LittleBigRelationship

Uh oh! Things went a little bit wrong earlier today and Little Miss WLIG and I fell out. After both of us having a bit of a grumble to ourselves, we had a chat, and as usually happens we worked things out and had a cuddle. I know you were worried, so stop pretending you weren't. Anyway, on to business, once we had sorted things out, Little Miss WLIG asked if we could play some video games together. Once my heart and brain had stopped melting because I felt extremely lucky to have her and to be asked such an awesome question, I asked what she wanted to play. After going through the usual, a thought hit me. All that time we've spent playing 2 player platform games like Super Mario Bros. 3, and I've yet to play LittleBigPlanet with her. So I dug up the old trusty Sixaxis (which needed to be charged as we played) and grabbed my nice white Dual Shock 3 (imported before UK release of course darlings!).

Did we ever have some fun. After having a basic run down of the controls and taking an initial, "oh dear this is a bit much" moment during playing on quick play mode on some random German level. We started having some fun. I was chuffed to find that despite all the pink, Little Miss WLIG's Sack Boy didn't look anywhere near as outrageous as mine, and that the controls were easy to teach and for her to pick up. The game is unbelievably good fun in co-operative. After the shock of the Germans, we played the early story levels on our own and had an awesome time. Maybe it was the reconciliation still lingering in the air, but I don't think that I've had this much fun on a games console with my girlfriend since, well, ever!

So we started to play some of the user made levels, and this is were things fell down. Whilst the few are good fun, it is pretty obvious that the majority of people who submit there own levels aren't doing a job even remotely related to designing. It was at this moment that I felt myself agreeing with Yahtzee. Should people who don't even have the remotest concept of how level design works, or of quality testing, be putting out material with a big fat sticker of approval from the game itself? I know that the star rating system exists, but when I play a 4 star rated level, I expect it to at least work.

Unfortunately, bad level design did put an end to my gaming session with Little Miss WLIG, but luckily not a downer on the experience, and hopefully we'll have a play in the land of the Stephen Fry voice over some time soon. I think it's high time we all laughed at Nintendo and its efforts to blur gender barriers in gaming, LittleBigPlanet is doing just fine without you.