It's tough to recommend LBP solely based on its story mode, as great as it is. It's the online that really carries this title, both in regard to stage creation and consumption. As of launch day, it's been a bit of a roller-coaster. On the first morning online, we had no problems trying out user-created levels. By the end of the day server issues brought the game to its knees to such a severe degree that even the menu for single-player games crawled. Since then, things are a little less bumpy, but it's not quite at the level we saw during Sony's pre-release beta.
One of the attractions of online is that you can play through story mode with your PSN buddies. In a nice touch, your Sackperson is even synched up to match your speech. Unfortunately, there's some lag when too many players are on a map, and we've seen performance that runs the gamut from a smooth experience to a slide show. Media Molecule announced that it's going to patch the game in the future to allow for online co-op level creation. Hopefully it'll resolve these launch day lag issues, because they're currently a bit problem. Offline, couch-based multiplayer is preferable to hopping online, as of the game's release.
Creationism and Evolution Can Co-Exist
Besides multiplayer, level design is a linchpin of the LBP experience. It's possible for budding stage designers to flesh out their visions without beating the story mode, but it seems that based on some of the user-created content floating around, many would be best-suited to investing time in playing the developer-created sections of the game. Creation itself is a mammoth undertaking, but isn't impossible. The game walks you through a variety of steps, including how to work within all three planes of LBP's "2.5D" levels and how to create... well, everything.
Most level designs will require at least an afternoon to really expand and build. Media Molecule gives you a few shortcuts, such as auto-setting your background, but anything else is up to you. Fortunately, there are just as many tools as there are items at your disposal. If you've devised a brilliant idea for a machine, you can save it, then copy and paste it throughout your level. If you're so inclined, you can take your created items and make them rewards for other players. One of the more ingenious trends online seems to be design tutorials, in which experienced level-makers create stages solely to instruct would-be Romeros and Miyamotos on how to construct proper bridges, build swinging items, and place environmental hazards. It's plainly evident that Media Molecule's toolset is vast and expansive, but anyone with enough time can design something decent. It's probably too intimidating for casual gamers, though; it's not really possible to jump straight into level design and expect to churn out something decent in 45 minutes.
