LittleBigPlanet Reviewed | PlayStation 3

Growing up I always wanted to do two things: make my own videogames and build my own rollercoaster.

LittleBigPlanet (LBP) lets me do both. From the very beginning until the... well there is no end, personality gushes out of LBP that's not only charming, but inspiring. The mascot, Sackboy, too is the perfect avatar to match the whimsy, and downright enchanting allure of this beautifully realized game. Mario has never made me smile this big.

At first glance, the entire game looks like a Michel Gondry musicvideo. Every thing in the world has its curtain drawn back to show you exactly how it was made. Playing through the story mode shows you how diverse the physics-based platforming can be. Each stage engages even the hardest of hardcore platformer-fans, but is also accessible to those less-dexerous with a joystick. My girlfriend and I, for one, found no problem keeping up with one another, and even found the game a little easier when we playing together. Only phsycologically though, the emotive sackpeople bekon you on with their playful glare. The game sinks its hooks in you before you realize it, providing a muse for when you want to start creating yourself, by showing you how fun and simple creation can be.





When you do sit down to create your own level, it's overwhelming the amount of options you're given. First thing I did was try and build a giant Ferris wheel. I wound up the bolts, attacked some sponges (so my little sackboy can hold on), and let it go. I had fun for hours just constructing this machine, and really, I don't plan to do anything with it. I was just goofing off. And LBP really supports that. When you do want to get technical and design a serious level, check out the literally thousands of levels already created and uploaded to the internet from other players. There's a lot of crap out there, but there's also stuff so inspired, so brilliant, that you'll almost not even want to attempt. In the few weeks since its launch, I've already seen not only excellent stages proper, but other stuff like a working calculator, a re-creation of the side-scrolling shooter Gradius, and a photo gallery. But keep your uploads free of someone else's intellectual property. The developers are yanking down any level that has something in it that resembles anything that makes a buck. Wanna make a Solid Snake statue for the intro to your level? Don't, it'll get deleted from the servers faster than you can say "Metal Gear?!?"

LBP is one of those rare games that never gets old. And with a steady flow of new levels created by players around the world, you'll have a very big sustainable planet.

Fallout 3 Review | PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360

I'M A SLAVE TRADER.

I profit from kidnapping and imprisoning people for life. Doctors, security guards, shop owners... children, I enslave them all. My malevolence wasn’t inert though. It slithered out of me slowly, gaining strength from the toxic wasteland of Washington DC. But that’s skipping ahead. Nineteen years ago, in 2258, all I knew of the world was the sterile, but radiation-free under-ground Vault 101. I went to school and had friends, but when my father mysteriously left the vault — something that’s not happened in the 200 years since nuclear war ravaged the Earth’s surface — everything I’ve known to be true has become undone.

Fallout 3’s stage is a grim, and articulate one. The parable “it’s not the destination, but the journey that matters” aptly sums up the Fallout 3 experience.

Though it may look like it from the back of the box, Fallout 3 is not a typical first-person-shooter. In fact, it doesn’t even play like a FPS (not in the beginning at least). Like developer Bethesda’s previous game, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 relies on role-playing elements like skill-building and leveling-up to push the player deeper into its rich world. Roaming the massive wastelands, you’ll come across all manner of individuals that need help. It’s the typical questing for some poor sap, but it’s the context of Fallout’s world that sets it apart from other RPG experiences. For example, I happened across a Ghoul (humans horribly disfigured from too much exposure to radiation) that felt discriminated against. He wanted access to a town of “smooth skins,” but everyone inside was bigoted against his kind: Leaving me with a moral choice, fight for his rights, or exterminate his settlement. It wasn’t a necessary quest to complete the main story, but this, and many other side-quests like it, are too compelling not to see through.

Slave trading, too, isn’t necessary. It’s all up to you. I just happened to discover the slave trading mecca ironically named Paradise Falls. It’s here that I’ve been making my fortune, but out of all my friends playing Fallout 3, none earn their cash this way. Some play valiantly, freeing slaves, and some haven’t even stumbled across this unfortunate town.





If you’re not drawn into the story telling by-product, there’s still plenty there to enjoy. That is, if you’re not expecting first-person-shooter gunplay. See, you build your character’s stats throughout the game, so if you’re not investing any experience points into your firearms skill, you’ll end up shooting more scenery than enemies. Everything in the game is based on behind-the-scenes ‘die-rolls’ that factor the level of your skill for the particular action your performing. Everything from how much weight you can carry, to how accurate you are with grenades needs to be nurtured if you want to excel in any particular area.

But, it’s not just your character traits that you alter, you literally have an impact on the world in Fallout 3. When I discovered the city of Megaton, for example, with its dormant nuclear bomb in the center of town (hence the name), I learned that I could either disarm or detonate the bomb (vaporizing the town and all of its inhabitants from the map). And the consequences are real, everything from quests you can only get from certain villagers, to shops and items that you can only buy in Megaton are gone for good. What did I do? I blew the town to hell. The blast, seen from a mile away on the balcony of a barely-standing high-rise, was so gloriously intoxicating I reloaded my most recent save to see it again, this time in the light of day.

Ultimately, Fallout 3 is a game that’s as fun as you make it. And that’s the greatest asset of Fallout 3: its narrative isn’t solely dependent on the main quest line. In fact, what I like the most about Fallout 3 is its oratorical nature. Trading stories with friends on what perks they invested in, how that affected their game, some of the crazy characters they ran into; it all inflates the otherwise desolate world into something epic.