Nat

Back in October I was looking forward to flying through LittleBigPlanet in order to do a 2 Minute Review of it. I got sidetracked. By the game. My son and I have basically spent the last two months playing nothing but user-created levels. Some have been excellent (search for Little Dead Space by darknessbear), but most are downright atrocious.

While I think this game is great, I feel that is does have some flaws. Many of them are minor and not deal breakers, but allow me to let you in on my frustration.

HEARTS

1. Do you know how to find all the levels you’ve hearted so you can play them again? I didn’t know myself, and a quick search online showed that most other casual players didn’t either. Try the info world on the left, select My Levels, and then use a combination of shoulder presses to bring them up. Wouldn’t it be easier to put a “view hearted” option in the search menu?
2. Are there some levels in your “hearted world” that you cannot play or unheart? I’ve got three. They are user-created levels that the user has deleted. Yep, it’s a glitch. Media Molecule has known about it since the beta. By golly, we have our weekly DLC though.
3. There are also times where levels you’ve hearted don’t show up in the list. Hopefully you remember the title and user. Oh, wait, they don’t show up when you search for them most of the time either.
4. All the “plz heart my crap lvl” SPAM. Puh-lease. Make a good level. It’s Media Molecule’s fault on this one. There never should have been a trophy for hearting user-created content.

INCLUDED LEVELS

1. The initial game levels are amazing, somewhat challenging, and fun. They soon turn into an exercise in frustration. We’re talking thumb-fu difficulty. I saw you could leave comments on the Media Molecule levels. I was curious to see what people said about them. Yep. “Plz heart my crap”
2. The developer who came up with the Asian themed level with the spinning wheels can fall off a building and catch their eyelids on a flagpole for all I care. I honestly think you can twist a PS3 controller in two.
3. It would be neat if these levels could be star rated. I’d be curious to see what people thought of the Media Molecule levels.

USER-CREATED CONTENT

1. Some people are so ingenious with the level design that they should be professionally hired. All the crap though? Geesh. I wish I could just list the levels by star or heart. Instead we get a “cool level” option. Sadly, what’s “cool” is levels of music, cheating, and costumes. Yeah, do nothing levels, get trophy levels, and levels that fill up my content slots when my son plays them.
2. We can take pictures and do what with them? Make a sticker? It would be awesome if the pictures were stored in a folder on the PS3 hard drive, then you could, oh, I don’t know, post them on a blog? Oh, and if the stickers were a little better in quality? Maybe? It would also be great is you could use pics off your hard drive as stickers. (This set of gripes actually may be addressed already, but I’m not seeing a plethora of images on the web. Are you?)
3. That promised youtube “functionality” would be great. I can see why there’s a delay though. I really don’t want 1,000,000 videos of “get easy trophy levels”

It’s not much, but these are the frustrations I’ve faced. I’ve not created my own yet and I understand that towing the line is necessary in order not to face heavy moderation.

It looks like the next patch won’t be until mid-February and none of these appear to be addressed.

If anybody here has answers, I’m all ears..er, eyes.