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On Tuesday the LittleBigPlanet servers were still down, so I had the opportunity to enjoy some of the excellent create mode tutorials. Day 3 kicked off Wednesday night for me after I'd put the kids to bed and to my delight I found the servers were up, performance to be pretty good, and much fun was had by me! (Note: a new 1.03 patch for the game is now available and my experiences below are from the 1.02 version of the game.)

Update: added the latest LittleBigPlanet Episode 3 documentary video talking about the create mode of the game.

LittleBigPlanet 2 might have been on the drawing board earlier yesterday, but I'm sure that marker board has been wiped clean and schematics showing big server problems with LittleBigPlanet has been drawn in its place.

One of the odd things about last month's Mercenaries 2 was that the online co-op -- while considered the most fun part of the game by the critics -- was tethered. Get too far from the other player and you start taking damage. This is better than Grand Theft Auto 4, which features extremely limited online co-op in what I think is just one online mode, and even now I don't understand why Rockstar hasn't tried to sell me additional online co-op modes for the game. Co-op is very popular these days, just ask Nick "Bapenguin" over at Co-Optimus.com. The whole site is dedicated to it!

This week Nick has an interview with James Tsai, the lead designer of Saints Row 2, coming October 14th (or is it 24th?) on the Xbox 360 and PS3. In it he finds that not only was the game built from the start with online drop-in, drop-out co-op where each player can be on opposite sides of the city if they want, but it also led to some very satisfying emergent gameplay.

Back just after GTA4 launched my brother James would tell me he would run around the city with a friend of his in Free Play mode and blow away anyone who answered a cell phone on the street. Funny and cathartic, yes, but with no way to immediately segue into the missions like you'll be able to in Saints Row 2 it was a bit clunky to do something productive when that got old.

Check it out at Co-Optimus.

From Aeropause.

Aside from earning top scores, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror did what developers everywhere were claiming couldn't be done on the PlayStation Portable in March 2006. It put a third-person shooter on the platform with a strong 3D engine, full-featured cover mechanic, very good weapon variety, and a nearly perfect control scheme featuring the analog nub for aiming, the face buttons for movement, and a context-sensitive d-pad for climbing, using ziplines at specific points, swapping weapons with what was in the environment, manging inventory, and switching between night vision and other goggle types to help Gabe Logan take on tough terrorists around the world. All this with the L and R shoulder buttons kept free to aim and fire. Technologically it is an impressive game just on single-player side of things and the online game broke the mold with a full 3D shooter with voice support, several game modes, and online profiles including clan support that tracked your stats and rewarded you with new weaponry.

I've played through the entirety of the single-player portion of Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, which is the sequel to Dark Mirror and I have to say Sony Bend has improved on their previous game rather impressively. It's even better balanced than the first game, features water levels for Gabe to swim through and fight from, and generally avoids ridiculously difficult encounters that mar other portable games and remind you that you only have one analog stick to work with. The engine runs faster and looks better and while the story is still generic and disposable I'm-tough-as-nails-grr-dammit special agent bunk, this time it hews a little closer to reality without losing its prime focus as an excuse for some great shooter action. The signature cover-based shooter gameplay is augmented by the IR and EDS goggles. The rich environments are designed with ample cover, occasional environmental items like exploding cannisters, and the EDSU goggles can always highlight interactive items. This eliminates any chance of frustration with the light hit-this-switch, then-that-switch puzzles that occasionally crop up.

The online play in Dark Mirror was notoriously brutal and sloped terribly towards much more experienced players since they get more starting weapons to choose from when equipping your character, including the dreaded double-sawed-off-shotguns that ended any confrontation very quickly. Whenever I would go online with one or two friends to play against others who seemed to do nothing but play the game I would call it our Monday Night Meatgrinder game session. We would get shot and blasted down to little bloody chunks relatively quickly. It's really a testament to how great the game was with its included headset voice support and online leaderboards that we all stuck with it for a while, leveling up a few ranks before ultimately losing our tolerance for being stomped on fairly regularly.

Even back then there were a few moments I suspected the enemy had gotten extremely lucky. One particular moment stands out. I once nailed an opponent with a grenade at point-blank range and then watched his lifeless, defeated form get right back up and start shooting again. I was stupefied, but not so much so that I didn't put three or four bullets in him before he took ME out with a few good shots. I never forgot that encounter, chalking it up to a despiriting engine glitch, but now I think it was something worse: cheating.

My very first online game of Logan's Shadow showed me the developers had done a truly remarkable job taking the online play up a notch or two since Dark Mirror, and it also shocked me with a clear example of brazen game hacking and cheating.

But first, the good news.

Flagship's collapse has been shrouded in some mystery and it looks like my favorite Flagship product -- ok they only had two -- but anyway it looks like Mythos is in Hanbitsoft's hands and might come back someday. Jeff Green has a rather sizable interview with Bill Roper at 1Up. Roper left Blizzard and is the founder of Flagship. He gives lots of detail on what's happened to the studio.

Xfire dropped us a line today to fill us in on a brand new feature available now to their 10-million-plus user base. Video capture is now just a scroll-lock-V button press away, offering up to ten minutes of video storage online at xfire.com. And how much would they charge for this feature? That would be nothing, the same price of the service itself.

Themes on the PlayStation Store have been free, letting end-users advertise games and even make their own using special software, and today's Store update contains something clever. It's a PlayStation Home theme that, when downloaded, automatically enters you into consideration for an upcoming expansion of the PlayStation Home beta.

While no console will be getting Diablo III (thanks PSU), Ascaron has announced that in addition to the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Sacred 2 coming out this fall there will be a PS3 version appearing simultaneously.

These days all the movie Speed is known for is the 50-mile-per-hour bus ride. Dennis Hopper's taunt to Keanu Reeves character when giving him clues is "Pop quiz hotshot!" followed by the question. Back when I reviewed Buzz!