Continuing with my mixed fortune on the green servers, I fancied another game of ‘zones’.  Out of all the game types, ‘zones’ has to be my favourite.  I don’t know whether it’s my play style, or whether I just seem to have so much fun in it.  I like to play a ‘zones’ match as often as I can, because it just seems to hit the spot and satisfies my gaming needs.  The objective is just so simple: capture as many zones as you can, and the team with the most zones wins.  It’s kind of like a gigantic tug of war and there seems to be many different strategies involved.  Intriguing…

Mixing it up
Alas, one day all the ‘zones’ servers were full, so I had to make do with another game mode.  The next mode I played for quite some time was ‘Collection’, in which you’ve got to collect as many radioactive cores at one, without getting killed, then returning the cores back to base to score.  Something like that.  I participated in a varied number of different games: some chock-full of players, and some mostly empty.  I used the empty games to familiarise myself fully with how the game type worked both in theory and in practice!  On the quieter games I collected the cores myself, whereas on the busier games I mainly took the role of transport, and provided covering fire in my big, badass tank :)  Overall, ‘Collection’ is fun, but not as fun as ‘Zones’.

The old classic, ‘Capture the Flag’ offers up some quality action as well.  Plenty of dogfights, and tank battles.  Some quite amusing deaths as well, with players often not making the return journey back to base with the flag.  I’ll skip over ‘deathmatch’ and ‘team deathmatch’ as I can honestly say I don’t spend much time on those game modes.

In the zone, baby
It was another day or two before the ‘Zones’ servers weren’t full any more.  Bad timing, or just bad luck?  Anyhow, I was back where I belonged.  I remember this one game quite vividly: I was on the Eucadia map, and my usual mix of flying the Warhawk, manning the turrets, and driving my faithful tank simply wasn’t working.  I was being hosed wherever I went.  Then came one of those moments of inspiration which was a cross between having a vivid flashback, and seeing your old mentor, Obi Wan Kenobi, telling to to use the force.  In my case I had been playing a friend on the Eucadia map a few days ago one-on-one.  He trounced me by using proximity mines.

Enough day-dreaming.  I headed to an area I knew where I could stock up on some supplies of proximity mines.  I then headed to a particularly well-defended outpost which I hoped I could capture for my team.  After being killed several times by walking in the front door, I used a back road and dropped behind their buildings from the top of a hill.  I then went and waged guerilla warfare.  I placed proximity mines at each door in their building complex.  I can’t tell you how satisfying it was after leaving that area to see many names being ‘killed by LosHavros’, flashing up on the screen.  Unfortunately, we didn’t win the battle, but in my mind I had won my own little skirmish.

Till next time, when there will be more tales from the Ruined Capitol and The Badlands.

I’ve resisted using the ‘more’ tag up till now as it can annoy a lot of people: feeds are incomplete, and it’s an extra click to read the rest.  However due to the length of this article, I thought it would be unfair to readers who want to see what else is on the site (particularly on the home page).  In short, it takes up way too much real estate on the homepage.

So, if I do write an article of a similar length in the future, expect it to have the ‘more’ tag.  This is a friendly heads-up from your friend and trusted writer, Los Havros

As always, feel free to comment if there’s something about this you want to discuss.

You’ll be glad to know that my woes with Amazon did not last long.  The package was waiting for me when I arrived home.  As I hadn’t been on my PS3 for quite some time, the usual formalities were required: download firmware update, install update, restart PS3.  Time for some LittleBigPlanet goodness then?  Apparently not: two updates needed to be downloaded and installed before I could so much as look at the loading screen.

This is not a criticism at all, as it is good that both the PS3, and games that have shipped can have improvements added to them, important security patches, and bug fixes applied to them.  The PS3 firmware has included a number improvements which have added a layer of polish to how everything works and is integrated.  As a matter of fact, the recent firmware update took a fraction of the time to install, than previous versions by my own reckoning.

But I digress.  Let’s move onto looking at the game itself, shall we?  I’ll start with initial thoughts and the experiences of ‘play‘.  I’d like to start off by saying that having Stephen Fry as the narrator is a stroke of genius.  From his friendly advice on online etiquette, to his tutorial videos and wonderfully fantastic anecdotes, you find yourself laughing and being put totally at ease.  It also gives a warm, fuzzy feel of Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, meets Fantasia.  The visuals are simply sumptuous: everything is rendered in high definition, but with an organic and home-grown feel.  Everything feels so alive and rustic: you’ve levels and creatures made out of wool, cardboard, wood and much more.  Fantastic.

Let’s go play.  I must confess that I didn’t really ‘get’ what people meant when they said the play levels (story mode) were tutorials in themselves, and you could look at them for inspiration.  It wasn’t until I was swinging like Tarzan, above a lake of nasty crocodiles, that I finally understood.  I took a close look at the crocs, and without realising, started to try and figure out how they were made i.e., how they ‘ticked’ (shocking joke and reference to Peter Pan, sorry).  Each level is very detailed and has a lovable, rustic quality that doesn’t detract from the game.  In fact, it immerses you even more into the world of LittleBigPlanet.  Top notch.

My only bugbear is the gameplay.  By that, I mean how the character interacts with the world.  Dragging and grabbing objects works just fine, but jumping doesn’t feel as accurate and responsive as I’d like, and moving back and forth (the semi-3D plane of existence) can be a bit hit and miss.  Other than that, I cannot fault the level design and gameplay objectives.  Whether or not community levels are as good, is up to the community.  Before I move on, I’d like to mention the music.  This is another area where LittleBigPlanet shines.  The music is bright and upbeat, and changes depending on which situation you might be in, like a spooky castle plagued with ghosts.  The stand out moment for me in this regard, has to have been on the meerkat level, when you enter the nightclub.  Very atmospheric, and an excellent choice of music. (Update: it is ‘My Patch’ by Jim Noir.)

Another area (yes, yet another!) that LittleBigPlanet stands out is the community, and multiplayer.  Even if you’re playing solo, at the end of each level there’s a leader board and you’re ranked up there with the rest of the community.  You can tackle levels with other players locally, if you’ve got the controllers, or partner up with people online.

I’ll mix up my overview of create and share together, because one doesn’t really follow without the other.  You can ‘create‘ a level of your own, then ‘share‘ it for the whole LittleBigPlanet community to play for themselves and rate.  What is really neat, is that when you select someone’s created level, you’re not left waiting much longer for it to load than a story level.  And we’re talking about 5-6 seconds at the most, people.  That’s impressive.

I’ve tried my hand at creating a basic level, but I’ve still got a long way to go before it will be of an acceptable quality (in my eyes, anyway) to share to the community.  In create mode, you’re not allowed to use a new tool without participating in a hands-on tutorial with it, narrated by Stephen Fry.  This ensures that you have a rough idea how to use all tools effectively!  I had some problems trying to get a creature moving, but that’s probably me being stupid as the whole game is ridiculously easy to understand.

The last main area I want to cover is the community aspect.  Now, surely I’ve already mentioned this a bit?  Well, yes but there’s more to tell.  My latter play through of LittleBigPlanet was with the servers down.  After initially playing with full community integration with the active servers, it was as if something big was missing.  Make no mistake, LittleBigPlanet is truly spectacular in single player mode, but nothing beats comparing scores, sharing levels, and playing co-operatively.  The experience feels a bit flat without it.  So if you haven’t got your PS3 hooked up online, make it so!  LittleBigPlanet is just so much more rewarded when connected.  It’s better being together :).

So, to sum up- this game is ground breaking.  It could be the sleeper hit of 2008, perhaps beating such games as successful as Metal Gear Solid 4.  Will LittleBigPlanet reach out to the masses though?  Given enough publicity and marketing, I believe so, as there is a compelling message to tell.

The Los Havros verdict: highly recommended.  It’s an essential buy for anyone with a PS3, and dare I say it?  Those without :p

Now, here’s something that might be interesting: my tweets on LittleBigPlanet.  Why so interesting?  This link is a search for whatever I say about ‘littlebigplanet’ in my tweets.  This means that whenever I tweet about littleBigPlanet after this post, the search will keep up-to-date and include it in the results.  Pretty neat huh?

First, Let’s start with what I’d like to call ‘the PLAYSTATION debacle’.  Now, up until the launch of the PLAYSTATION 3, Sony’s consoles were always endowed with the simple, effective and iconic branding ‘PlayStation’.

Before I knew it, I was bombarded with products and services such as the PLAYSTATION Eye, the PLAYSTATION Network, and the PLAYSTATION Store.  I got the feeling that this once simple and effective branding had started shouting at me. Why tinker with something like that?

Even PS3 Fanboy’s article is titled ‘No need to shout: PLAYSTATION = PlayStation’.  On their poll that they’ve got going, most people prefer the original, lower-case version (at the time of writing).  They say that in the latest firmware update (2.50) names have been changed to ‘PlayStation Store’ and ‘PlayStation Network’.  You’ve also got box art coming in that is saying ‘Only on PlayStation‘.  What the heck is going on?  This is creating brand confusion.

Before, ‘PlayStation’ was understated, but a sign of quality- a brand you could trust.  ‘PLAYSTATION’ makes the brand loud and clumsy.  People know that the PlayStation brand is good, why shout at them?!  I’m going to label this debacle as pointless and potentially damaging.  Tsk tsk Sony.

Now, moving on to the ‘New Xbox Experience’.  Microsoft are changing their brand in a different way- by seemingly leaving their loyal, hardcore gamers to one side, and seeking out new, more casual gamers ala the Wii.

Initially to me this seemed more of a ‘Mii too’ move by Microsoft which could potentially alienate existing 360 gamers and dilute their brand.  However I do believe now that if Microsoft does this right it could make their whole service become more cohesive (if that’s possible!  It’s pretty much amazing already, let’s admit) and expand their reach into new territories.  Done wrong however, and it could end up like Xbox does Teletubbies.  (I’ll save how I feel about Nintendo and it’s Wii for another article).  This is quite a bold and risky move from Microsoft.  Such crazy horses.  And you know what?  It might even pay off.

So what can we conclude from this brief look at gaming brands?  Risks have to be made to further brand reach and recognition, but getting it wrong can give the wrong impression to customers, and potentially alienate them if they feel their console of choice no longer cares about their needs.  It’s a case of branding done right, and branding done wrong.  I’d love some discussion on this matter.

(N.b.: I feel marketing is a different issue here.  I’ll try and deal with it in due course)