Little Big Planet 3 on PS3 – The DVDfever Review

Little Big Planet 3 is the first LBP game I’ve played on the PS3 and, in fact, to date I’ve only ever played the original game on the PSP but I loved it with a passion. And while previous games in the series had 3 levels of into-the-screenness at most, this one has a massive 16, so that’s something that took a little getting used to.

The whole thing is very much more intuitive than you think, whether for jumping about or how to get from A to B, although you can’t get 100% and fully complete the game on your first go-round. There are unlockables such as ‘boost boots’ (like a jetpack) which you’ll come across later on, and then you can replay the game and access areas and bubbles which you couldn’t get to first time round.

Once again, Stephen Fry narrates the world Sackboy and his friends inhabit, but there’s additional input from Hugh Laurie as Newton. There are additional voices from many including Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy), Simon Greenall (Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa) and Nolan North (David in The Last Of Us).

There’s also three new playable characters, named Oddsock, Toggle and Swoop, with individual abilities to discover, plus up to 4-player multiplayer, either offline or online, and some levels can only be 100% completed that way.

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Little Big Planet 3 – Prologue Level: 1 – Introduction (720p HD)

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As always, Little Big Planet 3 comes complete with a creator mode, for the design lovers out there. Personally, I’m too lazy to do all that. You can buy extra sets of levels, but these cost extra, eg. the Toy Story Pack. There’s also additional costume kits from a general ‘monster’ pack for just over £3 to one based on the hit animatied movie Frozen, for a fiver.

However, there is also some free stuff built-in, but not a lot. Better is to go to LBP.me and select a level from there. Since you’ll have logged into PSN on your PC to do so, you’ll find any level selection instantly comes up on your console. That is great…. Annoyingly, though, once you’ve died and it asks if you want to return to your pod (main menu) or replay the level, and you choose to replay, it reloads it back in, which takes ages. Why is that?

News items will also appear each time you start up the game if there are new levels available, and in the prologue, the Popit Cursor section teaches you how to make the most of the Popit, as well as the ability to rewind time so you can counter any mistakes.

As well as the usual engaging, colourful graphics on display, there’s wonderful sound FX all around you, such as when there’s electricity sounds which fizzle out of all the speakers. And I’m glad that all the basic sound effects, such as the bubbles popping and playing a tune, as you run over them quickly enough, is all still exactly as it used to be! 🙂

Musically, however, I’ve yet to come across any memorable tunes, as there were plenty on the PSP version.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.

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Little Big Planet 3 – Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? – 100% complete (Challenge Room) (720p HD)

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Any downsides?

• Well, whereas the first game had 8 sets of levels (with the PSP version having 7), and Little Big Planet 2 had 6, Little Big Planet 3 only has four lots. Three of these have 5 levels within, whereas the penultimate one has an odd-numbered 9. That makes for a total of 24. I wonder why we’re being short-changed? I know you can download more that other users create, as well as being able to create your own (for which I’m a bit lazy) but still, I have to ask just why are we denied a sizeable number? You’d expect subsequent new releases to include more, not less. There is some additional walking to and from levels which leads to Challenge Rooms, but it still feels like we’ve been short-changed overall.

• There’s a lot of CGI between levels, certainly more than I expected. I preferred the PSP version which just let you get on with things, and unlike this game, it didn’t fill the screen with teleporters and the like, so you disappear in one place and then end up somewhere else.

• The prologue does feel like it goes on for far too long, especially since after this set of levels, there’s only 3 more to go. And it wastes time by telling you things like how you can wave your arms about by holding L2 and R2 down whilst wiggling the joysticks around – something you’ll never do again.

• The game has some bugs, namely making it freeze sometimes. I was going through the Popit Cursor tutorials when I did something to make my Sackboy start posing. Then he just wouldn’t move. I tried rewinding it back but it placed me back at the last checkpoint – stuck in the air! Erm… little help?

All that said, if you like Little Big Planet then you’ll enjoy this third installment for sure once you get over any niggles. There’s a great deal to discover and once I’ve gone through the whole game I’m going to enjoy retracing my steps through Sackboy’s world, which has plenty of the “just one more go” aspect to it, when you get offed.

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Little Big Planet 3 Trailer

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Important info:

• Publisher: Sony
• Players: single player campaign, multiplayer: 2-4
• HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
• Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
• Spoken language: English
• Subtitles: English

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT	9 8 8 9
OVERALL	8.5