Little Big Planet

Arrived on Thursday (6th) - sold on Tuesday (11th).

Graphics, sound and presentation - great.
Gameplay - a tedious and fiddly physics enabled "2D in 3D" platformer.

Played through 4 continents with my wife (about half the game), including the bonus levels that you unlock with a key. We've played many co-operative games together, but never been so bored.

Typical level involves running from left to right, with the occasional upwards or downwards travel, collecting items or pushing / pulling objects for various reasons (usually in order to jump on them to get up to a platform).

It wouldn't be so bad if the controls or physics were implemented better, but all too often a frustrating piece of level design appears requiring split second timing (or luck with the physics), resulting in what limited fun there is being sucked out of it.

I know there are (probably a lot of) people out there that think this game is THE best thing to ever happen, but for me this feels like a step backwards - graphics and "cuteness" taking precedent over gameplay. Super Mario 64 (over 10 years ago) may not have looked anywhere near as good, but played 10 times better.

That's pretty much my thoughts to, and I've only seen videos of it. It'd probably do well with the Wii crowd.

Thats sad, but predictable for such a 'console must have' with the hype and coverage its had... ah well

Back to my 360 - mind you Fable II is not as good as it should have been either! :(

IPete2.

If I remember right it sure looked pretty with nice physics, but kind of what I expected. Like Spore and Black & white before that.

I think a lot of people don't realise that realistic physics are not easy to `play with`. By giving objects a set of predefined inflexible rules to follow it might well make them interact in interesting ways but it prevents the player from being able to do anything with them other than what their physics allow. The real world with its real physics is not easy to play with. You have to pretty much follow the rules of how the world wants to operate and you really don't have much control over it, even if you want to. That doesn't really make for fun play. It would be so much more fun to walk down a street if it wasn't for the realistic physics, let's say. It would be much more fun to jump if you weren't restrained by gravity. It'd be much more fun to move objects around if you didn't have to exactly carefully position yourself and pick them up exactly right and with perfect coordination and timing. Physics is very unforgiving to the player. With realistic physics there is no cushion of easier control or easier interactivity. It's more complex, it looks interesting visually, but does it really make for a more fun game experience? Perhaps in some ways it adds new avenues of possibilities, but at the same time it takes away from the player's sense of control and mastery, and their `magical abilities` to overcome things which would not be possible in real life. Physics in games can really only make games `like real life`, which I think is their significant downfall. But it gets hyped nonetheless as the next buzzword. Adding physics to a game doesn't make it great.

I think a lot of people are also thinking of physics as providing more `immersion` into a game by making towers topple and barrels fly and all the rest of it. I think that makes a game perhaps more chaotic which may add interesting challenges, but at the same time it reduces the player to a passive victim of forces he can't control. Most people, I think, don't want to accept a world that dictates their experience, they want to have some say in it, and they want to have some delusion of control over it, and they want to have magical abilities that defy reality, and they want to play in that kind of environment as a game. Since when was `very real` ever the material of a game? Games require illusions and fantasies, otherwise they can't be a game, and turn into nothing but a simulation.

Also seeing these tech demos where you see thousands of bricks or barrels flying around or objects falling and bumping into each other, does nothing for me at all. Who cares about these objects. The excitement really is about the fact that they're bouncing - hey, look at how they bounce! - but in the bigger picture who really cares. That doesn't make a game. That's just infatuation with a new technology, which has no meaning or significance or emotional impact for a game player.

Shame to hear. I remember seeing the videos for it way back when. Looked like it could be alot of fun with a bunch of friends.

Im not to keen on the game as it just is to free and has no direction but people have done cool things with it. See Below

http://www.gamingangels.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3981

After admittedly only one nights play with 3 other people and not expecting it to be as good as the hype, I quite liked it! It is beautiful to look at and the fact that users can create levels (or even just places to look at) means it should have quite a long life.

I totally disagree with ImaginaryHuman. His criticisms of physics could be levelled at any game dynamic - with or without physics. In what way are physics "a set of predefined inflexible rules"? They are certainly more flexible than a game without them (does Manic Miner have more flexible rules cos it doesn't have complex physics?). Games have been toying with physics since gaming began: alien bullets in space invaders fall to the floor; the first ever video game had physics (simple as they may be):
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp
..should we reject all games with physics because they give us too much chaos and choices.

"Physics in games can really only make games `like real life`"
This is just plain untrue. Physics can be as realistic or unrealistic as you please. LBP has fairly unrealistic physics that are a lot of fun. I spent a good few minutes chasing other players just to pull them around.

Another good example is Super Mario Galaxy which has a lot of physics (unrealistic) and is great fun.

If the physics are not realistic then it is not physics, it's an approximation of observed behavior. An old retro game that moves and spaceship left and right when you push the joystick is not realistic physics. I was talking about the attempt to make physics life-like and how that detracts from creative freedom. Unrealistic physics are much more fun, which I agree with you about. It's just that a lot of games now are trying to strap on physics just to be cool and to let objects move around more `freely`, but at the same time it can be harder to interact with. And then the game starts to revolve around the physics and what it lets you get away with and what it doesn't, which I don't think is the right approach.

Take for example that one game with a little motorcycle and a spring-loaded guy strapped to it, you try to overcome difficult obstacles by properly applying acceleration in the right amounts at the right time. It's hard to play and sometimes almost impossible. It's cool that physics are involved but having to play by realistic physics rules means you're no longer just pushing left or right or fire to overcome obstacles, you're having to wait for the physics simultaion to be in the right state to allow you to try to make it work to your benefit.

I don't think that is ever so much of a problem with an unrealistic physics system. And like was said up in the first posts, LBP has you hanging on to platforms to lower them with your weight, or to push things - these kinds of `required ways of behaving` are because it's driven by physics, rather than a much more fun mario or sonic-style of control with unrealistic physics where not everything makes total plausible sense but is much easier to play and much more fun because now freedom revolves around the user's ability to wield control over the environment rather than the environment working against them annoyingly. Sometimes the situations that present themselves in a physics-based environment (a realistic one) are just play tiresome and awkward. You can't filter out the un-fun aspects of physics without making them unrealistic. I'm just saying in general that realistic physics are a mixed bag, it's not all fun fun fun.

Sadly...we are at a time when graphics rule over gameplay.

It's not approximate at any level, comes down to how accurate physics related data you've got. Also, you defined "real physics" very losely there.

I think your two posts could've been said in a few lines or less. I don't agree that physics on earth are restraining at any level, you should ask a gymnast.

And if a game had great earthlike physics I think it could be really cool as long as the controlls are ok (not as tedious as some games like Second Life perhaps).

You should play some Gish. It's awesome. :)

Well, I bought Little Big Planet, have nearly finished it, and absolutely love it!

Have played around with the level editor a bit, too. Wish I had more time to put into it.

Define "realistic"? All science including physics (or as we're discussing here, dynamics) are approximations of observed behavior. Someone watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and complaining about the unrealistic physics, as there is no way those slender branches would actually support Chow Yun-Fats weight, much less provide enough resistance to allow him to leap off it, is missing the point entirely.

It's not about realism, it's about being internally consistent, and providing a suspension of disbelief. This is where games like Little Big Planet succeed, and games like Crysis fail spectacularly.

I thought Crysis physics were great and a lot of fun, Definately one of the better things about the game. It just depends if you like the gameplay or not. If your not into slower paced stealthy gameplay or prefer dumb fast action horde shooting games then it's not going to be for you.

I thought little big planet was absolutely rubbish, but the physics and graphics were nice.

I think it more depends on whether you can still take the game seriously after watching a dead body bounce around the place for half an hour.

Some people might call that fun, can't say I noticed, but I'm not one of those people that mill around gawping at dead corpses all day. I'd rather play the game :).