LittleBigPlanet
I’ve overseen a renaissance in my Playstation 3 these past few weeks. It’s a machine that I had but used rarely, only turning on every few days to kill some bad guys on GTA IV, as fun as that always is, there are tons more games that are only now coming down to respectable prices. So i got a few pre-owned games from Game, before getting the latest Pro Evolution Soccer, and finally i bought the genius that is Little Big Planet.
Little Big Planet is hard to describe. It’s a 2D platformer with 3D graphics, with realistic use of fabrics (such as cardboard, sponge, glass) and realistic physics. You play as ‘Sackboy’, a little knitted character that is as customisable as the rest of the game. The genius of the game lies in the customization, which lets you create your own levels from scratch, then upload them for the rest of the world to try. Of course, creating a level takes a great deal of time, and anything I get round to doing will be poor in comparison, but its good to know it’s all there for me to tinker with as and when. And the second masterstroke of this game is the online function.
I’ve played games online, and as fun as they are, nothing has pleased me more than playing Little Big Planet online. Whereas in the story mode, you make your way through the game on your tod, online you have the help of up to three more players. Of course, it isn’t to be taken seriously and a good few games on LBP i’ve played in these last few days have all gone a bit silly. This is helped by the Playstation pad’s motion control helping move your Sackboy, so you can move its arms or swing its hips, or indeed hit one of the three other players you’re playing with. And due to its anarchic nature, players invariably die in a variety of silly ways, all of which have made me laugh. In fact (as I now have a camera/microphone) people playing in the same online game as me must be a bit tired of my constant chuckling! But to be honest, i can’t remember a game that has made me laugh so much!
What hasn’t been making me laugh is Argos and Maplin Electronics being shit. Not so much them, more the products they sold me yesterday. I bought a Satellite extension cable, as my television is now the opposite side of the room from the cable, and after setting it all up i find that it doesn’t come with a ‘coupler’, the thing that ties the two cables together! Closer inspection of the Argos catalogue reveals that it should indeed come with one, but rather than fart about in the Customer Services line at Argos, I’ll just get one from Wilkinsons, or indeed any hardware store i find!
And on to Maplins, they were selling a USB Wifi dongle thingy for £12.99. I need one for my PC now that my PS3 is hogging the other wired connection, so at £13 i thought this cheap dongle would do fine! I really should of guessed that it’d go wrong at some point and indeed it did. It installed but wouldn’t recognise me plugging it in any USB port, so off it goes back to the shop today. A side issue of all this is that I’ve found out the DVD drive in my PC doesn’t work anymore, so that’s 40 quid more i need to shell out!!
But it’s not all doom and gloom, England beat Germany yesterday, the German Christmas market opened in Nottingham and of course Little Big Planet is just waiting to be put in the PS3 again!
