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There have been a countless number of games that have promised a complete set of full user creation tools and have failed in delivering. Not only that but now developers are starting to throw around the term ‘A Youtube of levels’ a whole lot more. If past attempts have shown us anything it’s that we are a long way off this kind of experience. That’s why developers, Media Molecule have set the bar incredibly high from the get go for LittleBigPlanet.

LittleBigPlanet is essentially a simple side scrolling platformer but in practice it’s a whole lot more complex than it appears. You control a fully customizable Sackboy as he ventures across numerous terrains and obstacles. It’s not simply flat side scrolling as you can cycle through three different planes on the x axis as well. This can cause problems when game automatically re-routes to whatever plane has objects on and sometimes can hault your progress in said level. It’s always frustrating when the game causes you to die but after a while you’ll find ways to work around this problem. Meanwhile you’ll collect objects, points and encounter a load of new and innovative platforming elements during the game.

There is a single player element to the game that explores all the opportunities within the engine. You travel all over the world and despite the mode being called story you are doing pretty much mindless platforming until the next level. Luckily the levels are hand crafted so well that you don’t particularly mind nor care about why your doing it because it simply is fun doing it. The story mode really shows off some of what can be done within the games engine. Everything you see can be created in the games editor so the story mode although fun really comes off as more of a look-at-what-you-can-do instead of a great standalone experience.

LittleBigPlanet comes with brilliant visuals and an even better soundtrack. It would be hard to deny the game of having one of the most eccentric soundtracks in a game ever. It suits the game brilliantly and really helps sell the charm the game has. The game also has great voice-over work done by the lovable Stephen Fry and although the dialogue at sometimes can be embarrassing, most of the time it’s genuinely funny. The cute characters, the whimsical death animations and brilliant facial expressions all make LBP, visually hard to hate.

The game’s editor is where LittleBigPlanet really stands out against the crowd. Everything is controlled and accessed through a couple of button presses within the games simple ‘popit’ menu system. While side scrolling platformers as a genre aren’t exactly thriving right now they are incredibly simple. LittleBigPlanet tunes into the simple nature of the genre by letting you do nearly anything you could imagine. Although it might take a lot of tuning and time spent to actually develop a level, it’s undoubtedly worth it in the end.

The editor allows for a lot of creativity simply due to the amount of content on offer. Not only can you create any shape imaginable but you can change the way the user interacts with it. Different materials that act in different ways provide you with enough variation throughout the game. For example glass is slippery while sponge can be grabbed. Not only are these materials easy to understand and use but they also work exactly the way you would expect. You also have a plethora of different buttons, switches and more importantly rockets to spruce up your level.

Once you’ve finished crafting your masterpiece you can publish your level to be played online by other people. This is where the phrase ‘A Youtube of levels’ is actually realized. After the brief pause for uploading the level you’ll occasionally get updates on how many people have played your level. You can then go into the info page on the main screen and find out what tags people have applied to your level.

Tags are a way of grouping the levels into different categories. After you play anyone’s level you can give it one of the many tags to describe it. For example Beautiful, Ramps, Perilous, Difficult and so on and so forth. This is a great way of organizing the levels and it also gives off a feeling of community because your input does matter. Levels can also be given star ratings on how generally good they are. It’s a great way of letting the community feel self sufficient but it would bee nice to see an ‘editor’s pick’ channel come in the future so all the levels at the top of the list aren’t just ‘get all the trophy’s’ or ‘Mario 1-1′.

While your online you can search through these levels and within seconds upon picking one you’ll be playing it. This system has effectively created an infinite number of levels for you to try. The fact that there is no delay between finishing your level and publishing it means that every day there is new content to try. At the moment though all the top levels are the aforementioned Mario clones and trophy grabbers but once the initial teething problems are out the way the game can really show it’s potential.

Speaking of teething problems the LBP servers haven’t had the most successful launch. They have been up and down like a yo-yo and it doesn’t help that while the servers are slow, so is your game. Hopefully these are just teething problems and will eventually pass. Although it’s inevitable that the game will suffer from slow servers at some point and it’s tough to accept due to the limited users online at the moment and lengthy beta that performed well under the server load.

Despite these minor issues the core of the game is brilliant when it works. The games brilliant presentation and sound work only helps cement the game as a triple A product. Then fact that you have endless amounts of content on offer really makes LittleBigPlanet a brilliant deal. The charming visuals, great editor and sometimes great user created levels make LittleBigPlanet one of the best games on the Playstation 3. Although be warned the disc has the potential to inside your Playstation 3 for a very long time because this is arguably the system’s long awaited killer app.