LittleBigPlanet did a great job of bringing the traditional side-scrolling platform to the high-def generation with a great community of level creators to add a lot of replay value to the package. That’s why the announcement of a PSP version of LittleBigPlanet earlier this year garnered a lot of interest, but has the final product lived up its predecessor’s excellence?

Coming from Sony Cambridge with some help from Media Molecule, LittleBigPlanet managed to fit onto the PSP fairly well without cutting too many corners. The major thing that was lost in the translation is co-op, which is a shame since being able to play with friends is a rather large part of its predecessor’s appeal. The positive side is that the single-player gets more of a focus this time around, as the original featured areas that required at least two people to access them for the precious prize bubbles. Other changes include just two planes of movement instead of three and the spawn points now offer unlimited lives.

The single-player mode in LittleBigPlanet is very similar to what is offered in the PS3 version, as you take part in a basic story that is spread across several worlds that tie together in a way advertises the user-created levels to further. The controls feel a bit tighter than they are on the PS3 version, but the analog nub on the PSP isn’t nearly as good as the Dual Shock 3’s analog sticks. That means a lot of simple jumps get a bit harder when you can’t make some simple jumps the first time or get caught on things easily. The single-player campaign comes in at just over 30 levels with about a third of those as the mini-game levels, which is a bit shorter than the nearly 50 levels that were in the original.

Level design in LittleBigPlanet as a whole is pretty good, as levels tend to be less straightforward and offer some more puzzle-based levels where the puzzles that involve splintered to solve parts of a puzzle so you can continue on. Vehicle sections are a bit more numerous with a magic carpet level and a unique use of the jet pack and rails to guide and limit your reach as the highlights of that portion of the game. The spawn points do offer an unlimited amount of lives now, which is useful for the harder parts of the single-player campaign. There are leaderboards for every level, but it’s not as simple as it needs to be since you have to login and then attempt to check out the community levels to get your scores uploaded to the leaderboards. The emotions you can give your Sackboy are fleshed out a bit more here as you can hold down the L shoulder button to pull off up to four moves on the d-pad for each emotion, though they feel more like gestures you’d use for co-op, which this game conveniently lacks.

The user-creation aspect of LittleBigPlanet returns in this version largely intact from what you’ve seen in the PS3 version, so you shouldn’t expect to be able to make a level here if you weren’t able to do it on the original. The tutorial is still very heavy-handed with Stephen Fry telling you how almost every tool and aspect of the creator, which will probably annoy those that made levels in the PS3 version. Controls are convoluted since you have all of the options shoved into a lesser amount of buttons, so the heavy-handed tutorial could be good for everyone. Other than the controls, the editor should be deep enough that it should be more capable of standing up to what the PS3 version can achieve, though we won’t see if it can live up to its potential for some time since there will probably be a smaller audience of creators right off the bat.

User-created levels still use the same moon set-up that the original LittleBigPlanet offered, so you will see the Community moon, My Moon, the main LittleBigPlanet, and spaceship pod. The Community moon offers a good basic set of sorting options for user-created levels that you can download to your memory stick, which forgoes the tags and commenting systems that the original offered. The levels you download are collected on the main planet as an option under the story levels to play them, which also offer the same kinds of sorting options as the Community moons. My Moon is where your created levels reside while the spaceship pod offers a place to edit your Sackboy, avatar, and get news from the developers. With the opportunity to download a bunch of levels, you shouldn’t worry too much about how much space they take up about 100-200 KB, so you should be fine unless you’re exclusively using a small Memory Stick.

LittleBigPlanet definitely took a visual hit when it was shrunken down to fit onto the PSP, as to get the physics to work properly forced out co-op, high-res textures, and the third-lane of movement and items. Those cuts keeps the framerate at a pretty good level, though there are points where it drops and even playing with the physics in the level editor how much of a difference there is between a pile of objects that fills up the screen and empty space. The backgrounds do look pretty good at times with some that have good 3D backdrops. The downgrade in visuals does hurt the Sackboys a bit, as you aren’t really able to see finer details on his clothing and his shoes will be nearly indistinguishable. The soundtrack here is very much similar to the style of music that was chosen for the PS3 version, though the songs here aren’t quite as memorable as those in the original LittleBigPlanet.

LittleBigPlanet has certainly made a pretty good translation to the PSP as more of a single-player-focused experience, but that also brings with it more of a reliance upon great community levels and/or developer support with DLC to help give it replay value to be worth $40. Since we can’t really tell how the community will take to this version at the moment, it’s hard to recommend buying it at full price. If you’re a level creator that likes a new blank slate to play with, this will probably satisfy that urge while everyone else that just wants to see the new levels and what this version has to offer would be best off with just renting it for now. You can easily wait a few months and check out how the community is progressing to see if it’s worthy of a purchase at that point, which should also mean that you can get it for a bit cheaper than it will be right now.

Final Score: 8.2 | Recommendation: Rent It

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About This Author: Chris Selogy

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