What is the LittleBigPlanet series about, anyways? You play as a cute little plush character named Sackboy (or Sackgirl, before you grab your pitchforks and torches) who you can customize to your liking thanks to lot of hats, shirts, pants and other accessories you obtain throughout the game. The game has a Story mode, where you go through several different levels, a Create mode, where you make your own fantastic levels and upload them online, where you can play everyone else's cool little levels. Put simply, if LittleBigPlanet is an elementary school science kit, then LittleBigPlanet 2 is a professional laboratory. The first game gave you enough tools to make some pretty standard levels, but the sequel is for all sorts of creators. If you like making simple platformers, you can very easily jump in and make it quickly, but if you want to do something a little more advanced, something one step ahead of everyone else, you will be stuck for days. This is the hook of the LittleBigPlanet series; jumping into the fray and giving a new and unique perspective that nobody has seen before. There's so many new things in the sequel, I'm gonna need a little bit to gush, so just bear with me.
LittleBigPlanet 2 introduces Sackbots, robots that can be programmed to act the way you want. Do you want your levels to have a buddy that can pick up stuff that's in your way and throw it around? Just program a Sackbot to follow you around and pick stuff up. Another really awesome thing enabled is the ability to make Movies on LittleBigPlanet 2. This is an incredibly complicated process, but it definitely pays off when done correctly. Some movies posted online in the game have ranged from about a minute long to 45 minutes long! The Create mode in general in the game is really good and well-made…
…except for one major problem. The Tutorials given for each tool in the mode are really good, but they only really give you a sense of what they do, and sometimes even that is really vague. The main issue is that I've went through almost every tutorial available and I rarely came out of any of them with any real knowledge of what just happened. I know what each tool is capable of doing when used correctly, but I don't know how to use them correctly. Because of this, even though the rest of the game is almost perfect, the Level Creator feels too complicated, which is a shame, because as I just said, the rest of the game is great.
The Online mode functions alright, although I really wish loading times weren't so long, but whatever. The levels people create in the game are amazing and the best ones are the levels that deviate, that defy what's expected and try to replicate other games, and that's amazing. Of course, there are also simplistic platformer levels, which are also loads of fun. And the Story mode, my god this is so hard. Oh no, it's not hard to finish the levels normally, I mean that it's bone-breakingly, soul-crushingly difficult to finish each level WITHOUT DYING. In the Story mode, you often get prizes. There are four ways to get prizes from levels: In the level itself, by completing the level, by getting all the prizes in the level, and by beating the level without dying. Beating a level in the game without dying is referred to as "Acing it" (as in "Ace", like the card). Trying to get an Ace on some of the levels is really easy, but the later stages drag on and on and the second you die, you have to restart the entire level all over again. Get ready to throw your controller across the room, because this game does not mess around.
Overall, LittleBigPlanet 2 may have some problems, it may have a tough level creation tool, but it still remains one of my favorite games of all time. Sorry this review was also late, but next time, get ready, because I'm gonna review the long-requested sequel to everyone's favorite horror game...
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