One of the biggest surprises from Sony at GDC this year actually managed to generate more buzz than the impressive unveiling of the Home service. You'd never have guessed that the game to garner all this positive recognition would be something like LittleBigPlanet, a downloadable title by Media Molecule, the makers of Rag Doll Kung Fu. A lot of what makes Rag Doll Kung Fu fun has also found its way into LittleBigPlanet, but it's so much more than just a way for players to smack each other around.
TinyHugeFun
From our demonstration on the show floor at Sony's Gamers Day event, we found that LittleBigPlanet was easily one of the most charming looking games we've ever seen. The first thing you'll notice is that there is no user interface at all. Everything is quite intuitive, and your high-definition display is put to good use thanks to gorgeous visuals. These aren't graphics that are meant to be compared to something like Epic's Gears of War. Think more along the lines of backdrops reminiscent of what was attempted by Rare with Viva Pinata, crossed with character designs drawn from Internet celeb Domo-kun, and you're on the right track.
LittleBigPlanet's characters are rag doll puppets which can be customized in seemingly endless ways. While you won't be able to get rid of the endearing stitches at their joints or the zippers on their bellies, you will be able to change the color, texture and pattern of their skin, apply decals to their bodies, dress them up in crazy outfits and deck them out in many different accessories. Some of the configurations we saw for the little dolls included characters wearing a Chinese Dragon costume, an Evil Knievel figure, and a poor little guy wearing a cardboard box on his head. This design was particularly pathetic-looking and captured the hearts of all those in attendance.
The little characters can be controlled in a couple different ways with the Sixaxis controller. One of the most impressive aspects of the controls was shown to us immediately -- in order to hop into the game, a player need only shake one of the four controllers. Tilting the controller front and back will bring your character to and fro, and using the shoulder pads and analog sticks makes it a cinch to grab onto things as well as control your left and right arms independently.
The move we were shown next was one we couldn't stop using throughout the gameplay session: the slap. By pulling an analog stick in and quickly twisting it in an outward circular motion, you can slap another player smartly across the face. This was a perfect opportunity to be shown the emotive system and how it affects characters. By pressing the directional pad up, down, left, or right, you can change your character's emotional state, from happy to sad and so on. A sad character will not only have a depressing frown on its face, but it will also mope as it walks, with slumped shoulders and its head sagging. How these characters interact with each other will also be affected by their emotions. A happy player will high-five another happy player, for instance, while a happy player and a sad player combined will result in a hug. It's really charming stuff.
