It’s been just over two years since the first LittleBigPlanet game burst onto the scene with its unique “PLAY, CREATE, SHARE” concept. Since then this PS3 exclusive has garnered numerous awards, and in an unsurprising move developer Media Molecule was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment earlier this year. There’s also the small matter of the 3 million or so user-generated levels that fans worldwide have uploaded to the LBP servers.

To put things into perspective, that’s over 4 000 levels being added daily. With this level of support from the Playstation community and Sony it was clear that a LBP sequel was a no-brainer. However for a long time Media Molecule denied that they were developing a sequel, claiming that another LBP would defeat the whole point of the game - namely it being a constantly evolving source of endless entertainment created by and for the community.

Then in May this year Media Molecule finally lifted the lid on a sequel to squeals of delight from PS3 fans the world over. LittleBigPlanet 2 was originally going to be released in November but was pushed back until January 2011 in order to add a few more coats of polish to the game. Now, more or less a month before it ships, a demo of LBP 2 has been released on PSN. It weighs in at a meaty 2025MB and features 3 of the 50 levels included in the final product. I got an opportunity to play it this morning and here are my first impressions on one of the top PS3 exclusives announced for 2011.

The demo begins with an intro that shares more than a passing resemblance to the one from the original LBP. In it the narrator waxes lyrical on the topic of our imaginations and mentions how our more inspired thoughts often just drift out of our heads without being put to good use. This is supposedly where LBP 2 comes in - it represents a means to trap our clever concepts and share them with the rest of the world.

After this familiar introduction we are given control of a generic sackboy in a rocket-shaped cardboard pod. The demo allows you to decorate both your sackboy and pod with bits and bobs that you’ll find scattered through the 3 levels available in story mode. Unfortunately, most of the features we know and love from the original LBP are unavailable in the demo and in their place are 3 video clips - a trailer for the game; a short video on the kinds of levels we can expect from the LBP 2 community (some creations from the beta are shown briefly); and a brief overview of the new creation tools that will be at our disposal come January.

It would have been great if the demo allowed us to load up any of the user-created levels from the beta, but unfortunately Media Molecule aren’t that generous. I suggest making a trip over to YouTube to see what your fellow LittleBigPlaneters have been getting up to with the beta. It’s quite astonishing to witness what can be done with the new and improved LBP 2 creation tools - this is clearly a paradigm shift for user-generated games as a whole.

No longer is the LBP community limited to side-scrolling platformers - you can already see recreations of various game types such as the world map view from past Final Fantasy titles; a Micro Machines clone; a 3D FPS Wolfenstein look-alike; a Pac-Man clone… The list goes on. Don’t be surprised if you see a whole lot of Gears of War, Halo and Alan Wake levels materialise over the coming months - oh, the irony!

Another impressive feature of LBP 2 is that you’ll be able to play all the user-generated levels from the first game. These will be rendered using the new graphics engine so expect better lighting and improved anti-aliasing on those 3 million plus levels which have already been created. If you happen to fall in love with LBP 2, expect it to be a very long engagement because you’ll never be without a fresh and enjoyable level to play - with friends, alone or alongside strangers.

LBP 2 also appears to feature simpler-to-use creation tools than the first game, and you can expect far more powerful and diverse creation options in the sequel as well. There’s now an option to link levels together to create a fully-featured game that may just pique those mega-wealthy publishers’ (i.e. EA and Activision) interest if it’s brilliant enough. There’s a cut-scene editor, as well as a music sequencer that allows you to compose soundtracks for your levels without the headache caused by the inelegant music feature in LBP 1. Hideo Kojima and Harry Gregson-Williams may just give you kudos if you bring your ‘A’ game to the directing and composing duties on your LBP 2 levels.

The three story levels in the demo introduce a number of new features to the LBP universe. In the first level you need to use a grappling hook and bounce pads to reach the top of a tower. In the second one you ride on the back of different animals whose special abilities allow you to progress through the stage. For instance, at one point you ride on top of a bunny who has a handy butt-stomp (forgive the usage of Super Mario lingo) ability. This allows you to break through some pieces of wood and progress downwards towards your destination.

The final level is designed for two to four players and features your sackboy kitted out with a rocket helmet to annihilate your friends or foes with. You score points for every successful kill and the sackboy with the most number of points when the timer reaches zero is the winner.

These three levels provided a simple and fun introduction to some of the main new features in the game. Sackboy’s physics felt a bit heavy at times - especially compared to other platformers like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I hope that the finished game will give you the option to edit the gravity of each level you design and perhaps even the weight of each object. This will allow you to better match the feel of whatever game you might be paying homage to.

The graphics were not as good as I expected them to be. Considering this is a second generation PS3 exclusive, Media Molecule should really be pushing the PS3’s graphical capabilities like other first-party developers for Sony (such as Naughty Dog) do. The lighting and anti-aliasing look better than the first game, and there’re some new visual effects like fur. But on the whole the character models and textures look very similar to LBP 1. It’s still got a lovely clean, stylised appearance though, and is certainly not a bad-looking game.

I’m eagerly anticipating LittleBigPlanet 2’s release and can’t wait to see what the community does with the impressive creation tools at their disposal. Such is the talent and dedication of the LBP community at large that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some user-created levels featured better gameplay, music and storylines than a lot of the professionally developed titles on PS3.

Be sure to download the demo from PSN to get an early taste of Media Molecule’s feature-filled feat before the final game goes on sale towards the end of January 2011!

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