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Sony's Little Big trump card?

• Darren Waters
• 14 Oct 08, 09:05 GMT

In March last year at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco Sony began to turn the fortunes of the PlayStation 3 around.

After a painful launch period the company put itself somewhat on the front foot with two key announcements: Game developers and journalists were shown Home, the 3D social networking hub for gamers, and LittleBigPlanet, the debut game from Media Molecule, set up by three ex-employees of Peter Molyneux's Lionhead studio.

While Home remains overdue, LittleBigPlanet (LBP) hits the shops in just over a week's time.

The moment the demo of the game was first shown people were tipping it as a killer application for the PS3. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for that first demo and I was very impressed. It looked set to a highly creative platform games combined with a very ambitious attempt to harness the user generated content revolution.

Since then the game, and specifically the developers, have gone on a journey which has seen LBP become the single most important title for the PS3 this year and I've tracked its progress closely.

Below is a video from my most recent interview with Alex Evans, of Media Molecule, at E3 in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Forget Metal Gear Solid 4, as good a game as that was Sony is hoping LBP will showcase the PS3 this Christmas. With Microsoft cutting the price of the Xbox 360 so that the entry level machine is virtually half the price of a PS3, AAA titles for PS3 have to work so much harder than equivalents on the 360 if they are to help shift consoles.

Sackboy, the main character in LBP, is very much the poster child of PlayStation 3 this Christmas.

I have had the finished game in my hands for just over 24 hours. So what do I make of it?

LBP is unquestionably one of the best titles of this year, or any year. Media Molecule should be praised for delivering on virtally every promise they have made over the last 18 months.

It is a terrific platform game, with an abundance of creativity, fun and character. It's up there with some of the best platform titles ever made, include Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 64.

And the scope to build your own levels, or personalise your game experience is breath taking. Encouragingly, the first efforts from beta testers are impressive for the most part, and awe-inspiring on occasion.

However, despite every effort to simplify the level-building aspects of the game, the bar will probably be too high for most gamers. No because of technical obstacles but because creativity takes inspiration and perspiration. Most of us will be too daunted to realy make the most of the tools.

My favourite homebrew level is by one gamer who has the used the level building tools to make a working calculator.

One of the first online reviews of the game, by Eurogamer, has given it a 9 out of 10. It's a score I agree with.

Will it shift consoles? That's the big question for Sony this Christmas. I certainly think that the right mix of marketing will help push Sackboy into the broader consciousness this year. Media Molecule has described LBP as the equivalent of YouTube for video games.

If that message can be conveyed to consumers then LBP will be a runaway hit.

However, even if the game is a roaring success, I'm sure it will be used by fanboys on both sides of the fence as a shield and as a weapon to make claim and counter claim.

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