Adam Bergstein on Little Big Planet

It’s Friday the thirteenth, and so I would first like to just say, welcome all you superstitious readers. For me this has never been a day to dread, but rather a day to enjoy. Friday the Thirteenth is much akin to leap year in my personal belief system. It’s a day that is special by virtue of being unusual. It’s not every day that a date comes around with this much significance. This is the sort of day I like to take as a personal holiday, like a birthday. It’s the anniversary of America’s collective paranoia, and I love to celebrate those sorts of milestones even if they are small ones.

The trouble is, of course, that the deadlines don’t recognize my personal holidays, and E3 certainly isn’t going to pause just for my benefit. Yesterday saw some gorgeous trailers and releases. There’s too much to go through all in one sitting, so I’ll just pick one. I have three words for you: Little Big Planet.

There is so much that I can call innovative in this game it’s not even funny. Much like Pikmen, Little Big Planet is all about the group dynamics. The strategy of this game requires you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each member of your group. Each little adorable character has abilities that will help the group along. Also, the player can interact with everything within the environment, another amazing advancement in game play. And when I say everything, I mean the player designs the character and the environment. You place objects in the game that you receive as “swag” as you go along. This is the sort of deceptively simply game that I can imagine sucking up whole weekends because it just looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I cannot wait to play it. Knowing that I have to wait for it is not only killing me, it just makes me tired.