LittleBigPlanet Review

LittleBigPlanet's real achievement was never the platforming, it was the audacity of shipping a genuine creation suite on a console in 2008 and betting a AAA budget on players doing the level design. The create tools, all physics objects, connectors, and emitters presented through Stephen Fry's patient narration, were deep enough that the community built calculators and shooters out of what Media Molecule intended for obstacle courses, and the play-create-share loop it pioneered echoes through everything from Dreams to the user-generated economies of today's biggest platforms.

The handmade cardboard-and-fabric aesthetic still charms, and Sackboy is a genuine mascot. The asterisks are real, though: the jump is floaty in a way the best user levels could never fully design around, the three-lane depth system causes as many deaths as any hazard, and the story campaign is a pleasant tutorial rather than a destination. A B game that mattered like an S one.