Epic E3 Report (LBP2 edition)

[Note:This post was going to be "Sackboy goes to E3",but I accidentally left Sackboy at home!]

[Note 2:The lighting on the E3 show floor is enough to give any cheap digital camera a fit.  My apologies for the horrible pics and videos.]

Thanks to some last-minute work-schedule wrangling (and having family to visit in the greater Los Angeles area),I was able to attend E3 this year.  Since my super-secret industry work stuff things only took up a small portion of the week,I braved the crowds and sought out the LBP2 booth.

Initially just looking for the phrase “Play Create Share”led me a bit astray,but gave me a better idea: I just opened my ears and followed the sound of movement-themed music until I arrived in the Sony booth.

They had ten stations,each with four controllers and a choice of story level “The Tower of Woop”or any of the three competitive games from the Sony press conference demo.

Horrible cam footage was taken:

This video really doesn’t do the new transparency- and animation-enabled costume pieces justice;they look super awesome (despite a few graphical glitches):

Hey,what’s that?  Some sort of press conference up on the big screen?

After [the good part of] the press conference,I spotted a familiar face hanging out around the Sony area.  It was Spaff!

Once word got out that Spaff was on the show floor,screaming teenage girls started mobbing the convention center.  So we retired to the high-security Sony Media Room of Ultimate Trendiness (many thanks to the super-awesome Sony manager who helped me sneak past the guards).  I couldn’t take any pictures or video,but I believe this demo was given in that room.

There I met [super awesome web designer and community manager] Tom Kiss and they showed me quite a bit of LBP2.  We played one of the somewhat brutal levels from the Steam &Cake section of the story (“This could be the new Bunker,”I was told,but it wasn’t that bad).  I saw some of the Game Jam levels as well.  Then on to Create Mode,to get a better understanding of direct control seats,microchips,and cutscene production.

It’s worth noting that I didn’t encounter the problems that plagued the aforementioned demo;the only time we had to reset things was while I was trying to pull apart a cutscene: I tried to tweak a piece of black material being used for the fade-in,and (I believe) got into a mode where it was covering the screen and wouldn’t go away.

I don’t think I have any info that hasn’t already been covered elsewhere,but a few things worth emphasizing:

• Microchips allow not only for basic circuit design (AND and OR gates and the like),but additional tools like sequencers selectors and randomizers.  And without the nasty analog power distribution issues that plague real circuit designs.  Time to dust off all of those old Electrical Engineering books.
• Holographic Vacuum material is insanely powerful.  Combined with microchips,there’s just not much you can’t do.  I was a judge at a recent Board Game Jam;each of the games I played would be implementable in LBP2.
• The intention is to launch LBP.me well in advance of the release of LBP2,and not with empty pages:all of the LBP1 levels will show up and be active within the web service.

While I was absorbing all of the excellence,Alex Evans somehow materialized nearby.  We played Super Block Race and I actually won the first round by ten points!  A rematch was required,and I was badly beaten.

Eventually I did have to leave (rumours that I started crying,and had to be pried from my seat,are somewhat overstated),but I must say: the Molecules and the Sony people (I guess the Molecules are Sony people too,now) were wonderfully nice and friendly as always.

Back on the show floor:

Really nice well-constructed Sackboy backpacks?  Yes,please!  Unfortunately they won’t be available until later this year,and these were just prototypes.  They’re actually intended to hold the PlayStation Portable,with the PSP inside Sackboy’s head and memory sticks and UMDs in his tummy.

The manufacturer was actually there at E3 as well:

“Manufacturers of Really Good Stuff”to be certain,but they only had the one LBP2 poster on the wall behind their giant stuffed Hello Kitty.  I asked them about the backpacks,but they didn’t have any info to share (with me).

Here’s a rather awkward GameSpot floor report that shows the backpacks as well.

Another thing I noticed at the LBP2 booth was the awards they were already up for:

It’s more difficult to track down the results of these things than it should be.  So far:Over at IGN’s Best of E3 2010 awards,LBP2 was a nominee in the “Best PS3 Game”category,but lost to Portal 2.  In 1UP’s Best of E3 2010 awards,Little Big Planet 2 [sic] lost “Best PS3 Game”to Infamous 2.  LBP2 is included in Destructoid’s E3 2010 Game of the Show nominees,but I can’t find the winner announced anywhere.

Believe it or not,there was one bit of LBP2 goodness that I hadn’t partaken of yet:PlayStation Move integration.  So I ran over to one of the Move demo areas and stood in line (while watching Kyle Shubel chat with David Jaffe in the VIP area).

I played a fairly easy dinosaur-themed level,controlling the Move cursor while a booth assistant ran through as an actual Sackboy.  Gameplay is much as we’d seen:brightly-colored material on the screen can be activated/manipulated by the person holding the Move.  The cursor-moving is similar to so many Wii games,but handles a little differently.  That said,it only took me a few seconds to get used to it and start flinging Sackboy around and clearing his path faster than he could keep up.  As is so often said,I can’t wait to see what the community will make with this.

Before I left,I took some time to get really good at Super Block Race:

(rumours that I exploited a glitch to achieve this score are probably correct.)

I will be doing another E3 post in the next few days,with more general thoughts on the Move,Connaught Kinect,Kirby,3DS,Nexon,Kirby,OnLive,Zelda,Kirby,etc;feel free to skip it if you’re not interested.