PAX and Plush Toys and MorePAX and Plush Toys and More

PAX

A games blog over at the Portland Mercury seemed impressed by LittleBigPlanet,and were nice enough to point out something that I think is being largely overlooked:

Unlike most world-building games,this platforming section is robust enough to functionally be its own game,much to the delight of those who don’t have any desire to slap together oversized fire-breathing cranes for their friends to play with.

The PlayStation Blog posted a booth tour from PAX;at 2:20 or so they start talking to SCEA’s Kyle Shubel,and he shows them a cool rocket car and the PAX08 Wall of Awesome.

The Escapist magazine gives a positive report of their hands-on session with LBP at PAX.  They mention the now-famous Disney DLC,purely as an example,and also repeat the October 21st release date.  Reassuringly,“Even so,Sony noted,they’re determined to keep LittleBigPlanet‘s unique style and presentation intact,so they won’t be replacing sackboy with other characters or introducing content that would weaken their own brand.”

Joystiq spent their hands-on time at PAX wisely,and give us a delightful time-lapse of them building their logo in LittleBigPlanet.  Be sure to check out the multi-rider tank at the end.  You can see a demo of that tank here.

PS3Center.net has a good gameplay vid of the ghostly Skate to Victory level,minus the actual skateboard part.   Whoever’s playing is much better than I am;those ghosts always got me.

Robot Martini has an informative and matter-of-fact hands-on preview up.  Kind of an analytical engineer’s view,which I strongly approve of.

Here’s a mini-preview from Blogcritics.  “I cannot wait for this game to come out.”

The Daily Dairy also got a chance to play.  Bowie reference FTW.

Cellphone camera videos of people playing LittleBigPlanet at PAX08 are certainly not in short supply.  dliggins put a few up on photobucket.  All of the remaining thermometer complainers seem to like seeing Kyle show the huge Elephant Temple filling only half of the glass.  Someone even caught what appears to be the game’s intro animation,although the quality’s not the best (sudden brightness vs cellphone camera,I guess).

Leipzig

videogamer.com unsurprisingly listed LittleBigPlanet among their “Games that most floated our boats at GC 2008″,saying that “[...] for all the buzz about user-built levels and online communities,it was the sight of row upon row of enraptured Germans that reaffirmed our faith in this game.”

Our favourite GC-attending Molecule Craig Kerrison only got a brief appearance on X-Play (and it doesn’t seem to be online),but GameReactor lets him give a nice demo of the oh-so-gorgeous Dancers’Court on GRTV.  He does say that there are seven themes,each of which has three or four levels;if there are 60 or so levels included,mathematics tells us that some of these must be outside of the seven themes (or maybe they’re not considered “levels”per se).  Maybe this is the Player/Creator divide?

buzz-worthy

CVG made some hearts flutter by posting part of a recent interview with Pete Smith,where he said that “[...] we will be aware of who those awesome designers are and certainly there’s the potential to get them building levels as part of the dev team.”  Many fans already viewed LittleBigPlanet as a pathway into the industry,and I wouldn’t doubt that other developers will be keeping an eye out for fresh level design talent as well.  As I recall,the “show ‘em what you can do”path worked out pretty well for Zoid.

Shuhei Yoshida,President of SCE Worldwide Studios,told videogaming247 that “LittleBigPlanet is going to be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year”.  Everyone seems surprised that he includes Japan in that prediction,but we’re not.  We’ve been paying attention.

Speaking of Japan…ta-dah!  Official Sackboy plush toys from Taito!  Play-Asia has somewhat better scans,but I can’t wait for real pics.  About the info page at NCS,though:  Can someone with less rusty Japanese (and better eyes) help?  What does it say at the bottom-right about the three television commercials?  Early October teaser.. something new.. Mid October bookstore commercial.. ?  Christmas commercial.. LittleBigChristmas Campaign?  Forgive me,チャング先生、I have forgotten much.

misc

GNN gives us some cool info on (and screenshots of) the Chinese/English version of LittleBigPlanet.  It looks to me like one of the player names came from a Japanese version,unless katakana is used in Chinese games as well?

One of our favourite webcomic artists,Scott Johnson,says he’s looking forward to LittleBigPlanet.

Over at wayofthegeek,CMorrison seeems certain that LBP will flop.  A sucker for gamer pidgeonholing,(s)he says Hardcores are too hardcore,and Casuals are too cheap.  We’ll see.