Little Big Planet 3 Review - Something that is light hearted for once.

 

By Sam Coles:

After all the releases of the really serious games such as Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed it’s nice to sit down and play a game that doesn’t take itself seriously which is also charming, funny and light hearted.

 

 

Little Big Planet 3 opens with the familiar and soothing tones of Stephen Fry’s voice coupled with Hugh Laurie who plays the dim witted light bulb headed Newton which suits Hugh’s abilities to play a character who is well.... stupid. The story takes place in a world called Bunkum and you are first introduced to Newton as a friendly moron who wants to help, but he then gets taken control by the titans of Bunkum and wants to rule all creativity.

 

 

 

You as Sackboy or girl must awaken the three heroes’ of Bunkum you have Oddsock who is a dog like creature who can wall jump and scale walls, Toggle who speaks by his name he can toggle from small to big and Swoop who has flying abilities from gliding to well... flying.

 

The graphics and the presentation are what you would expect from a Little Big Planet game they’re absolutely beautiful with the varied levels and locales which can be from the swamps to Arctic. It’s not your standard side scrolling platformer this time it has added depth where you can travel into the background and yeah this isn’t anything new to the genre, but with the added depth of field effects it emphasises the distance with sack boy with the background and foreground.

 

 

The gameplay is more or less the same when it comes to the standard Little Big Planet tropes where you move through a level collecting orbs for points and stickers and outfits to customise your sack person. I still have a problem with the way Sackboy controls because he still feels really floaty and it can be especially annoying when you are doing very precise platforming. The other characters have tighter controls and it’s a shame that you don’t get to use them that much in the main single player campaign, the Oddsock segments are the best because it is fast and tight to control and you really feel the momentum of the character. The gameplay doesn’t completely suck me out of it; it’s just the fact that they still haven’t change the way Sackboy feels maybe did it on purpose who knows?

 

Yet again you can customise your home hub where you select levels with stickers that you’ve collected throughout your travels and also you can be as ostentatious as you like with your Sackperson looks or you can make him or her look like an idiot.

  

Music and sound design is top notch as always with some great music that suits the environments and sometimes keeps up with the speed of platforming. One of the best parts of the game is where you have a Marlon Brando cameo called Marlon Random because he is a method actor. Its set in a 1950’s setting with songs such as “Sandman” playing in the background.

 

The problems I’ve had with this game are glitches, the main glitch that I’ve encountered throughout my adventures are points in the levels where Sackboy would suddenly fall through the level geometry into an abyss, but this has been ironed out with a patch. I had horrendous frame rate problems at the start of the game it was jittering in the tutorial and it was unplayable in some bits in the high teens with FPS.

 

Besides those problems Little Big Planet 3 is a fun game if you’re looking something that is less serious and is light hearted this game would make a great gift for an adult or a child this Christmas.