I’ve been lucky enough to get hold of a Beta key for LittleBigPlanet.

Wow. What a charming game, brimming with little touches and brilliant ideas. From the second Stephen Fry’s voice kicked in I knew I was in for unique treat. So what is LittleBigPlanet about? well I’m lazy sod so I’ll pinch the description from Wikipedia

In LittleBigPlanet, players control small characters (nicknamed either “Sackboy” or “Sackgirl”, owing to their material and appearance), each of which can jump, move, and grab objects. Players can use their abilities to shape and develop the highly manipulatable environment to build custom spaces either individually, collaboratively, and/or competitively. Levels focus on co-operative, physics-based gameplay, and players can use mechanisms such as cogs and blocks to build anything from small level parts to large, complex worlds. The game will also allow opportunities for players to acquire new skills and tools.

It’s a joy to play. At face value the gameplay can seem simplistic, sure it’s not a deep or complex platformer like say Super Mario World. But that doesn’t matter as there is just so many cool little ideas and fun things to do. The level creation mode is where it comes alive. The scope of what you can do is staggering, the game comes with an enormous toolkit of stuff to play with and build levels. Levels can be published online and shared for everyone to play, picking through some of the user created levels online has been a mixed bag – but several of them have shown stuff I didn’t think was possible, and you come away with ideas for your own creations!

I’m in love with LittleBigPlanet – roll on the 24th Oct when it’s released fully.

So it’s that time of year again, the time of year where 99% of publishers release their “triple A” titles.

Gaming has always been a seasonal hobby, and it’s inevitable that publishers are going to release games in the run up to Christmas, but I think things are getting silly. For example this year in the next 3~4 weeks we have coming out: Fable II, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Little Big Planet, Mirror’s Edge, Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Prince of Persia, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty 5. And that’s just the ones I want off the top of my head, that’s a LOT of games. Four of those games all come out on the SAME DAY.

Now personally it’s not about the cost, although I appreciate for many people this is a major complaint. Really how can we give our time and dedication to these games, to do them justice? Titles like Fable II and Fallout 3 I’m hoping to get a good 40~50 hours of play out of, which is probably a month or so of play each.

Something will have to give, some of these games will not be bought straight away. Using a bit of willpower I will wait – maybe till next summer when there will be no games being released and play them then. The games will also be half the price at that time.

I’m curious how the game publishers expect to benefit by this glut of choice? Inevitably some of these games will sell far less than others in the face of all the competition, and I think the publishers are shooting themselves in the foot.

I’ve knocked up a command for Ubiquity to integrate with Blippr

To install & use it, visit this page you should see a notification at the top of your browser, click the Accept button and follow the process to install it.

You will need Ubiquity installed for it to work, dhur.

Enjoy!