LittleBigPlanet on Vita has to be seen in person to be believed. It’s beautiful! Sony put together a little playable demo to show off how they worked in all of the new Vita interface types into the LittleBigPlanet world. It wasn’t a long demo, but it did a really good job of showing the seamless feeling of using both the buttons and pads along with the touchscreen and touchpad. It also showed a game that I think looks better than the PS3 LittleBigPlanet.
The demo starts out looking like a classic LBP level, complete with neat interplay between the foreground and background. It quickly ramps up to show all the new ways you can get around and interact with the Vita’s controls. The touchscreen is heavily used, and it seems to work very well. Even selecting a costume for your Sackboy was done by touching the character and then the preferred costume.
The demo moved into showing off how the gyro sensors would work, with a bit where you have to tilt the Vita to move Sackboy in a cart across a gap. Pushing obstacles out of the way is as easy as touching and dragging them with the touchscreen. I really liked some of the examples that used the rear touchpad. In one section you had to push a puzzle board of Tetris-like blocks forward into the foreground to create steps for your Sackboy to progress through the level.
Again, the visuals seemed to pop off the Vita’s 5-inch OLED screen. Even from a distance I was able to appreciate the high-resolution graphics and vivid colors of LittleBigPlanet. All of the Vita launch games I saw tonight looked great, but LBP had to be one of the best-looking ones out there so far.
I saw one of the examples one-screen multiplayer in LittleBigPlanet. An air hockey game lets one person grab one side of the Vita to slide their thumb back and forth to defend their goal. I was told that the game permits up to four players for games of this style.
LittleBigPlanet on Vita is looking great so far. I’m sure they have so much more to show us, though.
Published: Jun 7, 2011 02:41 am