free Cotton Candy and Sex Island? "Oh," says the commercial, "We're sure you'll figure it out."

Guess what! I didn't figure it out.

Obviously, I have gazed into my crystal ball and learned that LittleBigPlanet, despite meh sales numbers, is a fantastic game, perhaps even system-purchase worthy. But my mom doesn't read game sites or magazines and this commercial isn't going to sell her on Sony's "accessible" opus. The on-screen action, though colourful and gorgeous, looks busy and intimidating. Man, there are clowns and shit and it still looks intimidating! And there's never any indication about what you're supposed to do with the game, other than have fun. Somehow.

If I were old and crotchety, I'd ignore this jumble of technicolour noise. "One of them video game things," I'd say. "It doesn't concern me. Oh God, this isn't my heart medication, it's Tic-Tacs!" (Dead)

Even if I were a young kid and I saw this commercial, I don't think I'd jump up from the television and run into the kitchen screaming "MOMMY MOMMY BUY ME BIGPLANETLITTLE I MEAN PLANETBIGLITTLE I MEAN--"

Here, Sony: "Build awesome things and share awesome things with your friends!" There! Now at least I have some idea of what's going on.

Related Links:

The 61FPS Review: LittleBigPlanet Part 1
Five Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
Create Unholy Life With the LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Generator

Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We here in the United States celebrate our nation's Thanksgiving tomorrow, one of the great national holidays where just about every office is closed as we gather with family and friends to eat, drink, be merry, and prepare ourselves for the brutal holiday shopping season that starts the very next day. Sony, who usually update their Playstation Store on Thursdays, saw fit to treat us to this week's updates a couple of days early to save us the trouble of fighting tryptophan-induced grogginess, and oh the treats they have in store!

First, of course, is the weekly free costume for LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy, a turkeyface. Hilarious, yes? No? Hmm, well maybe these next few items will give you something to be thankful for...

First, of course, is the long-awaited release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. And to celebrate the momentous fighter's release, a slew of commemorative mp3s in the form of the Street Fighter Underground Remix Soundtrack are up for free download, including original tracks by Hieroglyphics, Redman, and Oh No. Again, the mp3s are all free and a PSN exclusive, so that's one thing the Playstation version has over the XBox 360 version, along with a generally favorable d-pad on the controller.

Most interesting, though, is the announcement of the PSN Fall Sale with five downloadable games marked down to only $4.99 until next Thursday, including three of my four favorite Playstation games of 2008: echochrome, PixelJunk Eden and The Last Guy. All three are PSN exclusives and are truly unique genre-defying and beautiful games. If you're still not ready to commit five dollars to any of them just yet, there are free demos of all three on the Playstation Store as well, but I think a quick playthrough of each will convince you that five dollars is a steal for such original and engaging play experiences.

I'm certain that my Wii will be getting a family workout tomorrow with Wii Sports and Boom Blox heading the pack, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some turkey-headed Sackboys and a few rounds of echochrome steal the spotlight for a while too.

Related Articles:
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Trailer Review: The Last Guy
Far Out, Man
Whatcha (Wish You Were) Playing: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Sony Might Just Hate You

John Constantine — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Even before the company’s dramatic fall from grace, there has been a number of reasons a discerning individual might think that Sony hates them. The original Playstation had a failure rate to challenge the Xbox 360’s and the first DualShock controller didn’t become a pack-in with the system for months after its release. The Playstation 2 launched at a pricey $299 and that price held until May of 2002 when Sony suddenly and without forewarning dropped it to $199, leaving thousands of gamers out a hundred bucks when a simple press release could have saved them the trouble. The PSP launched and its screen was plagued by dead pixels and the Playstation 3 cost half a grand at the cheapest when it launched in ’06. One day, they’re committed to backwards compatibility and against rumble in controllers, and the next they’re asking you drop sixty smackers on a controller that shakes and backwards compatibility is for the birds. Yep. Sony hates you. Sony hates all of us.

Well, today, Sony hates your potential creativity. If you’re anything like us, you looked at LittleBigPlanet and thought, “Oh man. I am totally remaking Castlevania III in that sumbitch.” As the game plowed through its autumn beta, it turned out there were many like minded souls out there, making all sorts of homage-laden playgrounds for Sackboy to romp about. Then, last week, Media Molecule started disappearing levels from LittleBigPlanet’s servers en masse. Claiming that these deleted levels were the target of user complaints, it turned out that they were almost all removed under the auspices of copyright infringement. Most of the levels erased were based on classic videogames, but as Kris Erickson pointed out on PS3 Informer, some levels were removed for so innocuous a reason as they shared a name with a movie. (It’s actually just as well this one was taken down. No one needs to be reminded that Failure to Launch exists.) Today, Sony released a statement outlining some “suggested” LittleBigPlanet rules of conduct:

• Ensure that the content you share with other users is suitable for all ages - everybody has access to your level if you publish it.

• Please respect other people's intellectual property rights. For example, don't use images, brands or logos that you're not entitled to use.

• If you come across any content that you feel the need to report, then please do it responsibly. Hoax reports will be considered inappropriate behaviour.

Nothing says creativity like a nice set of rules! Regarding the all ages part, I don’t see why Sony and Media Molecule didn’t incorporate age settings that reflect a given PS3’s parental settings in the first place. No hoax reporting? Fine. But the intellectual property issue is both prickly and offensive. As Erickson also points out in his excellent editorial, the majority of these levels deleted from LittleBigPlanet fall within the boundaries of fair use. The levels inherently don’t diminish the value of the work that inspired them because, especially with game homage, they have to run in LittleBigPlanet. But more importantly, none of these levels are made for commercial consumption. They are free, provided you already own the game and a Playstation. PSN member RoboAlucard92 isn’t getting paid for his Symphony of the Night level in LittleBigPlanet. When Konami releases their inevitable LittleBigPlanet Castlevania content pack, then that level might need to be taken down. But not before.

The very existence of LittleBigPlanet seems like an act of love. But this sort of corporate kowtowing looks a whole lot more like hate.

(Our thanks to CVG, PS3 Informer, and NeoGAF user newschool)

Related links:

Microsoft Just Might Hate You
Nintendo Might Just Hate You
Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet
Waiting: Four More Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
Four More Games That ARE Awesome Remade In LittleBigPlanet

Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

John Constantine — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

While reading Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds’ sharp history of postpunk, I started thinking about videogames. I’m nothing if not predictable, I know. There’s a slight corollary between the gaming zeitgeist and punk rock. Not politically, of course. Videogames are, at least popularly, more conservative today than they’ve ever been. Just look at Bobby Kotick’s reasoning for dropping Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters from Activision’s release schedule: "[Those games] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” I realize that Activision is in the business of making money and not artifacts to inspire the human soul, but publicly stating that your publishing ethos is assembly-line-production makes it difficult to assess the creative merits of Guitar Hero: Buy This One Too, Just ‘Cause.

No, videogames in 2008 are, like punk rock in 1974, taking a medium that’s become marked by excess and stripping it back to its most basic. Even beyond Capcom’s retro efforts and traditional two-dimensional, genre exercises (Braid, Castle Crashers) on Xbox Live, designers like DICE are trying to keep games simple and raw. Mirror’s Edge, for all of its visual polish, uses only three buttons for the bulk of its action and the game’s goals are uncomplicated (run to, run away.) Games are also trying to put the power of creation back into the audience’s hands. Halo 3’s Forge, LittleBigPlanet, and Maxis’ Spore might not be putting players into the guts of design, but they are inlets for everyone to make their own games. You don’t need to know how to play guitar to rock, and you don’t need to know C++, or draw, or write to make a game. Add these mainstream juggernauts to the booming independent dev scene, the confrontational tedium of games like No More Heroes (as Goichi Suda says, punk’s not dead,) and we may look back on the 2010s as gaming’s punk rock era. But how does punk lead to postpunk, the rebellion of aestheticism through the surreal and the futurist against the simplistic and traditional? What would that game even look like?

Modern gaming’s genesis came during postpunk’s six year lifespan and the two, strangely enough, shared many of the same audio/visual tics. But where postpunk’s visual tendency toward angular, primary colored geometry and aural predilection for jittery electronics and propulsive bass lines were born of artistic statement, videogames came to them out of necessity. This is why envisioning a surrealist gaming experience is problematic; the hallmarks of surreal a/v media are traditionalist hallmarks in games. While a game like Deus Ex Machina, Mel Croucher’s 1984 Spectrum title – a game that could very well have been a Fast Product Records release a few years before – look like ready examples of surrealist design, but were it released today, it would look like little more than retro fetishism. In order for a game to be successfully surrealist, its mode of expression will have to be tied directly to play and not traditional presentation. The game has to subvert expectation based on established mechanical tropes to garner the desired subconscious effect. The seeds for this are out there, in places you might not expect. Mario tends to be associated with childlike psychedelia, but the manipulation of perspective and gravity in Super Mario Galaxy are a larval form of potential surrealist play; for twenty years, Mario would die if he jumped into a void, and here the void propels him to new heights.

A game can be most anything the designer wants it to be. In the coming years, the most difficult task for both designers and players will be looking backward, seeing what games are and have been, and figuring how they can break them to create something brand new for the future. Punk play to postpunk to whatever comes next. Now if only we could figure out how to get the vital social commentary in there…

(Thanks to 1UP for the Bobby Kotick quote and Edge Online for the Deus Ex Machina retrospective)

Related links:

Yeah, But Is It Art?: It Will Never Be the Same
Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions
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Easy Access

The 61FPS Review: LittleBigPlanet - Part 1

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Many would agree with me the LittleBigPlanet is the most significant game release of 2008. Sure, Spore was a big deal, but it was only the next logical step in Will Wright's Sim series. LittleBigPlanet is a platform for whatever the user wants it to be, a venue for sharing and interaction, and a robust toolbox for imaginative and aspiring game designers. There's no denying LittleBigPlanet is an impressive and forward-thinking new box of toys for the kids, but is it a fun game? With one week of Sackboy inhabitance under my belt, I'm prepared to render my first impressions.

First, an astounding "Yes!" LittleBigPlanet succeeds in its campaign to bring fun back to gaming. From the charming tutorials narrated by Stephen Fry (remember his delightful British voiceovers in the feature film treatment of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? Accompanying those wonderful Shynola-produced animated sequences? The very definition of whimsy, right there.) to the wondrously expressive characters and environments, the fancifully capricious score of licensed music to the patchwork globe user-interface, everything about this package just oozes fun the way a frat boy at a party oozes Axe body spray, only you'll want to spend the whole evening with LittleBigPlanet, wake up next to it the following day and ask if it has plans the next night.

There are, of course, a few areas where the fun breaks into "well, that's annoying." While the stages included on disc are ingeniously designed spectacles of platform peril, precise jumps and landings are frustratingly difficult due to the fact that Sackboy sort of floats into place rather than the stop-on-a-dime runs and jumps we've gotten used to from Mario and Mega Man. I've lost dozens of innocent Sackboys to spike pits, poison gas, and electrified obstacles because they didn't quite land jumps the way I expected them to. This brings me to my next qualm, the ever-archaic lives system. Each checkpoint throughout the stage allows you to respawn there for a certain number of lives before you fail the entire stage and I am left wondering why. Shouldn't an all-ages game focused on cooperation and fun like this allow at least the option for infinite lives? It's quite annoying to make it more than halfway through a stage filled with challenging obstacles only to come across one of those aforementioned difficult-to-land jumps, quickly fail at it four times and have to start back at the very beginning again. Just let me try this jump until I get it right! There are wonderfully informative tutorial videos on how to use each and every tool and object in the game's create mode, but while there are easy-to-use reality-altering pause, fast-forward and rewind commands for the world around Sackboy in create mode, these timeline controls do not apply to the videos, which continue uninterrupted until they end. Miss something important? You have to wait for the video to be over, then hit the switch to start the whole thing over again.

But enough whining, because what LittleBigPlanet does well it does astonishingly well. Not only is the story mode included on disc thoughtful and compelling, it continuously activates the players imagination. Every stage introduces obstacles and puzzles and enemies unseen before and then provides you with the tools and knowledge to make those elements or your own crazier takes on them. The true measure of a game's fun for me has always been how much I find myself thinking about it when I'm not playing, such as keeping track of the time I spend running for trains outside of WiiFit or pondering my place in the universe and how that effects my fashion choices outside of The World Ends With You. Well, this past weekend, waiting for a train after a Halloween party, I found myself dreaming up obstacles to build for my little Sackboy. Within seconds I had pulled out the sketchbook and doodled this curious little environmental puzzle:

Having played with the create tools for an hour or two by the time I'd sketched this, I already had a general idea of how it would all work, and it took maybe five minutes to build as a functioning prototype in-game. No, it's not huge or world-altering, but as a small bit of a larger environment it's enormously satisfying. This brings us to the biggest aspect of LittleBigPlanet and the hardest to review: user-generated content. LittleBigPlanet is all about sharing. If you don't make your own stages and/or play other people's stages, you're only playing an incredibly small part of the game. Sure, betas have been out for a while, but the full game and its server have only been around for about a week and, having played around 45 user-generated stages at this point, I can say that I'm honestly blown away by what some people are making. Of course they aren't all great, it's commonly accepted that a majority of all user-generated contet will be complete rubbish, but it's a testament to either the creativity of the early adopters or the jury process of how the stages are organized that so many of the user-created stages I've played so far have been beautiful and well thought-out experiments in game design, from underwater temples to basketball courts to classic game soundtracks to a recreation of the Pac-Man arcade. The only reason I haven't finished LittleBigPlanet's story mode yet is that I feel propelled to check out the new user-created stages every time I turn the game on, I am just so fascniated by them all. (Edit: Shortly after writing this, I did face off against the final boss and earned my "Just Beginning" trophy for completing story mode.)

Clearly so far, LittleBigPlanet is not a perfect gaming experience, but it transcends. LittleBigPlanet is so compelling, so unique, so inspirational that it will undoubtedly be played widely for the entire lifespan of the Playstation3 and beyond and is likely to usher in a whole new generation of gaming like Super Mario Bros, Wolfenstein 3D and Dance Dance Revolution before it. Unlike last year's PS3 blockbuster Ratchet & Clank which was billed by critics as being the first game to look like you were playing a Pixar movie, LittleBigPlanet strikes me as the game that would result if the creative minds at Pixar decided to make a game instead of a movie. What can be done in games that can't be done in other media? What can be done in games that hasn't been done in games before? How can we make all of this a compelling emotional experience for players, regardless of age, gender, or nationality? I believe LittleBigPlanet will reshape the way both gamers and game designers approach the medium and, as is the whole point of the software, bring the two groups even closer together.

Look for continued impressions and final analysis to come...

Related Articles:
Sackboy vs. Muhammad
LittleBigPlanet is Insane
The Natural World of LittleBigPlanet
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem, Sackboy

61FPS Reviews:
Dead Space
LOL
Dragon Quest IV
Ninja Gaidan 2 part 1 & part 2
Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1 & part 2
Wii Fit
Grand Theft Auto IV part 1, part 2 & part 3

Four More Games That ARE Awesome Remade In LittleBigPlanet

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The day we've waited so very, very, very long for is finally upon us. LittleBigPlanet is out. For real. No more delays or teasing. It's been fun dreaming up all the crazy stages we can build, so much so that we even wrote up what classic games we'd like to remake...twice! But now that the game is out, it's time to stop dreaming and start creating, and that's exactly what the clever kids over at GamesRadar did, building LBP stages of four of their favorite retro classics.

After some hard work, some very interesting stages were built based on:

Donkey Kong,

The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link,

Space Invaders, and...

Mega Man.

Click here for a full description of the process and videos of each stage compared to their source material.

Perhaps most interesting is the method used to import sprites and graphics, as seen to the right. Yeah, he's got his PS3 on his computer desk and snapping shots of Photoshop documents with his EyeToy. That looks both uncomfortable and inconvenient. Come on, Sony! You've got to know that a large chunk of the people wanting to play with this game are creative people. Illustrators, graphic designers, architects, bedroom programmers. These people would LOVE to work on assets on their computers and transfer them over to the PS3. Just tell us what format you want them in! They have to be in Hi-Def? No problem! Just let us do it! There's no way I'm lugging my PS3 all the way to my desk every time I have an idea for an obstacle to take a picture of it. I'll probably end up putting these graphics on my iPod and taking pictures of that, which can't possibly be all that high a quality. Please, please release a patch that allows users to utilize graphics from the hard drive for user-generated content. Aren't you just asking for trouble by trusting us with nothing but a webcam? Have you seen what people do with webcams?

Related articles:

Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet
Four More Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet is Insane
LittleBigPlanet Meets FFX
Sackboy Vs. Muhammad and Round 2
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

The Videogame Ages, part 2

John Constantine — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

In part one of The Videogame Ages, I discussed the inadequacy of “generation” language in gaming, and laid out The Golden Age of gaming. In part two, I look at the Silver and Bronze ages before taking a look at the modern era and the future.

The Silver Age – 1983 to 1996
8-Bit, 16-Bit, Early Handheld, Early 3D, Advanced PC and Arcade

The silver age of games is defined by expansion, in not just playability but breadth of experience. When home computers became affordable and home consoles began diversifying, games started transforming from immediate, single-mechanic experiences into more lasting forms. Silver age games were still about escalating challenge, but high scores ceased being the goal, replaced by definitive endings. Games started becoming more explicitly narrative-driven, as aesthetic justification on consoles and as the focus of many PC games (see the entire adventure game genre.) Portable gaming also started to rise to prominence during this period, early single-screen LCD games replaced by multi-game consoles like the Game Boy and Atari Lynx. Arcade and PC game technology pulled far away from home consoles, but all games were shifted from the rough visual abstraction of golden age games, into more aesthetically recognizable presentations – albeit still cartoonish impressionistic rather than realistic. The rise of polygonal 3D graphics, both real-time full 3D (Yu Suzuki’s Virtua series) and pre-rendered (Myst, etc.), at the end of the silver age marks the transition to bronze. In 1996, with the release of Mario 64, Tomb Raider, and Quake, the silver age comes to a close.

The Bronze Age – 1996 to 2006 (maybe)
32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit, Death of Arcades, PC Equalization

While golden age games’ boundary was a single screen and silver age games were largely confined to movement from left to right or down to up, the bronze age is the birth of 3D space as gaming’s chief concern. This isn’t to say that games that take a place on a 2D plain ceased being important or a valid medium for experimentation (though they certainly became marginalized on consoles, PCs, and in arcades.) But creating spaces with depth similar to the physical world took center stage in design. This push toward realistic spaces is mirrored in game aesthetics. Nearly all the technological benchmarks of the bronze age have come from creating as lifelike a facsimile of real life as can be achieved on any technology. PC games typically set that high water mark, though by the end of 2006, home consoles had largely caught up to PCs, much as they did with arcade games during the first few years of the 20th century (arcades are close to extinct now.) Game narrative started heavily borrowing from film’s storytelling language, relying on scripted scenes voiced and acted by digital characters in an attempt to tell deeper stories, but games also started developing there own unique storytelling language during this period, some games allowing the player to always be immersed in drama through play (see: Half-Life.) Multiplayer games no longer required physical proximity with the rise of online play on both PCs and consoles, and portable gaming started offering richer, longer play experiences, akin to those found on consoles.

I’m not totally convinced that the bronze age has ended yet, but the telltale signs of gaming’s latest age-defining shift have been popping up with some frequency over the last few years. The argument can be made that the Heroic Age of gaming is one of community via online networks and MMOs, user-generated content (see: Spore, LittleBigPlanet, Halo 3, Boom Blox, etc.), and experiential gaming. Experiential gaming is a big one whose mettle has yet to be tested, whether or not broad physical activity, from waving a Wiimote to playing fake musical instruments, will catch on. It’s certainly a dramatic shift to see experiential gaming leave its one-time home, the arcade, and transform into a driving force of home gaming. Then again, who knows? Maybe the golden age of gaming has only just ended, and its now, when players can finally build games themselves inside of other games, that the silver age has begun. Let me know, dear reader.

Part 1

Related links:
Comparison of Wiki Articles Proves Geeks Inherited The Earth
MMO Predicts Life in 10 Years
Men Are From Hyrule, Women Are From Simville: If Gender Defines the Games We Play, Why Does Everyone Play By the Same Rules?
9/9/99 9 Years Later
Fix It: Alone in the Dark, Tiger Woods, and the Death of the Glitch
Everyone Will be Able to Rock

The Videogame Ages, part 1

John Constantine — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

This past Friday, I tried to slip a little piece of language into a discussion about game emulation that I was wary about using at all. At this point, the go-to boundaries for discussing videogames’ admittedly small history is console-technology generations. We say 8-Bit or 16-Bit because these are easy identifiers based on competing, contemporary technologies. But the language “The 8-Bit Generation” doesn’t account for arcade technology, PC games, or portable gaming. Now that Bob Dvorak’s Tennis for Two is officially fifty years-old, I think we can finally start applying broader terms to gaming’s evolutionary eras. Obviously history is fluid, and chances are these classifications won’t hold true in 2050, but for now they work. The Hesiodic ages, as laid out here, consider games on every platform; the rigid parameters of home consoles, the advanced nature of PC and Mac gaming throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, the fast strides made by arcade technology throughout that same period, and the predominantly inferior technology available in handheld gaming. Unlike Hesiod’s Ages of Man, however, the videogame ages are (mostly) a positive progression. Please note: these are not strict definitions. This is a discussion, and I want everyone to make their opinions heard in the comments section. Now then, onward to the Golden Age.

The Golden Age – 1958 to 1983
Dvorak, MIT, Early Arcade, Early Home Console

The golden age of gaming began in 1958 and was, for almost a decade and a half, almost exclusively concerned with tennis. It took Nolan Bushnell getting clever for us to start calling it Pong. Tennis for Two, Magnavox’s Odyssey, and Bushnell’s advice to “avoid missing ball for high score” was pretty much the only game in town until the mid-70s with some notable exceptions. The second videogame ever made has a more recognizable legacy in today’s games. Steve Russell’s Spacewar!, started in 1961 as a side-project of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT (history’s first hackers, dontchaknow,) shares the two-player, two-object dynamics of Pong but the gameplay focused on actually destroying your opponent in a science-fiction setting. These games set the standard for the golden age: individual play mechanics presented on single screens. By the late-70s and early-80s, as Atari and other early consoles that could play multiple games were becoming common, games started expanding in both scope and ambition. Adventure, Pitfall, and others introduced continuity in their worlds, while Pac-man and Donkey Kong made the first stabs at introducing narrative. On the technology end, 1980 saw scrolling action in Defender and the larval form of 3D play, vector graphics, in Battlezone. The game industry crash and the release of the Famicom in 1983 mark the end of this period.

Part 2

Related links:
Comparison of Wiki Articles Proves Geeks Inherited The Earth
MMO Predicts Life in 10 Years
Men Are From Hyrule, Women Are From Simville: If Gender Defines the Games We Play, Why Does Everyone Play By the Same Rules?
9/9/99 9 Years Later
Fix It: Alone in the Dark, Tiger Woods, and the Death of the Glitch
Everyone Will be Able to Rock

Sackboy Vs. Muhammad Round 2

Bob Mackey — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:45:00 GMT

Leave it a representative from the American Islamic Forum for Democracy to sum up much more succinctly what I tried to take on a few days ago. Edge Online recently posted a reaction from said representative, M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., who weighed in on the whole LittleBigPlanet controversy:

“The free market allows for expression of disfavor by simply not purchasing a game that may be offensive.”

Jasser, who has also appeared on CNN, in the Washington Times and National Review, said that not only does the First Amendment support freedom of expression, but Mohammed also “defended the rights of his enemies to critique him in any way even if it was offensive to his own Islamic sensibilities or respect for Koranic scripture.”

And, as with most cases like the LittleBigPlanet fiasco, the object of censorship is getting much more attention than it ever would have before the scandal. According to a news post on Edge this Monday:

The track in question, Tapha Niang by Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, has seen a surge in sales on the iTunes website. The track features two passages from the Islamic religious text: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt," meaning "Every soul shall have the taste of death"; and "kollo man alaiha fan," meaning "All that is on earth will perish."

Three cheers for freedom of speech! Now if we could only convince uptight book-banners that their actions are just as useless...

Related Links:

Sackboy Vs. Muhammad
Little Big Planet is Insane
Create Unholy Life With the LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Generator

Waiting: Four More Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:30:00 GMT

With the news that the loooooooong awaited LittleBigPlanet would be delayed a week while a music sample quoting the Qur'an is removed, those of us who have received neither review copies, street date broken retail copies nor beta keys are left pawing at our monitors and waiting by the mailbox with breathless anticipation for the "game of the year". The more footage I see of user-created stages, the more my mind fills with ideas of crazy things to construct, and so, in order to tide myself over for another week and following John's example, here are four more games that will be awesome to remake in LittleBigPlanet:

PaRappa The Rapper

LittleBigPlanet's homemade aesthetic lends itself perfectly to Sony's paper cut-out rhythm wonderpup PaRappa and his domesticated wildlife compadres. Picture room after room of cardboard environments and cartoon characters in which you need to accomplish a series of ordered tasks within a certain period of time before opening the door to the next room, mimicking the classic rhythm game mechanic.

Excitebike

We've seen plenty of user-created vehicles and race courses so far, likening LittleBigPlanet to an HD console version of Line Rider. Should be little-to-no sweat to produce to some sweet motocross courses for DIY dirtbikes! And wasn't the biggest draw of the original Excitebike the ability to design your own courses and race them? Let's do that again, only this time, let's save and share those courses.

Boom Blox

Physics-based all ages AAA console title with a tons of single and multi-player stages on disc and a heavy focus on user-generated stages? Why does that sound familiar? Oh, yeah, I've been playing that game for five months on my Wii! Let's emulate the multi-player castle stages, give players alternating rooms of obstacles with collectible points and an extremely short period of time to gather as much as they can before the materials all vanish and move on to the next room. Player with the most points by the end of the stage wins. No, not exactly the same as in Boom Blox, but damn close enough with platforming rather than throwing balls with motion controls.

Duck Hunt

It's hard to play a light-gun shooter without a light-gun, but I can't help be inspired by the recent wedding proposal stage that demonstrates contextual events based on applying stickers to certain objects. See how many flying objects you can affix your personal sticker to in a certain period of time! You can even put your sticker over somebody else's before the object falls to steal their point!

Hmmm, you know what? All that dreaming up games to play in LittleBigPlanet most certainly did not make waiting another week any easier...

Related Articles:
Sackboy vs. Muhammad
LittleBigPlanet Meets FFX
LittleBigPlanet is Insane
Five Games That Will Be Awesome To Remake In LittleBigPlanet
Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

Sackboy Vs. Muhammad

Bob Mackey — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The recall--and subsequent delay--of LittleBigPlanet due to the presence of Qur'an quotations in one of the game's licensed tracks has angered gamers, and rightfully so. While some of the fan hostility is coming from having to wait nearly a week to get their hands on such a long-awaited title, much of the anger--including my own--stems from the senitment sent by Sony's course of action. In a medium still trying to mature, how will progress ever be possible when content is being kept in check by special interest groups (as violent as their extremists may be)? As I griped about in this post, there's something about how games are still viewed as products--as opposed to entertainment, or art--that's keeping their content watered down when compared to what's seen in TV, movies, music, and other media.

And content is soon going to be a problem for both Sony and LBP users due to the unfortunate bigotry this incident has caused. Just go check out any of the blogs/news sites that have reported on the LPB recall; nearly half the user comments carry a creepy anti-Islamic message that will undoubtedly carry over into the game's user-made content in the weeks to come.

My question is, where will Sony draw the line? As LBP's publishers, they are responsible for the game's licensed content--but when crafty users start scanning in pages of the Qu'ran for some LittleBig political commentary, does someone have to step in? It's a tricky censorship issue that Sony's definitely going to have to handle in the future; and, while I'm against the reactionary anti-Islam slurs flying left and right, I'd certainly love to see a LBP level satirize this issue--and I bet plenty of level-crafters are plotting this as I type.

It's an interesting issue that's really yet to be resolved; games have had user-created content in the past, but never on such an accessible, corporate-sponsored(and distributed) level. I guess it's easy to see why Nintendo tries to keep gamers from communicating as much as possible--though that doesn't exactly make them right.

Related Links:

Atheists Riled Up Over Spore
The Natural World of Little Big Planet
Little Big Planet is Insane

Little Big Planet Meets FFX

Bob Mackey — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:00:00 GMT

I'll admit that I'm not very hyped about Little Big Planet; it could be the curmudgeon in me, or just the fact that I'll have no goddamned time to create anything cool with the game on my busy schedule. The silver lining to all of this is that I won't need to plunk down the cash for both a PS3 and a copy of the game to be entertained--all I need to experience LBP's user-created content is the entirely-free YouTube. Expect the majority online streaming video services to be completely loaded with content from Little Big Planet for the next year or so.

A good example of this trend of this already in action is the following video, which takes the best part of Final Fantasy X--the music--and transplants it into a baroque music player created through hours and hours of hard work and block placement in Little Big Planet. Sure, I can hear the same thing by looking this song up on iTunes, but I gotta give credit to all of the makeshift music box crafters out there:

Now, if someone out there would somehow turn Little Big Planet into a rhythm game using the same technology, I'd be motivated to smash in the window of my local GameStop and steal a brand-new PS3.

What? I still won't have any money.

Related Links:

Little Big Planet is Insane
The Natural World of Little Big Planet
Create Unholy Life With the LittleBigPlanet Sackboy Generator

Little Big Planet is Insane

Cole Stryker — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:00:00 GMT

610 Magnetic Switches
500 Wires
430 Pistons
70 Emitters
?? Hours

Some magnificent nerd has built a basic calculator using the above ingredients within Little Big Planet. Watch the video from start to finish, it gets better in the latter half. In the words of commenter, "njoivids":

"gotta lot of time on ya hands aint ya lad sure ur clever but uve just proved to the world that u have never had sexual relations"

I'm not sure what this mans for Little Big Planet. I thought I had finally figured this game out, but I didn't think users would be able to build anything quite like this. If users are as enthusiastic within LBP as they were within Spore's Creature Creator, then I guess this video only scratches the surface. Could this ever be big enough to draw casual gamers away from the Wii? Maybe if it were released in tandem with a price drop...

Gears of LittleBig Fable Music: Considering the First-Party Blitz

John Constantine — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:30:00 GMT

October brought its true fury and grandeur to New York today. It took three days, but the nattering leftovers of summer finally drifted out to sea like so many dead leaves and left behind the lowlight and intent wind so particular to the month. Walking down the street, I could smell it, looming like bonfire smoke and Halloween parades: game season.

I hold no love for the business structure that sees some ninety-percent of the year’s most ballyhooed games releasing all within a tight ten week window. It leads to sensory overload and, for the devoted gamer, it adds to already-big backlogs. But I’d be lying if I said it isn’t always exciting. All of the hype, all of the previews, leaked screens, developer showcases, and high, high hopes all lead here and it always begins in October. Holiday 2008, as it were, is going to be a particularly interesting season considering that it is gaming’s first to witness true third-party agnosticism. Nigh on every publisher from East and West is releasing their biggest games on any and all platforms available. (There are rare exceptions. See Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles, Valve’s Left4Dead, and a number of Wii titles.) This brings even closer scrutiny to the console holders' offerings; more than ever, first-party games need to be system sellers. They have to act as ambassadors, convincing casual and hardcore gamers alike that if they put money into such and such a system, there will be more where that came from.

I’m fascinated by what the Big Three are bringing to the table and how those games reflect their mutual identities. Nintendo is Nintendo, releasing just two Wii games, with the new god of the Touch Generation, Wii Music, and its long tail economics prophet, Animal Crossing: City Folk. I have no idea how people will receive Wii Music giving Guitar Hero’s ubiquity. If everyone with a Wii is already used to one type of music game, one that requires you to actually, you know, play, will they actually want to pay fifty dollars for a gimped version that offers none of the manufactured exhibitionism?

Microsoft has got the quantity and the most traditional variety. Between Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and (possibly) Halo Wars, they’ve constructed a blanket of sequels covering the genres of old so thoroughly, it’s a wonder most players don’t curl up inside and take a nap. Microsoft is also taking two more stabs at currying casual favor with You’re in the Movies and Lips. Gears will do spectacularly (though not Halo spectacular), Fable will do well, and provided it actually comes out, Halo Wars will sell on its name alone, but it remains to be seen if Microsoft can finally, after so many attempts, steal a slice of Nintendo’s pie. Kids don’t know who Banjo is and it’s not clear that the young adults who do still care, You’re in the Movies doesn’t seem like an obvious draw, and Lips has Singstar to deal with in Europe and America’s apparent ambivalence towards purely karaoke games. Low, low price or not, the Xbox 360 still looks to be the gamers game box during the blitz.

And then there’s Sony. Two of Sony’s four games are pure Playstation standards, totems of a threadbare empire: the basketball game and the racing game. NBA ’09: The Inside and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift should do respectably, catering to the audience they’ve always had on Sony’s boxes (though Motorstorm is filling in for Gran Turismo and Namco’s seemingly adrift Ridge Racer series.) Though, admittedly, that audience is not quite so big as it once was. Insomniac’s Resistance 2 is also interesting, the sort of first-person shooter heavy on single-player, narrative thrills and massive multiplayer variety that gamers were desperate for in 2007, before Halo 3 came out. Given the success of the original, though, and Insomniac’s pedigree, Resistance 2 could be a break out moment for Sony when it goes head to head with Gears 2.

Sony’s fourth game, due in just two weeks, is this fall’s true wild card. I have absolutely no idea what LittleBigPlanet is going to do when it finally comes out, whether the massive marketing push Sony’s put behind it has impregnated the world’s mind with that game’s intimidating possibilities and inviting façade. It’s impossible to say that LBP will draw in a traditional audience. As much as it’s a platformer, the fact of the matter is that the game can be anything you damn well want to be. It could change everything, a game that fundamentally alters the mainstream’s perception of what a game can be, or it can shrivel and die on the vine, a fondly remembered ambition years ahead of its time. I honestly have no idea what to expect from LittleBigPlanet and that’s exciting in and of itself.

Game season’s started. You can feel it, taste it, and see it all around. Get ready, dear reader. We’re going to have some very tired thumbs by the time 2009 comes knocking.

Related links:

Lowering the Standard: Why Nintendo’s Hardcore vs. Casual Commitments Aren’t the Problem
Christmas in Nintendoland: The Tokyo Conference
Miyamoto Says, "It Would Be Great If Music Education Started With Wii Music."
Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet
E3 Day 4: No Blades, No Bows. Leave Your Weapons Here.
E3 Day Two: Spin, Malaise, Sony’s New Clothes, and Nintendo’s True Disruption

Five Games That Will Be Awesome to Remake in LittleBigPlanet

John Constantine — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ever since its announcement, excited gamers across the internet land have been discussing their level-making plans for LittleBigPlanet. Puzzle levels, hardcore platforming levels, insane art landscapes, and, most importantly, Level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. Yes, LittleBigPlanet may be all about getting your creative juices flowing but there was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that players were going to throw down all sorts of lovely, copyright-infringing devotionals to gaming’s beloved creations of old. Team Sportsmanship, a group of art students participating in Parsons New School of Design’s Game Jam event, didn’t explicitly recreate a level from Fumito Ueda’s epic, but as PS3 Fanboy put it, their level can only be named Shadow of the LittleBigColossus. It’s a work of art, a lovingly crafted riff on Shadow of the Colossus’ grand encounters made terribly adorable by LBP’s style and Sackboy mascot. Of course, this got me thinking: what games are perfectly fit for the LittleBigPlanet treatment? Here’s what came to mind.

Castlevania III

Besides being a classic platformer overflowing with badass levels primed for reimagining, Castlevania III is also uniquely suited to LBP’s four-player challenges. You’ve got a vampire, a pirate, a witch lady, and a dude with a whip. What do they do together? They scale clock towers and kick the crap out of less-than-friendly vampires. Perfect.

Joe & Mac

The first time I saw a Sackboy smack another one upside the head, my brain was filled with visions of a caveman themed level in LBP. Then again, why be creative when you can shamelessly exploit someone else’s creations? Joe & Mac is a good fit for LBPization, with co-op play and giant dinosaurs to assault. Sure, LBP doesn’t appear to have projectile weapons but they do have clubs. After making a Joe & Mac level, you could go whole hog and recreate the full, non-linear Joe & Mac 2. Note: Chuck Rock sucks, so he lost the caveman race.

Silhouette Mirage

Treasure’s other action-platformers might seem like more obvious choices for LBP (Mischief Makers certainly comes to mind,) but Silhouette Mirage’s duality theme puts it over the top. Is it possible to make obstacles impossible to overcome or enemies impossible to beat based purely on color in LittleBigPlanet? Whether you can or not, finding ways to manipulate the environment to accommodate Silhouette Mirage’s quirks would be a fascinating challenge if nothing else. This one might be a little tricky thanks to the aforementioned lack of projectiles.

Silent Hill

I know. Silent Hill isn’t exactly a franchise that would lend itself to 2D platforming, let alone platforming as sticky-sweet as the kind found in LBP. Might be a little difficult to create the same sort of so-unsettling-you-don’t-sleep-right atmosphere when Sackboy keeps turning to the screen, smiling, and waving at you from the television. But imagine structuring a LittleBigPlanet level that, halfway through, started to transform into a horrid, twisted version of itself. Harmless cardboard flowers peeling back to reveal barbwire fences, the blue sky turning an angry red, and fog descending over the stage. It would be awesome. Plus, SackPyramidHead.

Leisure Suit Larry

Come on, where are you going? Come back. Just hear me out. Now take Al Lowe’s 1987 classic smut-adventure and re-imagine its torrid city of lounge lizards, ruffians, and prostitutes as a multi-tiered pagoda or luridly colored challenges. Behold, you must get the condom “key” from the Drug Store of Doom and carry it as you ascend one floor to the Perilous Prostitute Platforms! In the final challenge, you must convince the drunken barfly to give you the engagement ring and climb to the tower’s apex, where a buxom Sackgirl waits in a pleasantly pastel colored hot tub. What? Don’t look at me like that. You and I both know this is a great idea.

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The Natural World of Little Big Planet

John Constantine — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I bought a Playstation 3 to play Little Big Planet. After watching its public reveal at GDC in March 2007, my interest in Sony’s gargantuan machine finally leapt from tepid to boiling hot. A 2D platformer with succulent graphics and deep physics where you could literally craft whatever your tiny mind could imagine was a literal realization of my greatest gaming fantasies. In the time since, my enthusiasm for the game hasn’t so much waned as it has become numb. My brain reels when it tries to conceive of the sheer amount of things you can do in LBP and, as a result, has trouble thinking about it all. This mock nature documentary on the lives of Sackboys and Sackgirls is just the sort of inviting, humanizing thing to help get me frothing with anticipation again. I’m still paralyzed with terror at the thought of obsessing over my homemade levels, but now I just want to play the game.

(Link: Joystiq)

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Trailer Review: Eyepet - Wii Killer?

Cole Stryker — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Probably not, but this thing still looks like it would be a total blast for kids, moreso than any Wii game I've yet seen. It reminds me of those old Sega holographic laserdisc arcade games with the cowboy and the princess in which it was impossible to survive for longer than thirty seconds. I'd never play this, but I know plenty of munchkins who would. There's loads of opportunity with this technogy, much more than is hinted at here.

If this footage had been released a few years ago, would the PS3 have fared much better on release? Between this, Playstation Home, and Little Big Planet, Sony looks ready to court a younger audience. Better late than never, I guess. If the console wasn't so expensive, I'd wager that this game would be every bit as popular as Wii Sports, or even those stupid Tamagotchis and Furbies. I can definitely see my niece having more fun with a virtual pet than a Mii avatar. There's probably room for some pop psychology there, but I'll just let you enjoy the video.

Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:45:00 GMT

Your dear mother has undoubtedly told you at some point, "You need to have a wife. It's good to have a wife." Maybe you agree or maybe you disagree, but either way, singles feel pressured to hunt down a mate even while insisting to themselves that the single life is totally rad.

Sony's adopted your mother's stance on companionship, but instead of spouses it's talking about mascots. "Every system needs a mascot. It's good to have a mascot. Here, Sackboy now represents Sony."

"Gee Sony, Sackboy is awfully cute, but is it a good idea to make him the spokes...doll for the company? We don't actually know how LittleBigPlanet will sell. And honestly, I'm okay with Sony's lack of a mascot--"

"It's good to have a mascot. Now start making babies."

If you feel wary, it's okay. Sony's previous attempts to match us up with digital companions resulted in lukewarm relationships before sputtering out: Crash Bandicoot, Lara Croft, Kratos. Even Microsoft fared far better by branding itself with Master Chief.

What do you think about Sackboy as Sony's new representative? LittleBigPlanet will undoubtedly be awesome, but even though we gamers are a grasping, superstitious lot, there's never any guarantee of a title's success. LittleBigPlanet might launch with gusto and burn brightly before crashing to earth like a failed science project. Also consider that the Internet's favourite hobby is to adore a big-name title for a few months, then dump on it (cough cough Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Grand Theft Auto IV cough hork).

I initially thought Sackboy looked like a hanged gingerbread man. He creeps me out a little. My husband was horrified at my comparison. I haven't yet told him that I changed my mind and decided that Sackboy looks like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction...if the Gimp was supremely happy about his position in Zed's shop, I mean.

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LittleBigPre-Order Confusion

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

It's almost hard to believe that after all we've seen of Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet in the past seventeen months, the game still isn't out yet. Sony saw fit to make these last two months of waiting even more difficult last week when they unveiled a number of incentive goodies for LBP pre-orders: a guide to the game's massive creation tools, a book of stickers from the game, a Sackboy burlap pouch to hold your game case (shown at right), and downloadable costumes to transform your Sackboy into either of Sony's favorite scantily clad barbarians, Nariko from Heavenly Sword and Kratos from God of War. The fan community's reaction was expectedly positive to the power of outrageous. What most didn't realize, however, was that each pre-order would only receive one of these gifts, and which one depends on where they place their order.

As explained on the official LBP blog this week, those who preorder from Amazon will receive the creation guide and those who preorder from Gamestop will receive the exclusive downloadable Kratos costume. Though many fans have requested a "special edition" of the game that includes all of the bonuses, reps from Media Molecule have said there are no such plans. Still no word on where one would need to pre-order to receive the sticker book, burlap pouch, or Nariko costume, nor if any of these will be made available seperately after the game's release, but producing this many store exclusives is bound to only upset fans, much like the recent Smashing Pumpkins album "Zeitgeist" (which featured a different bonus track for each Best Buy, Target, and iTunes and then another bonus track for the Best Buy reissue). Also like "Zeitgeist," this move reeks of desperation to attract buyers to a third-place console.

Worse still, recent reports have indicated that LBP will not support music or graphics from the PS3 hard drive, requiring instead that all user-generated graphics be captured with the PSEye peripheral. Though this is as yet unconfirmed by Media Molecule or Sony, such a decision would cripple the creative element of the game that seems to be its entire focus. Say goodbye to those gorgeous stickers of zombie Schwarzenegger you Photoshopped last night and your Pink Floyd collection, say hello to poorly lit webcam photos of your cat and the same Go! Team song over and over again. I'm still looking forward to this game, but I really hope this last part about user-generated content on the hard drive is wrong. I gots to have my zombie Ahnolds.

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E3 Opinion: Because It's Cool To Complain...

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Totally Possible Things The Big Three Could Have Done To Make Me Happy With Their E3 Conferences:

Sony: Without a doubt, the one PS3 game that people are most excited about is LittleBigPlanet, and its use for a fiscal presentation in Sony's Conference was charming and delightful. Wouldn't it have been great if they'd done just a little more? Picture this: The lights go down on stage, and up on screen we see a recreation of the stage built out of popsicle sticks and yarn. Sackboy, in Jack's choice of Boston Celtics garb, walks in, lip-syncing perfectly with Tretton's voice (via PlaystationEye, which they've announced will be a feature of the game) and welcoming other Sackboys dressed as if from Resistance 2, Ratchet & Clank, and DC Universe Online, each lip-synched to their own guest as the cardboard frame behind them cycles through string-suspended images of each of those games. Totally possible based on what we've seen so far. For that matter, if LittleBigPlanet can easily utilize photographs, graphics and music from your hard drive, odds are good you can also paste videos onto little styrofoam movie screens. Just a couple of presentations in that alternate arena, then snap back out to reality. Would have made one hell of an impression without slighting any of the games involved. LittleBigPlanet should be to all Sony presentations from now on what Keynote is to all Apple presentations.

Nintendo: Rhythm games are popular right now, irreverent mini-game collections are the biggest sellers on Wii right now, the DS is the only gaming platform outselling the Wii, and Nintendo is just sitting on a game that perfectly ties all of that together, a game that they actually had playable at their booth! Just talk about Rhythm Heaven, Nintendo! No, it probably wouldn't have won over most of the crowd that was upset by the lack of a true "hardcore" title on display, but it definitely would have attracted a lot of positive attention to a buzzworthy game that may very well be ignored in the marketplace. Why bother showing WiiSports Resort, a game guaranteed to sell like Pabst Blue Ribbon at a college bar? With the insane design team from WarioWare and maliciously addictive rhythm gameplay, Rhythm Heaven may very well have stolen the show, if only given the opportunity.

Microsoft: While they arguably had the most crowd-pleasing conference of the big three, there were two things that would have made me giddy with Microsoft's show. First, more details on Lips! I know its just a karaoke game, but it stole my heart! I need more! Second – and this one's stretching a bit – confirming that long-rumored motion controller, preferably with a trailer/demo of an HD Boom Blox. Man, that would've been sweet!

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Games Cost Money: Sony Cans The Getaway and Eight Days

John Constantine — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

While the salad days of the Playstation 2 are at an end for Sony, things have been looking up for the entrenched corporate monster in 2008. Little Big Planet continues to wow, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue had a healthy release in April for a game that’s little more than a demo, and the buzz surrounding Metal Gear Solid 4’s impending release is loud enough to even drown out some of that Grand Theft Auto fervor that’s been going on. The stigma surrounding the Playstation 3 – that it’s an expensive, ugly machine without many games to play on it – is slowly starting to fade, and it has everything to do with some truly exciting exclusive software. So it’s disheartening to hear that two games being developed by Sony’s own London Studio have been cancelled. Eight Days, a Michael Bay-tinged action game that fused car chases with shootouts in the American southwest, and The Getaway, a sequel to London Studio’s successful PS2 Brit-crime drama series, have both been given the axe “due to the redistribution of resources and budget.”

While I’m the first to exclaim my love for the big-budget blockbuster games coming out on the 360, PS3, and PC these days, the truth is that, for at least the short-term future, they may not be an economically feasible pursuit for most developers. Games –graphically intensive, high definition games – cost money to make. While the Halo’s of the world sell enough to validate that sort of investment, most just don’t. It’s worrying that Sony found it necessary to kill two projects, games that were shown to the public over two years ago, because of budgetary demands. But for blockbuster gaming, it seems like them’s the breaks.

Thanks to Next-Gen for the spot.

SCEE Playstation Day 2K8 Roundup: Killzone 2, Home, Little Big Planet Dated

John Constantine — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Sony kicked off the summer announcement season in a big way this past Tuesday at their Playstation Day event. While the lack of original IP announcements was disappointing, the details and release date information on a number of their high profile sequels painted a very healthy portrait of the Playstation 3 in 2008. Insomniac president Ted Price was on hand to show off multiplayer footage of Resistance 2, reaction to which was reasonably positive considering the game is still in such an early state. The assembled journos also got their first look at actual gameplay in MotorStorm 2, now titled MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, showing off greatly enhanced environmental interaction over 2007’s original. Other big first party news was firm release window information for Sony’s oft-maligned Killzone 2, now dated for February ’09 (presumably to allow Resistance 2 some breathing space in the shooter market,) an October release for the promising Little Big Planet, and a fall release window for Sony’s grand social networking space Home.

Our thanks go to Eurogamer for their killer liveblog coverage of the event. Hit them up here for more details on the press conference.