Littlebigplanet 2 - DEMO

[Darwock]

What, no impressions???

You know I'd been thinking I may not get involved with the sequel despite having a 10/10 obsessive love affair with the original, purely because I don't have so much time to dedicate to creating stuff these days.

After 5 minutes with the demo I have completely fallen in love again. I only played the Tower of Whoop! but... the combined effect of trampolines, grappling guns and Also Sprach Zarathustra had me grinning from ear to ear, and all without a single friend present to slap.

Also noticed score related prize dispensers by the way. I was worried that all this stuff would be like over-egging the cake but everything I've seen so far just fits perfectly within the LBP 'feel'.

[merf]

still looks gorgeous but with an underlying poor platformer and I suspect the user levels will be full of half finished tat and very clever things that have taken hours and have no gameplay merit at all.

'ooh look somebody has made windows xp' - so what ?

for me its core gameplay still doesn't work and then the huge and admitedly clever scope of the tools leave it very unfocused. For me the way to go with this stuff is to be more focussed, thats why Modnation Racers worked so well.

[Neon Ignition]

Pretty much the same opinions I laid out in the Headlines thread. It appears to be a great expansion of the toolset for fans but other than that completely forgettable. It's true that the platform mechanics hold it back, people were far too forgiving of them the first time around and even just recently we've had XBL games and DKR etc that destroy this on a gameplay level. Custom level wise from the beta there are vids on youtube of some technically well constructed and inventive use levels but ultimately they're all poor versions of other games. Unless a massive existing fan, it's best followed via youtube.

[Darwock]

Wow, so you guys couldn't feel more different from me then. That one level I tried was just pure fun. Then again I never had a problem with the platforming in the original - the MM designed levels in story mode made up the best platformer I've ever played.

[merf]

oddly still think I'm going to buy it but not as a game I expect to enjoy and more in the same way I used to buy Amiga public domain demo disks by Team 17 to be impressed by clever coding and tech wizardry.

[Brad]

I thought that LBP was fundamentally a decent platformer engine the first time around. Ultimately I got bored of it but it was a decent game, even without the community levels.

[SuperBeatBoy]

I thought the demo was great, the new elements they have brought really open the game up for me.

[Tig]

Custom level wise from the beta there are vids on youtube of some technically well constructed and inventive use levels but ultimately they're all poor versions of other games.

I wouldn't really agree with that.

I saw plenty of interesting gameplay ideas in the beta... there were flying AI drones which could assist the player; AI co-op partners with special gameplay properties; levels where everything was driven by the background music, and levels where the player gets telekinetic powers, or can rotate the entire play space.



I reckon it's premature to write off all of this content as being "poor"... especially when you remember that the LBP2 testers knew their levels were going to be deleted at the end of the beta.
Obviously, no-one's going to want to invest weeks of work on an original idea if it's going to be deleted after a few days.




Although a couple of people did that anyway...
there were a couple of extremely high-quality levels appearing in the beta which rival Media Molecule's own work.









I'm confident that the final game is going to play host to some awesome, original content from players.

[Neon Ignition]

Typically I might give the benefit of the doubt but LBP1 proved the inventiveness will be buried under parodies of better games and trophy unlocking levels. If anything it gives more reason to wait till it's ?10 and the userbase thins out. The third vid is interesting though I can't say the first 2 look fun from a gameplay view

[JSR]

I found the first LBP to be the most overhyped game of this generation. A cool toolset wrapped around a poor platform engine was all it was. I tried a lot of the community levels, none of them entertained me. Some were very intricate and showed technical feats, but the gameplay in all of them were very basic. Usually consisting of pushing block into a nearby hole, flicking a switch to open a door, or swinging over a dangerous pit. All was way too primitive, and when the platforming is borderline broken (you never know how far or high you're gonna jump), the whole thing left me unimpressed.

[JP]

I'm not at all worried about this game having played the beta and the demo.

Of course, there will be poor user created levels out there but when you have people like me who don't really care about the creation side so spent most of my time playing the levels, I think that's expected and acceptable.

There are well over two million user created levels available for the first game completely free of charge and although there's only a small percentage of that which is really good I've still had far more really enjoyable free user created DLC for this than I have with the professionally created DLC that I've paid for in other games.

Although many of the user created levels have absolutely no gameplay at all, they don't need to.


If people want to mess around with the create tools then I'm all for it as it's a way of experimenting without having to worry about a game and they may create things that they may not even thought about if only platform levels had been created.

New tools like the microchips and music sequencer have been created because Media Molecule were inspired by stupidly complicated machines such as this one.


The first game was an excellent platformer and the controls did exactly what they needed to do. I'm pleased to say, that if people didn't like the platforming or the controls in the first game then it's unlikely this game is going to change your mind so you may as well just avoid the game and take your money elsewhere.

I know it took me a few level to adapt to the analogue physics based controls but they worked just as they should once I stopped trying to pretend that it was a different game.

Media Molecule seem happy to not have everybody like their game because it's the game they believe in and it's the game they want to make and if other people don't like it then other people don't like it. I really think it's a shame that more developers aren't willing to stand up and produce the games they want to make instead of making the game they think will appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

I still go back to the first game now trying collect the last few collectable items and I'm really looking forward to this one.

[MisterBubbles]

These two videos are genius and shows what the community can do, this and my current favourite minecraft show theres more to games than boring seen it played it got the t-shirt COD, the general public and gamers are always bashing on about no creativity and new ideas but vanquish and even weirder games dont sell, but COD Blops does near 7 million.
Where on a trip to sterile boring repeats and sequels and where all to blame.

[rmoxon]

Within the platforming genre, besides a few nintendo games, theres is very little that can compare to the imagination and invention that the makers of Little Big Planet pack into their level design, and thats why the first game was magic and this one probabaly will be too.

For anyone to say otherwise seems absurd to me.