Tuesday 25 January 2011

Dead Space 2!

If one thing can be said of Visceral Games, it's that the studio is true to its name. Visceral is a word that can adequately describe any of the team's violent, blood-drenched titles, and nowhere is this more true than with the game that turned EA Redwood Shores into Visceral in the first place, Dead Space.
2008's horrific, panic-inducing, limb-shredding action-horror title wasn't just visceral, however. It was atmospheric, engrossing and polished. In short, not only would a sequel have to match the scares, it would have to match the quality. Not an easy thing to do in the least, especially if you then try to top what came before.
Yet by jove, they did it.

Dead Space 2 (Xbox 360 [reviewed], PlayStation 3, PC)
Developer: Visceral Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Released: January 25, 2011
MSRP: $59.99

Considered insane and incarcerated in a city-like space station known as The Sprawl, Dead Space protagonist Isaac Clarke is still haunted by visions of his dead ladyfriend Nicole, while unsympathetic doctors prod and poke at his brain. Of course, if that were all that happened, it'd be a pretty dull game, so along come the Necromorphs to carve people up and give Isaac something to do. Better than getting molested by an amorous psychiatrist ... or is it?
Dead Space 2's narrative is richer and more integral to the experience this time around, helped in no small part by the fact that Isaac is no longer a silent protagonist. This sudden introduction of vocal chords could easily have been the ruination of Dead Space 2's narrative, but the change has been made gracefully and tastefully, with a character who still keeps his words minimal but becomes much more sympathetic. The final few chapters of Dead Space 2 in particular forge Isaac into a sympathetic character, one who deserves pity and respect in equal measure. 
The plot, which I shan't detail for obvious reasons, is driven forth by some superb voice acting from all corners, along with an expertly crafted script. It's hard to find naturalistic dialog in a videogame, but Dead Space 2 manages it. The only downside is that, for some reason, the voices are buried deep in the overall sound mix, with music and sound effects disproportionately loud.

This is especially frustrating during important exposition scenes featuring Nicole, where distorted voice effects and loud atmospheric sounds combine to make certain characters borderline unintelligible. The sound quality, especially the ambient noise, is superb, but you'll have to really mess with your audio settings if you don't want to miss plot details.
When you're not straining your ears to pick up the chat, however, Dead Space 2's quality is utterly astounding. Aside from the occasional physics glitch (the bane of all ragdoll-flavored games), Visceral's latest effort is one that smacks of perfectionism on the part of the studio. No mistakes were made with this game, and it's clear that it has been crafted with genuine love and respect, which is an increasingly valuable trait in videogames these days.
The core gameplay remains the same, and you'll know exactly what to do if you played the first game. Isaac makes his way through The Sprawl, utilizing his handy Plasma Cutter to slice the limbs off hordes of Necromorphs. Business as usual.
Visceral didn't buy a new car with Dead Space 2, but it did soup up the motor. The cheap scares are cheaper and scarier, the Necromorphs hit harder, move faster, and come in a variety of increasingly disturbing designs. Chief among the twisted monstrosities are the mutated children, who run screaming at Isaac in huge groups and are easily among the most unsettling monsters in videogame history. Few games let you shoot the mutated corpses of slaughtered infants, and that's an accolade Visceral can be proud of.

Dead Space 2, like its predecessor, is less about psychological, creeping terror and more about cheap scares. While some will find this detrimental, I can't help but relish the increasingly absurd ways in which Visceral attempts to make you jump. The game is relentless in this respect, as Necromorphs lunge at you from every corner, things burst and shatter all around you, and windows crack open, threatening to suck you out into the vacuum of space if you can't shoot the emergency shutter down in time. And it's all such mindless fun that you barely question the architectural sanity of putting glass windows in a space station.
For all its attempts to craft a creepy story and unnerving atmosphere, Dead Space 2 is at its best when it casts subtlety to the wind and throws wave after wave of Eldritch nasties at you, sowing panic at every given opportunity. The ability to induce this panic is the game's biggest strength -- a frantic environment where you feel outmatched and manage to survive by the skin of your teeth. Sometimes it can get frustrating -- it's not fun to have three monsters in a row leap at you while you have no chance to defend yourself -- but at the end of every fight, you'll feel that special kind of stress, that good kind of stress where your heart's racing and you feel like you just pulled off a superhuman feat of survivalism.
Visceral spent a lot of time making weapons more effective, dealing extra damage, and having more customization options. There are also a few new items, like a long-range rifle and a mine launcher. However, these new weapons still aren't as effective as the standby Plasma Cutter, with perhaps a Pulse Rifle on the side for quick crowd clearance. It's both a strength and a weakness that the starting weapon is still the most powerful in the game. The limb-shredding precision of the Plasma Cutter is wonderful, but you're left with a choice -- play without variety, or sacrifice your ability to fight efficiently in order to play with a flamethrower (as well as force more varied ammo drops, which leads to less ammo per weapon). Whichever way you play, your game will be dented just a tiny little bit.

I'm also somewhat disappointed that The Sprawl isn't ... well ... sprawling. While the environments are varied and you'll be going to all sorts of unique locations, The Sprawl may as well be the Ishimura with some neon signs. Most of the game still takes place in tight corridors, and you never get a sense that you're in a giant space city. The game's opening chapters hint at all sorts of glorious chaos as the Necromorphs tear The Sprawl's citizens apart, but it's over pretty quickly, and the majority of the game just feels like another deserted, desolate spaceship.
That said, the game will throw some variety into the mix at regular intervals. An early chapter set on a speeding train makes for a total thrill ride, especially with its ludicrously intense ending. There's also a chapter set in an elementary school, and you can probably guess how harrowing that is. The new anti-gravity areas are also pretty fantastic, especially with Isaac now able to freely float around the space rather than simply stick to walls. Some latter chapters take Isaac out into Space, and these rare, open moments manage to create the illusion of a far bigger world.
The single-player campaign clocks in at around eight hours, and like its predecessor, it feels right for the game to end when it ends. The story, though still light on narrative details, is beautifully interwoven and helps make Isaac into a truly endearing protagonist. His actions in the last two hours really flesh him out, and helps to create a more subtle, more human hero than we're used to in videogames. There are few single-player experiences so perfectly paced as Dead Space 2's, and for that alone, the game is worth a purchase.

It's a good thing that the single-player is still the game's biggest draw, because the multiplayer is, to be fair, nowhere near as good. It's not exactly bad, but it's rather unsatisfying and delivers nothing of the pacing and tension that the main game brings. The teams are split into humans and Necromorphs, and while one would imagine that playing a Necromorph would be fun, it's actually quite disappointing. Their attacks feel disconnected from the game, with wild hack n' slash swings that never feel like they're hitting anything and projectile attacks that are visually vague, giving no clue as to whether they struck their mark. It's also just rather dull to spend five minutes spawning, running up to somebody, and smashing the trigger blindly in the hopes that you'll kill something.
When playing as a human, the tightness of the story mode is there, but the atmosphere is all gone. Now the Necromorphs run around in circles, as online gamers are wont to do, and the unbridled chaos feels far less satisfying than the controlled madness of the tightly scripted single-player.
There is a bit of fun to be had, especially once you start ranking up and can customize your character a bit more with uniform colors and loadouts, but there's nothing in Dead Space 2's multiplayer that wasn't already done -- and done better -- in last year's Singularity, which also featured a "humans vs. monsters" mode and did so with far more depth and in a tighter fashion.

That said, Dead Space 2's somewhat tepid multiplayer does not drag the game down in any way, shape or form. The single-player campaign is so superb that even if the multiplayer was bad, it wouldn't have taken anything away from the experience. The game already justifies its $60 asking price before it goes online, and if you happen to dig the multiplayer as well, that's just icing on the cake. It feels like a bonus mode more than anything else, and the fact that it's at least "okay" is more than enough.
Dead Space 2 is a ludicrously intense, graphically gorgeous, thoroughly atmospheric game that takes everything the first title did and ramps up the absurdity to dangerous levels. It's cheesy to say that "if you liked the first game, you'll love the sequel," but in this case, I think that's a very fair assessment. Dead Space 2 is Dead Space with the tuning at its finest and the scares at their most delicious.
Action horror has reached a new peak with Dead Space 2.
Score: 9.5 -- Superb (9s are a hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage to what is a supreme title.)

Wednesday 12 January 2011

SteelSeries Spectrum 5XB

It is no lie that when this generation of consoles launched, the first-party audio equipment was sh*t. If it didn't break quicker than your Xbox 360 could red ring, then the audio quality was poor and it was made for people with oddly-shaped heads. Recently the audio peripheral market has caught fire and console gamers have more audio options than ever. Ranging from the super cheap to the "need to re-mortgage" variety, it's a market I am becoming obsessed with.
The great audio debate once again kicked off at the Destructoid Europe HQ when the latest piece of audio equipment from SteelSeries arrived on our doorstep. SteelSeries, originally an European-based company that markets itself as a manufacturer of pro-gaming equipment, already has an large catalogue of PC equipment. Now they have finally presented their first Xbox gaming headsets, the Spectrum 5XB and Spectrum 4XB. 
This hands-on will be looking at the Spectrum 5XB running through the following set up: an Original Xbox 360 20GB and LG Flatron HDTV. 
The Look and feel:
A Dtoider once told me "... you never know when a LAN-party will turn into a photoshoot.", a quote that highlights that it is okay to want your headset to look good, and that style and substance obviously need a balance. The 5XB comes in classic black with lime green detailing and smooth rounded cups in a high shine finish. The headset itself is of a simple design which I personally find to be one of my least favourite from SteelSeries. The Spectrum range makes me feel more like the Prince from Katamari than anything else.
However I feel while wearing them, one thing I can't argue is comfort. The headset remains light at only 590g and the padded cushions around the ears are so comfortable and keep the sound in amazingly well. Which is great considering that I love my volume up past what any otologist would ever recommend. It also helps keep the noise from the rest of the world out, My flatmate could be bleeding to death in my living room while screaming for help and I wouldn't have a clue. Awesome. 
SteelSeries really keeps durability in mind when designing this headset. The cable is braided and Kim Rom, the company's CMO, always seems to take great delight in tugging at the cord as hard as possible in any interview to prove his point. The headset also breaks down into three separate pieces for traveling and can take a large amount of torsion to the main headband without it feeling weakened. Finally the microphone is easily retractable which is great if you want to use your headset without the mic floating in the corner of your eye or if like me you have the ability to "misplace" those detachable ones far to easily. 
The set up:
I hate clutter. Previous headsets have seen my computer desk become a spaghetti junction by the time I plug in the millions of wires and gadgets that are required to make headset work, but SteelSeries have kept wires to a minimum with the 5XB. Now as Kim Rom has previously mentioned, they would love to make a wireless headset but sadly this is something that is still out of their hands and technology still doesn't allow for the same high quality of sound and reliability obtained through wired systems. Below are the before and after shots of my desk without the spectrum plugged in on top and with them plugged in on the bottom. It isn't perfect and there are still wires on my desk and stretching across to my bed when I play. But when compared to other headsets, it's a great improvement. The RCA jacks remain in the back of my TV at all times, the USB remains plugged into my 360 and when ready to use I simply plug the audiomixer into my controller and then connect the headset to the audiomixer and everything is good to go, surprisingly little fuss.
The Sound:
So before we get into how they sound, let's talk about how they work; the Spectrum 5XB uses the SteelSeries Audiomixer, a small device that is connected to the TV and powered by the USB port from your Xbox 360, which plugs into the base of your controller. The small audiomixer, which is light and doesn't throw the pad balance off, gives the players access to game volume, mic volume and a mute button. The volume controls are ergonomically placed where you don't end up knocking them with your hands while playing. The mute button even comes with a green/red LED light to avoid those embarrassing moment when you have ended up screaming into a muted mic unbeknownst to yourself.
Underneath the audiomixer is a small on/off switch to what SteelSeries call Livemix, which is rather clever indeed. When you switch it on, Livemix will automatically balance voice chat versus game noise. And no, it doesn't just increase the volume of voice chat to the point of giving you a burst eardrum. So no more loud explosions from the opposing team's rocket launcher interrupting you while you try to command your team to victory.
Now here is the really important bit, sound quality. I have to give it to the 5XB: the sound is beautiful. The spectrum gives off a deep and rich sound that feels heavy on bass, something I personally like in my audio equipment, that avoids distortion even with the volume up to maximum. Despite the sound being heavy on bass, more delicate noises are not lost. Considering that SteelSeries design for pro-gamers, where hearing every footstep counts, I would expect no less. Playing through games like Enslaved I can hear every fire crackle and the gentle hum of every orb. In Gears of War, I can hear the empty bullet cases hitting the floor and instruments playing in the background music that I didn't even know where playing. I was however really disappointed to find that my iPhone did cause interference with my headset while playing, sadly relegating my iPhone to another part of my room.
The microphone gets a good response from the players in my team speak with the majority finding my voice to come across as clear and crisp with nearly no distortion. When I get myself into some Horde mode in Gears of War 2, Livemix works brilliantly as I desperately relay instructions to my team mates to help us prepare from the incoming flank attack of Maulers and Boomers. It was easy to adjust the levels without fuss and without having to get up and walk over to my desk to use a different type of audiomixer provided by other headsets to get a better balance, everything is exactly where I needed it to be. I got used to flipping the switch to access Livemix on the underside relativity quickly. However, if you leave Livemix on expect to find sound levels changing constantly, it is best to only turn it on when you have something really important to say. 
Summary:
Over all, I have to admit I am really impressed with the new SteelSeries Spectrum 5XB, the sound is deep and rich and the microphone works well. The Audiomixer is a brilliant design that keeps the pad balanced and is ergonomic to use, the Livemix being a fantastic bonus. The design is as "no fuss" as possible, and it makes the headset easy to plug in and easy to use to help avoid confusion with wires running everywhere. However this design is sadly not for me, but it isn't like I plan on wearing them out; even though they do play audio files brilliantly as well. Above all is price, $90 is never cheap and parting with that kind of cash is never fun, but many people who have tried other console headsets will realise you are getting a fantastic bargain. Go cheaper and you will lose quality, yet even more expensive headsets will fail to provide your gaming experience with what the 5XB can. To top it all off the headset is light, comfortable and designed to take some pretty heavy rage throws. 
The SteelSeries Spectrum 5XB can definitely be recommended to anyone who is looking to have the fullest experience possible from their Xbox360 and you don't have to be a professional gamer to enjoy the amazing build quality, sound, and technology that SteelSeries has brought to the table. 
Specifications and price:
SteelSeries Spectrum 5XB:
Headphones Freq. response: 16 – 28.000 Hz 
Impedance: 40 Ohm SPL@1kHz, 1Vrms: 110 dB
Cable: 1 + 2 = 3 m / 9.8 ft.
Jack: 3.5 mm
Microphone Freq. response: 75 – 16.000 Hz
Pick up pattern: Uni-directional
Sensitivity: -38 dB
Impedance: 2K Ohm
€89.99/$89.99

Monday 10 January 2011

NOX Specialist Audio Headset

Review: NOX Specialist Audio Headset  photo

I once managed to get a set of Panasonic RP-HTX7 headphones (cream colored, natch) run over by a car. I don't need to discuss the Wile E. Coyote-esque set-up, but it has become my new litmus test for audio hardware. If it still works after getting run over by my brother's Oldsmobile, you've got quality.
I doubt I could run the NOX Specialist over with a car and still use it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
If you're not in the market for a gaming headset, feel free to move on. I understand that we're all busy dudes and that you'd rather look at a batch of screenshots than read a review for a product you're not interested in. I'm a man of the people, after all.
But, on the off chance that you got here by Googling "NOX Audio Specialist review," I welcome you, wayward time-traveler.
Specialist Audio Headset with Negotiator Universal Gaming Adapter
NOX Audio
Now available
MSRP: $79.99 (headset); $69.99 (adapter); $99.99 (bundled)
The Specialist, by NOX Audio, is, as I may have mentioned, marketed as a gaming headset. That's probably a bit deceptive, though -- the Specialist is a perfectly functional set of all-purpose headphones that happens to have a retractable (and flexible!) boom-mic attached. Even if they didn't sound as good as they do, extending and retracting the mic over and over is probably worth the $79.99 price of entry.
Well, no, it's not, but the retractable mic is cool.
And not to harp on the mic-dongle, but I do appreciate the mechanism: the speaker casing on the left cap houses a tiny little crank attached to the mic; the right side houses a volume dial. It's a small touch, but the Specialist is remarkably compact for a catch-all headset -- I hate having a volume mixer hanging off the power cord. Another triumph of simplicity: the Specialist can be easily folded and contorted to fit into a hard clamshell case. It's portable and self-contained, and I already know I'll be leaving my bulkier Panasonics at home when I do my traveling this holiday season.
All-in-one Skyping, too, is a breeze, thanks to the myriad splitters NOX includes with the Specialist. 
Unfortunately, this simplicity doesn't extend to actually using the Specialist for gaming -- you'll need a special adapter for your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 controller, access to your console's optical port, a spare USB port, three salamander eggs, and one of Steve Balmer's hairs, plucked at midnight. To get started, I consulted NOX' own FAQ and this video, and exchanged a dozen-odd e-mails with a PR rep. A set of instructions would've been nice.
Once you get your panoply of wires in the right place -- and, Christ, don't forget to change your audio settings! -- the Specialist actually works really well. The Negotiator is a proprietary attachment that balances in-game audio with chat which, coupled with the Specialist*, allows for a very specific audio quality. The unintuitive set-up aside, the Specialist works best when used as a gaming headset -- the mic is flexible enough to keep out of your face while still picking up your voice; the Negotiator makes it easy to simply turn off in-game chat if things get too trolly, and the Specialist is comfortable enough to use during your marathon sessions.
Be aware, though, that the Negotiator isn't included with all the headsets -- you can buy the attachment separately or buy them both bundled.
My online Pepsi challenge between the Specialist and the standard issue Microsoft headset produced mixed results, however -- some couldn't tell the difference while others found marked differences in audio quality. That's not to say the mic is entirely crummy -- in my experience, it holds up pretty well on Skype, for example -- but it seems the weakest part of the offering. For what it's worth, the Specialist won't be replacing the Blue Snowball I use for podcasting, despite the former's aforementioned ease of use.
And that is perhaps the larger theme of my experience with the Specialist: It's a fine piece of hardware, but it won't change any of my audio preferences. The headphones have a warm, rich sound, and do a good job keeping noise out and audio in, but they struggle with the lower register. This is mitigated somewhat by the Specialist's specificity and the strength with which it carries out its tasks.
The NOX Specialist has several things going for it -- simple design, portability, comfort, and attention to detail, especially in terms of online gaming -- and they'll be invaluable when I'm away from home, but these fragile little road-warriors aren't convincing enough to oust the big boys of audio. However, if you're still rocking those iPod earbuds from middle school and are looking for a headset that does music, podcasting, and gaming in one neat package, the Specialist isn't hard to recommend. 
Specifications for the Specialist headset:
Drivers: Dual 26mm Mylar
Frequency Response: 20 Hz to 20 kHz
Noise Reduction: 6 dB @ 1 kHz
Sensitivity: 104 dBSPL @ 1 kHz
THD: <0.5% @ 1 kHz; <2% from 40 Hz to 20 kHz
Input impedance: 32-ohms
Microphone: 4mm Omnidirectional
Weight: 0.30 lbs
Specifications for the Negotiator adapter:
Frequency Response: 20 to 20 KHz
THD: < 0.5%
SNR: 95 dB
USB 2.0 Compliant
FCC/CE Certified
*Jason Statham and Bruce Willis are actually working on a buddy-cop movie called Negotiator and Specialist.
[Full disclosure: NOX Audio provided me with a Specialist+Negotiator bundle for review.]

Little Big Planet 2!!!!

Media Molecule once said that LittleBigPlanet would never get a sequel, that it was something the studio wouldn't ever want to do. Whatever changed between then and now, LittleBigPlanet got the second installment that the more cynical among us always thought was inevitable.
The trouble with a sequel to a game like LittleBigPlanet is that it's difficult to imagine what more you could do. LittleBigPlanet was more than a game; it was a breathtaking toolset of new ideas and fresh content. Following that up with enough content to justify a sequel was always going to be tough.
Your mileage may vary as to whether or not you feel Media Molecule got away with it.

LittleBigPlanet 2 (PlayStation 3)
Developer: Media Molecule
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
To be released: January 18, 2011
MSRP: $59.99

LittleBigPlanet 2 is almost exactly LittleBigPlanet, but more so. Rather than make any drastic overhauls, Media Molecule has opted instead for giving us the same experience with many more toys in the box. New materials, new items, new gameplay features -- there's a lot of stuff to play with, and how much you enjoy it all depends on how much you enjoyed the original.
This is LittleBigPlanet 2's biggest strength, but also its biggest flaw -- LittleBigPlanet 2 is an expansion on an idea, but it is not an improvement. The sequel still boasts the same issues as the original title, chief among them a rather weak platforming element. LittleBigPlanet was, to be fair, a great way of making sub-standard games. The loose physics and the fact that, by its very nature, levels are cobbled together as opposed to fully developed and polished, meant that even the best LittleBigPlanet level was rather poor compared to the average "real" videogame level.
Part of the problem (the cobbled-together feel) can't be fixed and can be considered part of the charm. Other elements, chiefly the game's horribly sloppy physics, really needed fixing but have been left almost intact. As brilliant as LittleBigPlanet 2 is as a concept -- and the concept remains brilliant -- the gameplay in the end is still lacking.

Another major issue with LittleBigPlanet 2 is that, in spite of all its new gadgetry, a lot of the original charm has worn off. The sense of discovery and magic that the original game had isn't there in the sequel, mostly because we've seen it before. The first game got away with its loose physics and simple gameplay because it was so new exciting. LBP2 fails to recapture the wonder, and this loss of magic exposes the flaws much more readily.
This is not to say, however, that LittleBigPlanet 2 is a bad game. It is, in fact, a rather good one when you take the entire experience into account. If you loved the first title, you'll no doubt really enjoy the new toys on offer. Being able to play with genres outside of platforming, such as scrolling shoot-'em-ups and simple arcade games, goes some way toward making up for the lack of freshness in other areas. The ability to add cutscenes and join multiple levels to create the illusion of a full game helps to turn your own creations into varied experiences rather than one-shot playgrounds, and in the hands of skilled crafters, these tools will be put to some amazing uses in the future.
The in-game toys are also rather fabulous. New environment additions such as the Bounce Pad pave the way for ingenious level design, while new vehicular robots -- including a bunny with huge jumping abilities and a dog that can move large blocks with its bark -- are a lot of fun to play with when the physics aren't making them difficult to control. LBP2 manages to impress with the sheer volume of additions. It would be easy to throw in one or two vehicles and call it a day, but the game's story mode will walk you through all the new playthings, and it keeps on delivering from start to finish.

The real stars of the show are the power-ups. I don't want to spoil them all, but they include a grapple gun, which allows you to create your own ropes and swing from various materials, and the "Creatinator,"a firearm that shoots out whatever the level designer wants it to. There are a lot more than that on offer, and each one brings something new to the table.
In addition to all that, LBP2 also provides Sackbots, the LittleBigPlanet equivalent to real NPCs. Creators can customize the Sackbots' behavior to make them act in certain ways. They can run away from or follow players, they can fight enemies, they will avoid dangerous materials, and they can be used to help solve puzzles. As is the LBP way, Sackbots are user-friendly and simple, which means you'll never get them performing complex operations, but they will add a lot of extra character to any level.
The "Create" mode remains as unchanged as the Play mode. New elements involve the ability to add or remove gravity (low gravity sounds more fun than it is, since it renders Sackboys nigh-uncontrollable) and the ability to customize your own music. The general simplicity of level creation has not been altered, and it's still both easy and fun to start making your own games. The true potential of the level creator won't really be tapped until skilled designers start tooling with them, but for a layman like me, it's still incredible to be able to make almost anything you like, and relatively quickly, too.

While everything remains largely the same, there are a few tweaks to help make things smoother. Tutorials are in-depth and listed in an easy-to-navigate viewing field. Connecting various environmental elements like switches and bolts is now faster and requires less fiddling around, and you can even record your own voiceovers for in-game dialog. There is nothing in the Create mode that could be considered revolutionary, but the alterations that have been made are certainly to the budding creator's benefit.
It's easier to publish and browse through the game's community portal, with a much more convenient list of levels that makes finding stuff easier to find. At the time of writing, LittleBigPlanet 2 can't connect to the community levels, but hopefully that's a pre-release issue and everything will run at launch. There's no excuse for story mode levels not loading, however. The in-built levels have random load times, and I even had a moment where a level refused to load at all.
This loading issue was a major problem for me in the first game, and while some of it is again tied to the nature of the beast, the fact I was having problems even with the built-in story levels is quite worrying, especially since the game has a mandatory HDD installation.

As expected, the game's presentation is as terrific as ever. The graphics are beyond gorgeous, and with each Sackboy more customizable than ever, there's a huge amount of charm on offer. The game even attempts a real narrative this time around, with a story mode that actually means something. It's a welcome addition, even if the story is banal and the dialogue is painfully unfunny. The music is better than ever, though, and the story mode alone offers up some great memorable moments where the visuals and sound come together perfectly -- certainly an inspiration for potential creators, and a high bar for them to meet.
While the box says that LittleBigPlanet 2 is PlayStation Move-compatible, that's a little bit disingenuous on the part of the packaging, at least at launch. The game has a ten-level demo which PlayStation Plus subscribers will have already enjoyed, Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves. Irritatingly, you have to install this demo separately, and it has to be accessed from a special "Extras" tab in the PS3's XMB rather than the game itself. Quite why it's so inconvenient is anybody's guess, but for what it's worth, the demo levels are a cool co-op experience in which one player manipulates special motion-controlled environments to help the other player's Sackboy get to the end. It certainly shows potential for future, patched-in Move support, but don't expect any waggle antics at launch.

Whether or not you enjoy LittleBigPlanet 2 depends heavily on whether or not you were still playing the first game months after it launched. If the magic wore off after a few weeks, then LBP2 is definitely not for you, as it does nothing to rekindle the fire. If you never got tired of the experience, then LittleBigPlanet 2 will help extend and enhance it, rather than overhaul or even improve anything all that much.
The flaws of the first game are preserved and plain to see, and now that the freshness of the previous title is lacking, the problems are that much more glaring. For all its new gimmicks and flashing lights, LittleBigPlanet 2 can still be best described as a great way to make substandard games. It's fun and it's cute and it's something PS3 fans should check out, but it's relying on a concept that was brilliant two years ago, and just isn't enough anymore to catapult the game into true greatness.
You're good, LittleBigPlanet 2. But you're not quite as brilliant as you want to be.
Score: 7.5 -- Good (7s are solid games that definitely have an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.)