Sharing is Caring
Fortunately, anyone can appreciate the fruit of thousands of gamers' labor on a daily basis. As vast as the level creator is within LBP, the community features are equally so. It's easy to search for levels, and it's equally simple to swim through several pages of user-generated content. The sharing section borrows from blogs and photo websites like Photobucket or Flickr, since each level can be tagged with a certain descriptor, such as "brilliant," "annoying," or "cute," among several dozen others. You'll be asked to rate and tag each level after you've completed it. If you're even more inclined to offer feedback, you can scroll over to a level descriptor to tell a creator that his/her level is great, or suggest what they can do to make the level better.
As of launch, the servers are awash with plenty of creations to sample, but it seems that the best-designed stages are the simple ones that do things completely off-the-wall. Whether it's calculators, basketball (with jetpacks and sponges, no less), or picking presidential candidates on the eve of Election Day, the stranger levels tend to prove more amusing than the more typical platforming creations, the designers of which often seem a tad sadistic in their approach. Regardless, there's a lot of content to choose from, and like Spore, LBP is a game that can only grow and evolve.
Even with launch day hiccups that prove a bit frustrating, LittleBigPlanet is indisputably one of the year's best titles. Its simplicity is deceptive; the easy platforming elements build in complexity in story mode to give gamers the best console side-scroller since Viewtiful Joe. The buzzword that's been tossed around a bit excessively is "creative." Granted, it's the root of a good third of the experience, but simply bandying the phrase "be creative" is a bit pat and can't accurately capture everything the game offers. Truthfully, LBP is a game rooted in production and consumption. The experience is hinged upon consuming and collecting in order to expand your depth and range when it's time to move into conceiving and concocting. Not everyone is going to offer a vision for others to experience, but the revolutionary nature of LittleBigPlanet ensures that gamers worldwide will be enriched a little more each time they turn on their PS3s.
