Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
LBP beta movie - The intro, tutorial and first level
Didn’t get a key? Never fear: this is almost as good. After the break you’ll find a movie of the first 14 minutes of play from the LittleBigPlanet beta, including the opening sequence, the tutorial - narrated by Stephen Fry - and the run-through of the first level.
SCEE put its beta live tonight, with demand crushing Eurogamer as the PS3 faithful tried to get one of 5,800 keys for the test.
Watch it. Sorry about the quality. We’re getting a capture card very soon, so it’ll be direct-feed all the way from there on in.
Source:
http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/09/23/lbp-beta-movie-the-intro-tutorial-and-first-level/
4 Hours With Sackboy
When you’re faced with beer or beta, it’s often an easy choice. Why should you forsake a good pint in the name of free bug-testing for a game you’re probably not that fussed about anyway, right? But when you find out the beta keys are flying around the web are for LittleBigPlanet, well, the decision is easy. 900MB later, and we’re in bed with Steven Fry and a guy made from sack. And we’re smiling and laughing like never before.
Make no mistake, Microsoft and Nintendo must be kicking themselves: if LBP isn’t a system seller then the games industry’s dead to us and we’re starting a website about kittens that can’t spell instead. From the very beginning, when you first boot the game from the XMB, LittleBigPlanet’s insane production values and complete easy of use scream out. The game’s extended later development has paid off, and whoever thought about hiring Fry for the voiceovers deserves a pay-rise - he fits brilliantly and his humour fits like a glove.
The beta’s actually massive. You get a good sampling of Media Molecule crafted levels, the ability to create your own (with tutorials and videos) from scratch plus full online functionality. If it wasn’t time limited we’d probably not bother with the Blu-ray version, and we don’t want to rub this in your face if you weren’t lucky enough to snag your own beta, but this is going to keep us busy for some time. Someone said something about Wipeout hitting tomorrow - we no longer care.
Slick isn’t the word for the interface, it’s as intuitive as anything we’ve seen before, each button sticks to its single use, there’s always on-screen prompts and everything is explained to you slowly for the first time. Sure, it’ll take you a good hour to get through the Create tutorial but there’s so much in there that the manual alone wouldn’t be enough. The first few Play levels are voiced over too, but the game gradually eases you into each new concept and before long you’re dashing around the Pod, decorating the walls, exploring new levels, seeing how your friends are getting on and forming ideas for Create, usually all at the same time.
Already, by 11 o’clock this morning there was a smattering of half-decent user created levels, and the further you plug into the main Story mode the more options you’ll get to play with yourself. The beta contains a huge amount of tools and devices (in fact we can’t imagine there’s really very much missing) and creating your own levels is a doddle once you’ve got your head around the game’s key concepts of physics and gravity, and how objects interact.
The visuals are to die for, too - everything’s locked at 30fps with some gorgeous effects, subtle motion blur , incredibly tactile textures and the art direction is consistent throughout. Every screenshot you’ve seen looks so much better in motion it’s hard to describe. The audio is equally brilliant, and although we’re not going to spoil any of the levels for anyone, the way the music changes in a couple of the pre-built Story sections is really cool.
So, LittleBigPlanet is all that. This is our first proper extensive hands-on with the game, and now we’ve seen the game’s structure, the menus, the options and the full complement of pop-it items it’s easier to see Media Molecule’s overall vision for the title. It’s vast but approachable, utterly next-gen but never aloof. LittleBigPlanet is history in the making, and Sony are absolutely right to be 100% behind the game this season. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going back to making that Manic Miner level out of sponge and fire.
Source:
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2008/09/24/4-hours-with-sackboy/
MM Welcome to the beta!
Welcome to the beta!
A super exciting thing happened today! The beta trial went live to thousands of people, mainly via eurogamer.net. In fact, I believe you all briefly brought down their site! WOWZERS! At the moment the feeling in the office is somewhere between unbounded excitement and mild panic - personally I think I’m losing my mind (in a good way!) Had to bash out a few songs on our newly acquired office copy of rockband just to de-stress while the beta downloaded in the background! just had our first few playthroughs with some of you people and with some of the levels that have been published.
What AMAZES me is how good the first ’sketches’ of levels are. it took our testers at least a few weeks of heavy create before incredible levels started appearing. and now something cool for you all to think about: you’ve only seen the first 3 levels 
Remember, this is a *beta* to test our servers, NOT a demo. Can’t stress that enough! So, what’s is so cool for us to see, is that you haven’t even seen the amazing story mode yet, which serves as inspiration, and yet the levels going up are already interesting. I can’t wait to see what y’all do when you see the full game, and start cranking out levels.
Also, since it’s a beta, it’s already quite an old build. We have some cool new stuff that’s been in our private test for a few days, I won’t give it all away but there are things cooking such as 5-star ratings, (much) better performance and less lagginess, better online stability, better UI for publishing, faster downloads…. so in a way playing this version is simultaneously exciting and an odd throwback to a couple of weeks ago.
Finally, to everyone who has supported the game, played the game, left comments, posted levels, and really got into the spirit of LBP, understood it, and well, enjoyed it, it makes me incredibly proud! Thanks for all comments and constructive feedback, we’re listening and we already have *stacks* of stuff lined up for the beta, and the full release. If you liked the first 3 story levels, the other 50 odd levels are going to blow you away HOORAY! I AM SO EXCITED!
ok I’ll stop now.
FINALLY PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT BETA KEYS:
PS sorry but beta keys and their distribution are actually entirely in the hands of Sony. MM have no control over this, so we can’t help if anyone wants to get on the beta trial, I am certain (100%) there are more keys coming SOON but we’d recommend checking the playstation forums and all the usual places for news. In fact, even MM hasn’t received our own full set of keys yet - we’ve only got about 10 between us all so far! (ok so we can play the game anyway, but, y’know, in case it makes you feel better!)
Source:
http://www.mediamolecule.com/2008/09/23/welcome-to-the-beta/
LittleBigPlanet Beta Impressions from Above and Beyond
“One of the members in a clan I’m a part of was lucky enough to stalk EuroGamer.net all day and managed to wade through the broken servers to secure his spot in the beta. Here’s what he thinks about the beta so far:
Here’s the short, short version of my impressions so far:
- Users creating content have ADD -or- the level creator/editor is too tedious to stick with.
- The level editor doesn’t give you a whole lot of stuff to use straight away. You have to sit through tutorials to unlock stuff, and the stuff you can unlock, to this point, isn’t particularly useful.
- Controls take some getting used to. There are three planes of depth you can switch between, which sometimes requires a button press and sometimes can be done using the analog stick.
- The (few) levels included in the beta developed by Media Molecule aren’t particularly memorable, but the first “real” level is pretty fun. There are a few new takes on platforming conventions that will probably be built upon later in the game.
- The interactivity is cool. You can join other players and they can join you pretty much whenever you/they want. You can then race each other, work together to solve puzzles/defeat bosses, or just futz around in your “pod” (your home base that you can customize).
- Good presentation. Simple, fairly elegant.
- Graphics are what you’d expect based on screen shots.
- Easy to lose track of time while playin
- Network lacks stability. Then again, it’s a beta. It could be worse, but during high traffic it’s not great.
That’s about all I have right now. I like it, but I don’t love it. I do love platformers as a genre, so I’m going to put this one through it’s paces. Hopefully folks whip up some good user created stuff sooner rather than later. I am sort of trying my hand at that, but in all honesty making levels myself doesn’t appeal to me. Playing others’ creations does, though..
After hearing his thoughts, I’m more cautious of it being a first-day cop. The only reason it was a first day cop in the first place is because I’m desperately trying to find games to play on my PS3, because Socom alone won’t save it when the Fall onslaught is upon us. Here’s hoping for a demo, Sony!
What did you guys think about everything you’ve heard so far?
Source:
http://analoghype.com/blog/2727/littlebigplanet-beta-impressions-from-above-and-beyond/
