LittleBigPlanet PSVita Beta - Impressions

When I got the email that I had been selected as a tester for LBP PSVita beta I was pretty excited. Even though I was never very skilled at creating levels, I enjoyed trying to make some of my own ideas come to life. Most of the time they ended up limping out the gate though. Some of the levels created by the community could easily be considered full fledged expansions to most other games though.
When the download and install completed there was an immediate update to the build I had downloaded. This tells me they are still constantly working on the systems that we know and love from the PS3 LBP games. The first thing I was impressed by was how great the game looked graphically. Besides the small screen, the game could have easily been mistaken for its console predecessors. All the controls were the same, as were all the animations. Everything we have come to know and love from the console versions was there.

There was of course added functionality for the equipment that the Vita boasts. Specifically the touch screen and rear touch pad. There were four developer made levels to play on when I logged on to play the game. All played brilliantly until I had to use the touch features. When something required me to drag/pull on it with the front touch screen obviously my hands had to leave the controls I would normally be occupied with.

The rear touch pad didn't seem to get as much use, at least with the levels that were present at the time. One of the levels is however controlled entirely by touch. It is interesting but doesn't feel like the LBP I grew to love.
The other thing that really bugged me was the completely broken nature of the net code. Now obviously this is a beta, but the game is built around playing with others and community involvement. I was honestly hoping that I could enjoy slapping other players while I was waiting around at the airport or wherever non-productive waiting is done. Sadly this is not the case as of yet with the beta anyways.
All the advanced level building features we saw added with LBP2 are still present. Thankfully the touch screen controls shine like a diamond when used here. No more slowly moving the sack boy around the screen or constantly pressing directional buttons for menus. Everything can be done with a simple and quick swipe or touch.




Overall I completely enjoyed my time with LBP-V beta. Lets just hope they have everything ironed out before launch. One thing that might become a problem though would be user generated content using up a lot of space on the vita storage card. There's a lot of user generated content already which means the community is already alive and kicking for plenty of new and interesting ways to play.