06 January, 2009

The Inexplicable Madness

Seven games journos from the Unreliable EuroGamer talk sense about Little Big Planet:

Dan Whitehead: I’m honestly quite surprised to find LBP at the top of the heap. Few games made me grind my teeth more in 2008. It looks lovely and is bursting with charm and clever ideas, and has Stephen Fry’s rich mahogany narration, but...it’s just not very good at being a platform game. Is that just me? The floaty ambience, unpredictable environments and crude checkpoint system all made it a bit of a chore to get through, as far as I’m concerned. Platforming requires precision, and that’s something that LittleBigPlanet just doesn’t have. It’s as woolly as its star.

Simon Parkin: That the responsibility for the game’s greatness rests on us and not on the developer is unusual, and for that reason the endless plaudits make me uneasy.

Tom Bramwell: I almost feel guilty that it wasn’t on my list at all, but it leaves me completely cold: the platforming is overburdened with self-conscious presentation its imprecise controls and frustrating checkpoints fail to justify, and the editor was too slow and complicated for my pathetic brain to bother with.

Kristan Reed: Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to seems to agree that LBP makes for a fairly boring single-player experience, but becomes absolutely mesmerising in co-op with the right player. The online lag is ruinous most of the time, and the added inertia on the jump mechanic makes it needlessly fiddly when the going gets tough.

Kieron Gillen: I can’t help but wonder - if a game’s based around user-generated content, and the fact you’re on a console means that you can’t actually let gamers generate their content without half of it being deleted because it infringes some copyright or another... isn’t that just a fundamentally flawed concept?

John Walker: All I’ve read about this is that the platforming is rubbish, and you have to make your own if you want to play a decent level.

Rob Fahey: I’m surprised that this is number one… It’s not my personal favourite game of 2008.


Perfection. Except, they’re all talking about why Little Big Planet is the Unreliable EuroGamer’s number 1 game of the year.

Excuse us while our heads explode.

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