E3 2010: LittleBigPlanet 2 makes sense to us now

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Hands-on time and careful explanation help us understand exactly what's in store for November

More impressive were a couple of fan-created levels that completely broke from LBP’s traditional side-scrolling gameplay; one was a full-on RTS, in which a Sackboy-piloted bug-like tank spawned multiple smaller tanks, which could then be directed by a mouse cursor to attack enemies on an overhead board.

Those are some of the biggest changes LBP2 brings to the table, but they’re far from the only ones. The size cap on levels has been greatly increased, we’re told, and its “quota” system – which flagged a level as maxed out once it had hit a certain number of one kind of object – has been replaced with a system that simply lets you fill the available system memory with whatever you want. It’s also possible to do more within those limits, like creating animated backgrounds.

The system for browsing user-created levels is also being improved; it’ll be possible to view them as a list, for example, and the developer is launching a social-networking website – LBP.me – that can be used to quickly browse and share user-created content, from levels to circuits. Also, each level will generate a unique QR code – those weird, square barcodes that we’re seeing more and more frequently these days – which can then be printed out. Hold that up to a PlayStation Eye, and the game will immediately retrieve and load that level.

LittleBigPlanet 2 is a whole lot of cool ideas wrapped into one game, and judging by what we’ve played so far, it’s coming together extremely well. The game’s scheduled to arrive in November, and we’re eager to see what other kinds of things we can create when that happens.

Jun 17, 2010

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Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.