LittleBigPlanet 3 is finally here for us PlayStation owners. Even though technically it’s the “5^th” instalment of the series (with the inclusion of the PSP and PS Vita versions), that doesn’t faze us or bother us in the slightest.  LittleBigPlanet 3 is a welcoming experience that the PS4 has needed to offer. Stephen Fry makes his return doing his soothing voice over’s, with Hugh Laurie’s character, Newton, making a debut appearance. Two fantastic people and performers, making what was a fantastic game even better.  From the get go, Hugh Laurie welcomes us all to the gameplay with a tutorial level (quite a boring one at that to be honest), however with Hugh saying things like “Chappy, Chappy, Chap” in his upper-class persona, it gave me a chuckle and all was forgiven.

This time around Media Molecule haven’t developed the game, instead Sumo Digital have stepped up to the plate and honestly have delivered arguably the best LittleBigPlanet title of the franchise.  They have captured everything that was good about the previous LBP instalments, especially the beloved universe, but also have managed to create some of the most unique levels the series has ever seen.  The level designs are of amazing quality, with so many being unique, not repetitive and thoroughly enjoyable.  There are a lot of challenging stages however, and are even more difficult when more players join in on the action, but that all adds to the experience (who doesn’t like a bit of frustration in a level from time to time?) which gives you a warm feeling of extra satisfaction upon completing a level.

The levels are crafted beautifully, with each stage having something different to offer. May it be the characters you use in the level or the power-ups that you’ve unlocked to access different areas, both of which gives this game massive replay value alone.  The levels are also much more in-depth than you may think. Every level is worth going over more than once, finding more stickers and collectibles along the way to finally hitting that 100% at the end of a level is pure perfection.

For this review, myself and my girlfriend played the game from the beginning to the end. It’s the first time I’ve seen my girlfriend Mikayla get so much enjoyment from a videogame. She has played LittleBigPlanet Vita, but any of the others; so it was interesting to see how she experienced the game being kind of a new comer to the series. She even wanted to play it without me, she was that hooked. Or she was just hinting that I am rubbish and die way too much (probably that). I mentioned briefly above about the new power-ups. The power-ups open up the playing field quite a lot and are a welcomed addition. First of all ‘The Pumpinator’ allows you to suck (L1) or blow (R1) blue objects, pretty straight forward.  Next up is the ‘Blink Ball’. This power-up is very Portal-esk and this power-up is strapped to your head and allows you to shoot a ball that teleports you to wherever another portal may be. There are some challenging moments in the game where you will have to teleport through portals with precise aim, especially when there’s moving platforms involved.

After you’ve been teleporting about the gaff, you will then receive ‘The Hook Hat’. Pretty self-explanatory, it’s a power-up that lets you ride rails and jump to and from other rails. Next up is ‘The Illuminator’. This power-up is possibly one that a few players may miss if they are not the type to purchase costumes. The power-up is a flashlight that interacts with certain picture frames. For those that don’t know, it is given to you by Zom Zom when you purchase 5 costumes. Lastly, ‘Boost Boots’ are a power-up that allows the you too double jump. A nice simple but useful power-up. All these power-ups are unlocked during the campaign. However, if you wish to create your own power-ups you can in the level creator.  Even though all the power-ups are very simplistic, they are a nice addition to an already great game that helps evolve the gameplay. It even helps open up the levels in a new light, continuously adding to the replay value.

One major difference that makes this LBP title stand out from there rest is the fact that there are new characters introduced. Oddsock is easily my favourite, he’s a dog-like creature that looks similar to Sackboy, but plays very differently. Oddsock’s four legs make him faster with the ability to wall jump.  The levels that are Oddsock focused are very fast paced with lots of jumping that kind of make you reminisce to some classic Sonic the Hedgehog levels. Toggle is a character with two sides. He can turn big, or turn small at the simple push of the L1 button. As you can imagine, Big Toggle allows you to weigh things down, like platforms. Tiny Toggle will allow you to fit through small spaces and is very fast.

Lastly, the most difficult character to use in my opinion is Swoop. Swoop is a bird, who can fly and, it’s all in the name, swoop… Swoop is by far the most difficult to use, but that’s probably because Swoops levels aren’t too kind and are quite a challenge. Throughout the campaign you will notice that each character has specific levels that they are made for, and it’s a bit of a shame you can’t switch at will, but you can choose to play previous levels with different characters.  The story does follow a set path and has you unlock each character one by one. You can of course do side-levels instead of the main levels.  This wasn’t an issue for me, as it nicely introduces each character gradually, and it goes back to the idea that once the characters are unlocked, you can go back and reach areas you couldn’t access previously. I think it works quite well, but others may not like that type of progression.

As many of you may know, LBP is famous for offering players the ability to create your own levels, taking the term “replay value” to a whole new level.  They have made some changes for the user generated content giving creators the ability to design on sixteen layers, instead of the previous three. This will open up a lot of opportunities for various fan made levels I am sure. This content is also present in the story levels. You will find throughout that you will be jumping back and forth between the background and foreground all thanks to bounce pads.

Another, interesting feature they’ve included is the ability to link levels, which is something that hasn’t been possible before, allowing players to create full replicas of games that they are talented enough to create. That’s not all, as there is a new mode known as the Popit Puzzle Academy. This is essentially a mini-game mode of sorts. It’s kind of in-between the story and creator mode. It’s a good mode however, and the idea of this mode is to create tools to get through the levels. It’s an interesting idea and it does what it aims to provide. An interesting experience, that eases you into the creating all kinds of things.

Simply put, the game looks gorgeous on the PS4, Sumo Digital have done a nice job making the game so colourful and stunning.  The cut-scenes are fully voiced, with Stephen Fry pitching in from-time-to-time as the narrator.  The voice acting is strong from all characters, even if the story is very simple and cheesy, yet it still works. The soundtrack and the audio is easily the best in the franchise in my opinion and is in fact my soundtrack of the year. There is a wonderful mix of different types of tracks, ranging from 50’s rock, which funny enough is played during a Diner level, to post rock, to up-beat funky tracks. It’s all here, and it’s all fantastic.  Oh, and not forgetting Nolan North makes an appearance as Marlon Random; an actor who kind of looks like Buzz from the Buzz quiz show games. Nice.

After all this praise, sadly there are some faults with the game that do stop it from being perfect. First of all, the game takes a while to get into, with a dragging introduction segment. The tutorials are very basic at the start, too basic in fact, so it’s a bit odd they’ve felt the need to have them. I imagine it’s because they assume there target audience are younger, or less of a hardcore gaming audience. I am unsure why; as doesn’t do the game justice. But once you get past that, the game just opens up a whole new world at your fingertips. It is challenging as the game progresses and I can see it being quite difficult for a younger audience as the levels certainly seemed aimed at adults or hardcore players of the genre.

The story is short, but it’s excellent whilst it lasts.  There are a few issues, a part for the story being short; the game was riddled with bugs at launch. There were awful bugs too that took away from the experience and could be darn right frustrating. I and Mikayla had multiple issues with the falling through the level glitch, not being able to respawn, or the check-point had glitched by spawning us both, but we weren’t visible. There were a few graphical bugs as well where some textures didn’t load. This happened over the first few levels of the game. After that, a few patches did release and I didn’t experience any major bugs after the first few stages. There is still some minor bugs mind, but nothing game breaking. This happened whilst playing offline and during co-op.

Respawning on LBP3 can be frustrating at times if you’re playing it in co-op. There have been many issues with levels where I had progressed further than Mikayla and she has respawned at an old checkpoint off camera, making the camera glitch a tad. Especially if one of you is in the background and the other is in the foreground. This is a costly issue due to the fact that you share lives, if you die too much before making it to the next checkpoint; you have to restart the level from the beginning. This happened a few times to us and it is frustrating but the game is that good, you don’t have an issue playing through some of the levels again.

Overall in my opinion, LittleBigPlanet 3 is the best in the series, it has improved on an already great format and somehow Sumo Digital has made the experience better than what Media Molecule was able too.  The levels are fantastic with great designs and are really fun to play. The new characters are great and I hope they return in a future LittleBigPlanet title. As I have already stated, the soundtrack is my soundtrack of the year, not much I can say about it except its perfection. The voice over work is also great, but the story is short. There are thousands upon thousands of community levels to play if you ever get bored of the standard levels. If that’s not for you, then create your own. It’s all here in this complete ‘little’ ‘big’ package. One down side other then the short story is the bugs. There are a lot of bugs.  The majority of them have been ironed out with patches since its launch, but some are still present. That being said, I highly recommend this game to fans of the previous instalments or fans of the genre in particular. Expect a challenge later in the game, but it’s certainly a rewarding experience and dare I say, quite possibly the PS4 game of the year during 2014.

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