farbot.com

If you've listened to Aeropodcast 57 with special-great-not-special-short-bus guest Julian "Rabbit" Murdoch you can hear how we all bemoaned Media Molecule's heavy-handed moderation tactics that have blotted out some pretty fun levels from the online portion of the game.

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.

I was shocked to find out that the ability to build LittleBigPlanet levels together online with your friends is going to come after launch of the game in it's first major update.

A pair of LittleBigPlanet sites have opened, the first being the official game site LittleBigPlanet.com resplendent with still images and menu navigation animations that clearly depict what the grainy hands-on videos of recent conferences have hinted at. The thing is still stupendously adorable.

The second site is the LittleBigPlanet.us.PlayStation.com site, affectionately known as the LittleBigPlanet News site. This one has a snappy little sticker demo when you click on the sackboy. Just pick a sticker from the pop-up, drag the arrow icon to grow and rotate it, then click the middle of the sticker to drag it around the page. It's a simple thing that hints at a fraction of the final game's creative options and introduces some terminology, namely the sticker.

Both of these things are great to see, and it shows that the game I think could be the Game Of The Year on all systems is really, finally nearing completion. It might have a hard time getting past Old Snake to get the award, especially given that it probably won't have a deep plot or backstory like Kojima has built for 20 years now.

So why I haven't I preordered it? That's easy. Because nobody can guarantee me I won't be waiting a few days after it ships for it to be at the EB/Gamestop or even longer to get it by mail. Instead I'll opt to visit my local superstore and snap it up off the shelves, maybe even with a discount on day one. I got GTA4 with a $10 gift card when I was fully prepared to pay full price. Why would I cut off that possibility?

October 21st is the day the game is supposed to ship according to Amazon, so let's hope it lands on the 22nd. I'll be waiting.