I'm still scratching the surface of this, and so far everything is mighty impressive (compared to the first at least), the improvements really justifies it as a sequel rather than an expansion.
First, I'll get the things out of the way: in the couple of platforming levels I tried, the sackboy's physics felt almost the same, as in there's still that floating feeling. The only consolation I can offer, is that they've added so many tools for the creators to use, in order to mask this, like the the grappler segments, the jumping pads, some small vehicles that I'm guessing were custom made, and if I'm not mistaken parts where the gravity can be tweaked so sackboy can either be either heavier or moving is almost 0-gravity.
The second annoying thing was the TEARING, omg some beautiful levels were totally ruined by it! fortunately, from what I understand, the tearing was even MUCH WORSE before the 1+ giger update released a few days ago, and many levels that experienced it are now tearing free. So here's hoping that by the time of release, that issue would be dealt with.
Now for the positives:
The new UI, seriously hats off to MM. They improved it in every way imaginable, especially in the community part of the game. They have finally broke free of the small profile bubble displaying level info and utilized the entire page:
- There's the basic info like level description.
- Publish date, and last time it was updated)
- Ratings (this time it's thumbs up or down), hearts, times played.
- The tags are back, but instead of only adjectives, they try to explain the level, stuff like: platformer, 1 player, shooter, etc.
- There's also the leaderboards, photos, comment section and this time a new Reviews section (going by the "create your game" theme I guess), all nicely organized in one page.
When you press the square on any any level, you get taken to the creator's profile, or his "planet." Every planet looks different since they can be decorated, a nice touch I guess. Every player has a list of badges displayed at the side of the screen when his or her planet is being viewed. They generally give you an idea about the creator and his levels, like: "MM picked", "Attention to detail", "highly rated", "1000 unique players."
So far the most impressive thing about the community component of the game is how easy it is to find levels, good levels that is. right off the bat you get to choose between
- Playing your queued levels, either from the game or by visiting lbp.me which is fully functional at the time of writing.
- Cool levels makes a come back from 1, only this time they're basically a long list. Highlight any level and the creator's level gets displayed at the side of the screen. You can either jump in or visit his planet.
- MM picks, it's a great idea to give this section this much exposure.
- Or search, where you can filter the content at any time between single player and multiplayer levels, genre, adjectives (same as LBP1), creations from LBP1 and/or 2.
Finally, the last thing I'm gonna comment on are the much welcomed new additions to level creation:
- Sackbots. It's nice to see them populate the levels as either NPCs, following you around, or I guess attack you. Having them populate the levels is a cool addition; you can choose how they animate, add speech than mere info bubbles (voice recording has been released with the recent update).
- Mappable buttons to different actions in races, platforming, even point and click levels. I guess the creators can now even limit what actions you can or cannot do in parts of some levels (eg: no jumping).
- Cut scenes and the music generator tools. Basically you can make make anything you want with either of them. I played a level that was dubbed a "short film" that was entirely made out of a long cutscene. How very fitting for sfags.
