A while ago I reviewed LBP on PSP, although I was pretty laconic, heh. I’ll similarly keep this one brief: pretty much everything I said about the PSP one also applies to LBP on Vita, but add in touchscreen gimmicks that were not always successful and sometimes seemed a substitute for clever or surprising design.
To my surprise, even though I did have online access, nothing from my “profile” on the other LBP games carried over. This wouldn’t be such a problem if this game was a tad more generous with dishing out costume parts. I enjoyed dressing up my Sackperson at the start of each new world but some more options each time would have been appreciated.
Uh… that’s really all that stood out to me, sorry to say. As with LBP PSP, it’s a perfectly cromulent entry in the series: looks good, sounds good, the characters are fine, it plays exactly like an LBP game (more like LBP2 if I had to narrow it down, due to frequent use of additional gameplay hooks like the grapple). Once again I’m not about to get invested in level creation but as an LBP level pack with some neat extras and minigames… it’s fine!
Since this is the first Vita game I’ve reviewed, I’ll take a second to compliment the hardware: the screen is really nice and the thing itself is nice to hold. Tapping the front or rear touch inputs is no substitute for real L2/R2 buttons though, so it can’t perfectly play every game mirrored from the PS4 like you would want, but otherwise it fills this function quite well.
I borrowed the original two LBP games for PS3, and found that while they can’t stand up to the great 2D platformers in terms of mechanics, at least they’re fun enough with their charming handcrafted aesthetic, cute little setpieces, and a decent selection of reworked licensed music. The PSP version, a unique game in its own right, manages to effectively capture all these things and feels like, well, the real thing. It’s effectively a level pack and fits right in despite not being made by Media Molecule.
Of course, a major focus of the game is on the level creation and sharing… features that I didn’t make much use of on console and was unable to use on my e-1000 model PSP. Nor was I able to access my costumes and junk from my console play. Ah well, taking it purely as a small set of levels, it was fine; seeing what mild challenge would come next, dressing up my character, travelling the world to each new stereotyped location. Relaxing.
Sackboy/Sackperson is the closest thing Sony has to a kid-friendly mascot, and you can tell from these games that there’s at least some passion and love that goes into them. It’s too bad the platforming is so floaty and imprecise; the momentum works weirdly and you don’t always get the outcome you expect from a jump. Also I really am getting over the pretentious Stephen Fry narration. But anyway, this shouldn’t be overlooked as part of the LBP canon; it’s just as worthy as its console siblings.
