The Best PlayStation Game Every Year 1994 - 2024
14. 2011 - Little Big Planet 2
Little Big Planet, Sony and Media Molecule’s Mario-Maker-before-Mario-Maker, was a moment that feels like yesterday and yet lost to the sands of time.
What was so wonderful about Little Big Planet on launch was the feeling that the developers were pretty much giving PlayStation fans the keys to the game and saying “you drive” and had as little an idea what would happen as anyone. Watching it evolve with people’s creativity, inspiring each other, leading to official crossover DLC drops and community picks from Media Molecule was incredibly exciting.
And Little Big Planet 2 therefore launched with all that the developers had learned from the fans in mind and ripped the lid off of things.
Major improvements included the function to score your levels yourself rather than select pre-made music, the ability to develop NPCs and, most importantly, the Controlinator. This device made LBP way more than a platform game as players can write rules for all kinds of objects, essentially turning it into a full-blown engine of sorts.
Lowkey best of all was that all levels from the origins LBP were backwards compatible with LBP2. Remember backwards compatibility?! Good times.
Little Big Planet 2 didn’t shy away from trusting players’ desire and ability to learn and apply that knowledge. And, if you weren’t much of a creator, you were buying into an ecosystem that supplied endless awesome levels crafted for you by the people who were.