After a long wait and a few setbacks, LittleBigPlanet has finally arrived and Sackboy has jumped out of his pod to greet us. I have been following this game for awhile and loved all the ideas that were put behind it. Usually when a developer talks about their ideas, something is lost in the translation and we never get to see it in the full version of the game. Luckily LittleBigPlanet isn’t one of those games and brings to the table a lot of innovation, humor and creativity.

When playing the game you really can grasp the ideas and how big this little world can get. From the get go you can jump into the story mode and soon after unlock the create mode and the tutorials or leap straight online and join other Sackboys (and Sackgirls) running around the story levels or even some user-created levels for fun, trophies and competition.

The story mode starts off fairly simple to give you a chance to learn the controls and functions as well as what a few of the objects do. From here the game progresses through eight major areas each with a few story levels and challenge levels. These break up the game a little more and offer a choice in some areas, however to keep the story and levels coming you need to pass the current story level to move onto the next. This gets a little frustrating at times but it does have a nice balance of challenge and reward.

If anything, the story mode feels a little short. While it does reward players for going back through levels and putting the right stickers in places for those extra items, sometimes going back through is a huge amount of work for one or two items. You will get frustrated at times, you will die and you will certainly want to hurl Sackboy across a burning fire pit just to teach him a lesson. Some of the boss fights (yes they’re boss battles!) are challenging and just to die at the end and having to make the way through the level again just starts to border on annoying. That being said LittleBigPlanet builds up to some of the best levels towards the end of the game and you end up wanting more. Luckily this is where the user content comes handy.

Once completing the first area you can jump in and attempt to make your own level. The tutorials are fairly easy, descriptive and humorous with Stephen Fry narrating these. You can opt to do the tutorials are your own pace when you want to use a new item, or by skipping through them with the ‘next tutorial’ button. Once through them the game is at your mercy. Any object, sticker or material you have collected in the story mode you can use in your own level. Once it has been published other players can jump in and give your world a go. They can give you a rating out of five, use key words to describe your level as well as ‘heart’ it. Hearting levels and items can be used to find your favourite things faster.

When looking for levels you can follow friends online or jump in with some other people. Finding a level to play on is a simple matter of searching via the key words tool. From here you can scroll through some levels with that key word in mind, it shows you how many people have played it as well as how many have ‘hearted’ it. This allows you to quickly get an idea of the level to see if it worth your time. If you do jump into an online game, you might end up going head to head against other players.

When playing online with someone you might be required to help out by pressing a button at the same time as them, or switching two levers. Other times you can play against each other and race down tracks with the winner getting more points. This is where the game really starts to come alive as you explore different worlds with other players. It can lead to some hilarious situations, for example when four of us tried to jump onto the same skateboard to ride down a ramp and one of us hung onto the front wheels, when the first jump came along it flipped and all four of us fell to our sackdeaths. We had a bit of a laugh and tried again and again.

During the story game play you will find separate sections that you will need help with. If you have a friend and another controller they can jump in and help you out here, otherwise you can play online. In the later levels of the game however you will need two and three other people to get some of the bonus stuff. This is where it really does force you to explore the community more and play with others.

Visually the game looks great having a style to it that carries on in every way possible throughout the game. They keep it all fun, simple and funky. The camera pans in various situations to give you a look up ahead or behind, but apart from this you really can’t control the camera. You can zoom in on your Sackboy if you want to change his outfit but doing this mid-level keeps you zoomed in for a little while and sometimes you might hit a hazard. A few times I couldn’t notice hazards hiding in the darkness or just off screen, but these are rare. There is also a few occasions where the object I needed got stuck forcing me to retry the level. Again these are annoying but rare.

The music and sound of the game is absolutely fantastic. Even without lyrics from the Qu’ran, the music keeps to the same style as the rest of the game. It is entertaining to hear some of the tunes that pop out. I even found myself re-playing a few of the older levels simply because the music was so good I just wanted to hear it again. Different areas have different music, different things have different sounds and you can even earn audio tracks to put into your own level.

The only thing missing is the ability to create a level with someone else. The developers mentioned early that they weren’t able to finish this feature, yet they were demonstrating it at early conventions. What happened here is anyone’s guess. It would have been nice to have it, but hopefully they can fix what issues they have and put it in soon enough. The downloadable content is already out as well with a few extra costumes available on the Playstation Network. However the “rare” week 1 shirt comes at the price of an old Playstation game! It is a little over-priced but some people are collectors and need it. Otherwise there are some nice, cheap costumes as well as a couple of free ones.

While it isn’t for everyone, you will know in the first five minutes if the game is for you or not. If you enjoyed the trailers, or have played a little bit and felt hooked you will certainly enjoy it for a while. Creative minds will be able to build up some fantastic levels with the simple yet effective creator, while other players can play away trying to get a high score over their friends on the online scoreboards. With challenging yet creative levels in story mode and thousands of players already creating away LittleBigPlanet looks good, sounds terrific and plays even better. If the community sticks around this game will be one of the best the PS3 has to offer for a while.