Hands on LittleBigPlanet, Japan style

At the Akihabara Entamatsuri, Sony had booths for people to try out LittleBigPlanet. Since I loved it the first time I played it, I dropped by to see if the demo was anything new. None of the booths had a line so I sat down and grabbed a Sixaxis controller.

The demo was nearly identical to the skateboard level I played before except for graphical changes. For example, the Sackboys were color coded to your seat. What was different was how the game was played. When I played LittleBigPlanet for the first time in the USA we were told how to smack each other around and encouraged to do so in good fun. In Japan this was never explained. Instead the demonstrator emphasized cooperation and got us to work together to collect sponge.

In the beginning of the demo there are a bunch of stones that most people plow through. However, you can work with other players to stack these stones up and build a staircase to a ledge and collect precious sponge. The three of us worked together to stack rocks and after a few minutes we had a path to the sponge. Speaking of the sponge it was a glowing white orb instead of the orange looking ball.

I was tempted to smack someone just to see how the other players would react after cooperating with me, but opted not to. Everyone wanted to play fair, so I didn’t want to ruin their experience.