Sackboy A Big Adventure - Review
I never got into the Little Big Planet series, I tried, but as a side scrolling platformer, I am used to more control and precision in my movements, though I did love the creative aspects. When Sumo Digital took over the reins for the third entry into that series, I never would have imagined that they would create a 3d platformer featuring the now iconic Sackboy. The only problem could this be a game that would bring me into that Little Big Planet world or keep me out once more.
The story is a pretty basic affair, Vex an evil puppet looking guy, has broken into Craftworld and kidnaped all the Sack-people, with Sackboy managing to escape in a rocket. When he lands in this unknown place, he is approached by Scarlet, a mysterious Sacklady, who tells a tale of the Knitted Knights, a group of daring Sackfolk, that would conquer evil and save the land and after giving Sackboy a push, he is off on his adventure to save his friends. Look as far as plots go, it is as basic as it gets, but most platformers these days are not known for crafting, pun intended, stories that go up there Shakespeare. The tale is charming and it does have some wonderful characters that Sackboy meets on his journey, but don’t expect anything to major on it, just enjoy it for what it is.
On the gameplay side, things here are very, very different what you might have expected if you are coming from Little Big Planet. The issue with those games is everything felt a little floaty, almost as if they were doing all they could to let you stay in the game, here there is a solid weight to the world and more importantly, Sackboy. The game has a number of stages, some that are very long and whine around the place, others are shorter and more to the point of things, but almost all the stages are fun. One thing to take into consideration is that the stages are not massive landscapes that you can explore at will, so heading in with a Super Mario Odyssey level of expectation will leave you feeling a little let down. The levels, while sometimes large, are presented in an isometric point of view most of the time, when they are not, they lock to a 2d perspective and occasionally, a mix of the two, this is not a bad thing, it does help keep you on track, but it is a shame that there wasn’t more places to explore.
Exploring is only one part, each stage has a host of collectables to obtain, some of them just give you trophies at the end of the stages, other will put stickers in your album, or unlock new costume parts. Basically, the more you explore, the better off you will be as exploring can provide more fun than just following the preset path. The other reason to explore is that each level contains a bunch of orbs, which are required to unlock the final barrier to the boss of each world, if you don’t have enough, you need to go back into the levels and try and find the ones you need. There are some levels where you can venture through it and if you don’t explore, you will skip over almost all those orbs, so exploring is really something you have to do.
Outside the exploration, Sackboy has a few moves to get around, there is the standard jump and ground pound attacks, and of course he can punch. Occasionally he will get access to tools like a boomerang or a grappling hook, which allow for a little more variation on combat, but they are both basic and don’t over direct aiming controls. When you do get into combat, sometimes it is avoidable, you can take two hits and then you die, your health is indicated by a very hard to see colour outline on Sackboy, so if you have a while to go until the next checkpoint, you might forget you’re one hit away from dying, which happened to me a lot. Apart from hitting checkpoints, I wasn’t able to see any way of recovering health, which for a platform, which is aimed at the younger gamer, that seems to be quite the oversight and if it is in there, then it is far too difficult to locate. When you are on the world map, which is an actual map, you can explore it, finding hidden puzzles and such, but there is no jumping, or running, though there are plenty of other levels to discover.
This brings me to the games most glaring problem, it is slow, in almost every way from Sackboy’s movement in levels and the map, to getting you back to the action, it is slow. Now this is not counting load times, which are quite fast, this is the overall pace of the game, which is even aware it is slow, as when you complete a level, it allows you to fast forward the counting of your orbs for the trophies. I say allows you, but honestly, I could never see any difference in speed, at least any that was significant. When you are running around in levels, Sackboy also moves slowly, not to slow that is a chore to play, but slow enough that it can be annoying at times, I just want more speed. The opposite to all this is in the boss fights, those tend to be more fast paced than anything else, which can be a bit of a distracting thing when you have gone from slow and steady to fast and frantic. The boss fights themselves are a hoot, they are not too challenging, so little ones should be ok with the sudden ramp up in difficulty and speed.
Perhaps one area of the game that shines so well, or should I say has it all stitched up, is the presentation, it is almost perfect. Again, I use the word almost, because there are some odd things that stand out, but more on those in a moment, first let’s talk about the good. Each of the stages have a unique theme to them, while the ones located in the same world have a more cohesive overall theme, they all have their own individual ones. Some of the earlier stages are bright and colourful, while the third world has an underwater vibe going, making things darker and adding in some effects to help sell it. What is impressive on the visual front is that each of the stages look hand made and while this is not the same extreme that Nintendo have done with things like Yoshi and Kirby recently, they have still managed to make them look great. I think what helps sell the effect is that you can see craft boxes lying around, and other assorted tools to help make them feel more real.
The issues that the presentation have are minor ones, but they do stand out, the first is that almost all the levels feature some sort of cardboard cut-out of characters, lining the walls. These are cute and help sell the aesthetic quite well, seeing a scared or happy guy pop up out of nowhere, the problem is, there is not way to see how some of these might fit into the scene. While this could be considered nit-picking, everything else seems to have a place, but a lot of these guys, feel like they were placed by cheating, not all, but a lot and the result feels cheap. The other issue has to do with the overall character presentation, Sackboy is far and away more detailed than any of he other folks he interacts with, again, the others are not bad at all, but when you see them side by side, you will notice the lack of detail on the others, Sackboy and Scarlet are great examples. Again this is not a game breaking issue, but it just seems odd to have such a detailed model for one and not for the other.
On the audio side, there are many things to love here and some odd choices to wade through, first the characters, Scarlet and Vex are brought to life by the amazing Dawn French and Richard E. Grant and both fit their characters very well. Scarlet is a bit cheeky at times, something that Dawn French is very well known for, her series the Vicar of Dibley especially, where as Richard E. Grant has a way about him when playing a villain, something he managed to do in the last Star Wars movie. Both of them bring a sense of familiarity to the roles, but at the same time, managed to not feel phoned in and that was something I really liked. It took me a while to pick out Richard, but Dawn has such a unique voice that she was easy to spot, but perhaps the best part is I never felt that I was hearing Dawn or Richard, I was fully under their thrall as they played their specific characters.
On the music side, things get weird, perhaps not bad, just weird and honestly I still don’t know if I like it or hate it. There are countless tracks that are charming and fit the game very well, with upbeat melodies, even in the darkest stages, well as dark as Sackboy can get. The thing that is weird is jumping into a level and hearing Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars or Houdini by The Foster People, not neither of those songs are bad, but they were so out of left field, I wasn’t sure what to think about them. My first thought, once I had the chance to sit down and think on it some more, was that it gave me a bit of a Rayman Legends vibe, at least with Uptown Funk. If you have played that game you will remember that each world has a stage where the actions are played in time with the music and while this is not as accurate with their beats to actions, there are a lot of similarities. All of it comes back to something I wasn’t expecting and after hearing a few more songs I knew, I started trying to work out what songs were original and what were from the radio, which did take away from a little bit of the fun of the game.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a solid game, there is a lot of collectables to keep you returning to levels, until you find them all, there is a lot of value in the game. The biggest issue the game has, is that it is very slow, across the board, while the overall gameplay is fine, the speed in which you can do anything is to hard to accept. While there are countless costumes to enjoy, there is no building options, like the mainline Little Big Planet series and that might turn some folks away, but if you can get some friends together and are ok with a slower game, you will find some fun here.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
+Some really fun levels to explore, ripe with plenty of hidden things to discover
+The story is brought to life by wonderful actors and while not breaking new ground, is fun
The Cons
-The game is slow, across the board and even it is aware of it, lettting you fast forward the end of levels
-There are random real world songs included on levels, that just appear out of nowhere
