Little Big Planet 2 announced!

I have been getting back into the groove of Little Big Planet. Recently I have created a new level that recreates the events from Fallout 3 that earn you the gold trophy "The Bigger They Are..." where you have to kill 4 Super Mutant Behemoths.

This morning Media Molecule has released the trailer for Little Big Planet 2.



After playing so many hours of the original, I can't help be be excited for this new sequel. The video says that all of the original user created levels work with the new one. That is good news.

Personally I'm more curious to see how much more they have put into the creation tutorial side of things. While there are plenty of user forums and home made videos giving explanations on how to create the more complex stuff, I can't help but wonder how much Media Molecule will add of their own.

The video also highlights how users can create whole stories. The original Little Big Planet tried to do this with the Community Key that you can create and add to each level. My experience with this though is that user generated levels tended to lump all of their keys in at once instead of stringing levels along. Maybe this new implementation will make that more intuitive.

One of the best "upgrades" to come to Little Big Planet is the ability to see each created level in it's own webpage. The ability to view information about levels while away from the PS3 and add them to your own queue to play at a later date is a huge success. One of the biggest disadvantages to the current Little Big Planet is the fact that once you create a level you are at the whim of the community to find the level in game. Sure you can promote the title on forums etc, but the ability to link to each level individually is probably the best thing that could happen to user created content in this game. Hopefully the initial deployment of this infrastructure doesn't buckle as soon as the new game is released and everyone rushes at once to see their own levels on line.

I'm sure that more of this game will be revealed at E3 next month. Stay tuned.