October 2008

Everything But the Kitchen Sink

stargrace October 30, 2008 0Comment

Yesterday was another LBP day. That is to say (I rhyme so well at 7am!) that I spent most of my time either trying to connect to LBP online (didn’t work until 6pm or so) trying not to lag into spikes with Tipa and Said, or adventuring on my own gathering more costumes and more building materials. When the servers finally did come online, I tracked down Tipa and Said and spotted them in the Meerkat zone. 

The lag was horrible. I felt like I was watching everything in slow motion any time I joined someone else who was hosting. If you’re the host, things are just great. It really made playing very difficult. 

Another thing that was difficult was that I don’t have a keyboard plugged into my ps3. Something I am going to fix this weekend. It meant that any communication would have taken me literally hours. I don’t want to wear a headset while I’m playing, and I don’t want to have to voice. So a usb keyboard is the way to go. It was VERY hard to communicate with everyone. Said and I ended up logging into vent and then Said would type things out to Tipa because they both were using keyboards. 

I thought playing co-op in a duo where the person was literally in the same room with you was hard, that is NOTHING compared to playing online. Especially when there’s lag involved. I think we all died more times from getting pushed off of the side of the screen by anything else. 

You know what though. Despite all of that, and what a very rocky start the online portion has been – I’m loving it. Every bit of it. I’m sure over time the online portions will get better – and it’s not essential to the game. You can play other people’s levels by yourself while you’re connected and have 0 lag. You can create your own areas just fine, publish them for others. Add your friends zones to your favorites, etc. There’s still so much creativity and just plain fun that even with the frustrations I think this is a fantastic game. I started working on the three wedding zones, and got a load of new outfits. They are very difficult for me to complete though, especially without dying. It will take some time (and a whole lot of luck) and me re-doing the zones a few times before I feel like I can run through and gain the ‘aces’ reward for completing it (and passing all the check points) without dying. 

It’s easy to lose track of time when playing. Especially when you never know when the next costume or building material may be coming your way. Tipa sent me a message with an attachment for LBP and I don’t have the faintest idea how to see it or how to get it or what it is. Suppose that makes a good goal for later today. 

I have two days before NaNoWriMo starts, Christmas upcoming (and I’m making a lot of my gifts, so they take time), as well as all the other real life obligations that everyone has to deal with. With all of that going on plus EQ2 + EQ1 – call me crazy, but I re-subscribed to WoW. More about that in a post later today (have I mentioned yet how much I love delayed publishing in wordpress? Well I do!).

Little Big Planet Rambles

stargrace October 29, 2008 7Comments

Since mother nature decided to dump 15cm of snow on us here in Ottawa between yesterday afternoon and this morning (and we’re not quite done yet) I was happy that I already had my copy of LBP and was not about to head out for anything in particular. Snow in November was becoming rare enough, but 15cm in October? It’s going to be a long winter. 

There were issues all day with the online servers for LBP, some times they were up, and other times they were down. I have no doubt that they did not know about how popular their game would be, after hyping about it for 2 years. They were having issues a few days ago – before the game had actually been sold to anyone aside from pre-order. 

I spent a lot of time going through zones I’d already played through, trying to get all of the rewards. I managed to get the garden to 100% completed – this means not only discovering all of the stickers, materials, and clothing bits in every zone, but also finishing each one without dying. This feat became a LOT harder to do in the Savannah. There are a few zones that I dislike, anything with moving ghosts that like to stomp on me, as well as crocodiles (and there were lots) and buffalo. 

I went through a million tutorials on how to build zones, and I’m thinking that I may actually need to buy some sort of manual on how to do it all because I am going to forget. That, and I can’t actually READ the buttons that pop up that they tell me to use. Time for a new TV. 

Randomness: The radio is playing Christmas music. Ugh.

Ok, anyhow. I am still amazed by everything you can DO in this game. I haven’t moved on to the wedding scenes yet, just the first two. I’ve been trying to get 100% in each level. Each time I play through I find something I missed the first time, a hidden room, a ramp, some extra stickers and building materials. A few things to keep in mind – never follow the direction arrows the first time through. There’s typically *always* something behind those.

I’ve seen a few other people’s creations, including a level 1 super mario brother’s level, that was a LOT of fun and very cute. One interesting aspect is that you can vote for other creations, and give them a rating out of 5 stars. Some levels are just plain.. plain. They focus on giving you a trophy of some sort. For example, fastest speed. It’s a zone that launches you by a rocket and you fly through the air (typically dying at the end). You unlock a trophy for flying so fast but that’s all there is to the zone. Another was to gain 1,000,000,000 points – and the entire room was filled with the little bubbles you step on to gain points. Again, not much to the zone. 

The co-op is still done very well in zones that have it planned out though. Since the game is still brand new to release, I imagine that over time the selection of player made zones will get better. I would love to create one, and I have an art themed one in mind, but I really need to learn the controls better first. Remember, I haven’t been playing PS3 or video games for my entire life. It’s never too late to learn!