LittleBigThings - Bad News First

Oh noooooooo

So, as Joystiq's reported, plenty of people are suffering from an infinite loading glitch when playing online with pals.  I was hit by this earlier today, as was Kaseius, whom I was trying to play alongside.  It's a real shame, as aside from that, the netcode seemed more improved from the first game, honestly.  Hopefully they'll get that sorted out quickly, as they are aware of the problem and have a fix in the works, apparently.  The article states that a quick fix is to turn off your controller, wait for the level to load (it should, apparently, once the controller is off or shortly after) and then turn it back on and resume.

You can't stay mad at that face.

Happily, there is good news, though.  Plenty of it, in fact.  Not only, as I said, has the netcode improved from the last game, just about everything has improved over the last game.  The visuals are more striking, the characters are more defined, the levels are just that much more entertaining, and the tools, my word, the tools.  Short of some little issues with the Grappling Hook, which is a learning experience, rather than poor implementation, everything works just so well and feels so good and easy to pick up.  The problem with the Hook being that the whole of its controls are hogged onto the left-stick; you go up or down with up and down, left and right accordingly, which doesn't sound all that bad, honestly, but when mention comes up of having the shorten/lengthen inputs being changed, it's hard to not find yourself going, "Well, yeah that might work better, now that you say it."  

The past has shown us that this is just the very very beginning of LittleBigPlanet 2, no doubt MM is already hard at work with supplements to keep us all happy for a while to come.  And with what they've undoubtedly learned with the previous two games (LBP and LBPPSP), the sky is the limit on what to expect.  (Except anything from Squeenix.)

As for my personal experiences in LBP2, I've already completed the story mode, which wasn't too hard to do.  The difficulty is spot-on, so long as you're able to think things out for a moment.  Times when you contemplate going back through the level you've just finished, or that you're having difficulty with, to ace it, you may think to yourself, "Why, that's never going to happen", and then perhaps a minute later or so after thinking more, you just realize all the errors you made, and it becomes that much easier and possible.  I know that's how it happened with me at least; the last boss in the game is particularly punishing until you stop for a moment to recognize all his patterns.  (No pun intended, given the context of the game)

Do you know what's going on here?  Right, neither do I.

I'm not quite sure how far I'll get into the Create Mode.  I know I'll spend all the time in the world in it, but whether anything of worth is produced from it is the part that I'm just not convinced on.  The tools are spectacular, and perhaps it's just experience talking, but they seem a bit easier to use.  On the other hand, there's just so many, and the mere thought of me possibly understanding microchips (it's 99% intimidation, don't worry) is daunting at the very least.

That's me (In a Bomberman costume) swinging on the falling lights in my level, Journey's Fall.

If, or rather, when I do have a project in mind, I'll likely use this as an outlet to express my ideas and intents; hopefully putting it all down somewhere will help the process along a bit.  I did have quite a few levels started in the original, after all, they just simply never saw anything resembling completion.  Aside from Journey's Fall, that is.  And while I'm proud of Journey's Fall, as it was the only level that I made and published and it wasn't complete crap, quality it was not.  It was short, I didn't know much with the tools (Not that I'm some guru now, mind) so there's a lot of embarrassing little things strewn about, and the 'cool' thing of it at the end (A Jetbike) still ends up killing sackpeople about 50% of the time.  While I've begun tweaking it a bit, or at least I had, back in LBP1, I'm not sure I'm happy with putting it back out there with anything short of a full-on remake, though, which will almost be as difficult a task as any.  But it's always been an idea in my head, as has the sequel level to it.  (In fact, I had the framework of the sequel built up before I lost it, but it was not that bad of a loss)

Few games have the ability to make and keep me as excited as the LittleBigPlanet games do (note the present tense), which is why I'm happy to say that it's here to stay, on this blog and in my PS3.  My poor, poor backlog.