|
|
|---|
LittleBigPlanet 3 is a puzzle-platform game developed by Sumo Digital for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It was released worldwide through November and December 2014, and it is the third entry in the main LittleBigPlanet series, and sixth entry overall. It was announced at Sony's E3 2014 media briefing on 9 June 2014. It was developed primarily by Sumo Digital, with XDev and series creator Media Molecule assisting in an undisclosed capacity. LittleBigPlanet 3 received generally positive reviews upon release. Critics praised the visuals, the create mode, and new gameplay elements such as the addition of the new characters. The game did however draw criticism for its technical issues and the short length of its campaign mode. The online servers for the PS3 version of the game have been permanently closed due to DDOS attacks in 2021, but the servers for the PS4 version remain operational.
Tropes[]
- Abnormal Allergy: In the final level, Newton tells Sackboy that he has allergies to drowning, which make him break out into... death.
- Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Zom Zom. He pronounces Bunkum like "Byoon-koom" and button like "boo-tone," for example.
- Action Bomb: the Bomb-Bots from "The Journey Home" are yellow Sackbots that, when grabbed, begin ticking suddenly. Eventually, they begin convulsing whilst crazily laughing before exploding. Clive Handforth says the best part is that he does not have to pay them.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: In the level "Furry Soles, Hot Coals," you don't play as Sackboy, OddSock, Toggle, or Swoop. Instead, you play as Yeti, who doesn't show up anywhere else except as a costume for Big Toggle.
- Ascended Meme: A character in the Ziggurat owns a portal that randomly generates a level link to a Team Pick from the community levels. She is particularly savvy to tired old community trends in the Imagisphere, as to quote: "Let's just hope it's not another bomb survival, eh?"
- Benevolent Architecture:
- The Blink Ball would be completely useless in "High Stakes Heist" and "Flip-Flopped Folios" if it wasn't for the Blink Panels that Sackboy can teleport to using it.
- Similarly, the Hook Hat would have no use whatsoever if there weren't Bendy Rails that go exactly where Sackboy needs them to.
- Body Wipe: In the level where you unlock Toggle, after he smashes through the walls, he dashes into the camera and then the camera focuses on his back as he runs away.
- Buffy Speak: At one point, Newton fails at making a simile when he tells the Sackpeople to use Layer Launchers to "bounce in and out like a, like a... a bouncing in-and-out thing".
- The Cameo:
- The King, The Queen, The Collector, some crocs, and a Robobun all appear during the final two levels, turned into half-Newton abominations.
- Da Vinci, Victoria, and the Collector all appear in the in introduction level, as part of the crowd behind Sackboy during the acting tutorial. For the former two, it's also an Early-Bird Cameo, as they respectively host the first and second worlds of the Popit Puzzles.
- Camera Abuse: In the Toggle Trailer, Toggle accidentally runs into the camera and cracks the lens.
- Cat-apult: Nana Pud fires exploding cats at you.
- Clumsy Copyright Censorship: In early versions of the game, the song "Battle On The Ice" would be present in the Popit in Create Mode if you imported your data from the first game, but neither its demo nor the song itself would play. The latter was fixed in version 1.05, but the demo is still bugged and doesn't play.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Newton is telling Sackboy the legend of the 3 Heroes and the Titans, he states that it happened "Long ago, before the Negativitron nearly laid waste to Craftworld." a.k.a. The plot of LBP2. In one Popit Puzzles level, Larry da Vinci attempts to recount the days of the Alliance, but can't recall the name of the Negativitron.
- In the beginning of the LBP2 tutorial on retrying, Stephen says that he got stuck in a hat once. In the LBP3 tutorial on retrying, Stephen opens by asking if he ever told Sackboy about the time he got stuck in a hat, and Sackboy tells him he did.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Nana Pud, who has pictures of her cats and even attacks you with cat-shaped bombs. When her house is destroyed, the second thing she worries about is her cats: Nana Pud: Me house! * Beat* Nana Pud: Me cats!
- Design-It-Yourself Equipment: You can create your own power-up through the new Powerup Creator in conjunction with dozens of logic gates, microchips, tags and emitters. The Popit Powerup on the other hand is a portable Level Editor which functions in-game.
- Disappeared Dad: Newton's father disappeared at some point before the events of the story. He shows up at the end to give Newton a stern talking to.
- Double Entendre: "The Pumpinator doesn't just blow! It can suck, too. Just hold L1!"
- Double Jump: Of a sort. The Boost Boots allow you to dash, whether in midair or on the ground. You don't necessarily have to go up, however; left, right, up, down, and diagonal are all viable options.
- Dungeon Bypass: In the final stage of the Popit Puzzles' Second Semester, you have to place, edit, and use Sackbots to solve puzzles. However, instead of doing that, you could change a Sackbot to the Swoop frame, use the "Act" option to control Swoop, have him pick up Sackboy, and then fly over the entire level to the end scoreboard.
- Dynamic Loading: The Dynamic Thermometer setting allows the player to set their level so that only things in a certain radius from the player are loaded, and things outside the radius basically don't exist. This also means that there's more logic for things, such as the Permanency Tweaker that causes things to always be loaded, or the Preloader which can be used to load parts of the level earlier than they usually would.
- Early-Bird Cameo: In the introduction level, when you get to the tutorial about acting, there's a large crowd behind Sackboy. Larry Da Vinci and Victoria von Bathysphere appear in the bottom left, before they show up to teach you the Popit Puzzles. Downplayed, since they're both existing characters.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The game starts off with levels that are simple enough. Then the first boss comes, and it's difficult for people who played a game in the series before. Then the second boss is a marathon with a character you just unlocked.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Titans are described as giant gargoyles that sucked imagination from Bunkum. Their true forms are only ever seen as shadowy blobs that towered above the entire planet.
- Elvis Impersonator: Marlon Random is obviously inspired by The King himself. He has a similar hairstyle and voice and frequently makes exaggerated poses; unlike Elvis, however, he is an actor.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Newton has a plan to release the Titans, thinking they have abandoned their evil ways and will forward creativity. Did they? Hint: No.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The game was infamous for having lots of glitches at launch. Here some of the game breaking ones:
- The game's launch was plagued with a glitch similar to the server issues with LBP1. It was outright impossible for some players on the PlayStation 4 version to play online with other players for many months.
- Seemingly innocuous actions — it's not known exactly what causes this — have the possibility of corrupting your profile. Hope you backed up all your levels and put all your costumes, captured and community items inside another backed-up level, because if not, you're never going to see them again!
- Also known is a bug while in Create Mode where Sackboy will get stuck and start twitching wildly until you delete the glitched object. However, if you quit and restart the game, Sackboy will get stuck in the pipe of the Pod and make the game unplayable until you load a backup or delete the save data.
- In rare cases, loading the Ziggurat hub level can cause the player to repeatedly fall to their death.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Gustavo peppers his phrases with random bits of Spanish. Gustavo: You can't catch me, amigo! Gustavo: Oh, you're so fast! Muy bueno! Gustavo: Hermano, remember that holding L2 will restart the race!
- Grind Boots: Inverted with the Hook Hat which allows Sackboy to ride on Bendy Rails with a helmet. The Hoverboard item in the Back to the Future level kit also has this property.
- Hailfire Peaks: Follows this in the steps of the second one:
- Stitchem/Prolouge is a Level Ate combined with Green Hill Zone and presumably the Swiss Alps.
- Manglewood is a 1950s America B-Movie set in a swampland.
- The Ziggurat is the Moscow Kremlin with frequent steampunk elements.
- Bunkum Lagoon is basically a medieval take on Venice, in the sky, with frequent sea-life motifs.
- Hover Board: The Back to the Future DLC has a Hoverboard item. It increases Sackboy's base speed, allows him to scamper up walls, and has the same rail-riding ability as the Hook Hat.
- Hub Level: Each world, aside from the first, has a hub level, where you travel to the levels to collect the missing Marbles.
- Impact Silhouette: Toggle does one of these in one of the cutscenes when he smashed through the wall.
- Happens again with, this time through the now shattered glass panel.
- Insistent Terminology: The Boost/Dash Boots. Pinky Buflooms and the Sackpocket call them the Boost Boots, but the sticker is called the Dash Boots.
- Involuntary Group Split
- When the player unlocks OddSock, a rock falls and breaks a bridge between Sackboy on one side and Marlon and OddSock on the other.
- When unlocking Toggle, a gate that he opened breaks, separating Sackboy and OddSock from Toggle and Papal Mache.
- Item Get!: When Sackboy gets a Marble, it's accompanied by it floating over to him while an ethereal riff plays, followed by a triumphant musical sting as he collects it.
- Large Ham:
- From story mode, Newton and El Jeff are both very loud at times.
- The King in The Journey Home: The King: HO HO! I'M HELPING! KIINNNNGGGG!!!!!!!!!
- Lighter and Softer: The story is much more comedy-based than LBP2 and Vita. In particular, the villain is a complete bumbler and no lives seem to be at stake.
- Loud Gulp: After being scolded by his dad, Newton does one of these if he just consumed the Titans.
- Meaningful Name: Bunkum means "nonsense." Fits with the random theme of the planet.
- Metroidvania: A lesser example than most, but thanks to the Sackpocket that lets you hold powerups and the unlocking of 3 new characters over the course of the game, there's some of this in the story mode, allowing you to go back through prior levels and hub worlds to get collectibles.
- Mouth Cam: Happens at the very end of the final boss.
- Mythology Gag:
- In "The Journey Home", in the level "Spring Time in the Gardens", the player starts the stage by going down a ramp on a skateboard, like in the first game. If they were to look closely at the ramp, they may notice that there is a path that goes under it (like in the first game), but it's too high to reach. As they progress a bit into the level, they acquire the Springinator, so they can jump up to under the ramp. Once the player gets up, they can walk to the left under the ramp, and when they get to the end, there's nothing there (unlike the first game) and the player gets a Pin titled "Not This Time!" And just to make it better, there's a sticker on the wall that says "CRAZY", which is the sticker that was in the Prize Bubble under the ramp in the original LBP.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants levels are jam-packed with references to the show. Mystery from "My Pretty Seahorse" shows up multiple times, Kevin the Sea Cucumber and the King Jellyfish from "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic" are in Jellyfish Fields, Plankton's lab from "Plankton!" is available as a sticker, and the perfume department from "Shanghaied" appears on the Flying Dutchman's ship, among many other references. Even the loading screens may slip in the tip "Licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets."
- Nostalgia Level:
- The entire point of the "The Journey Home" level kit, in which Toggle goes to The Wedding from LBP1, Swoop goes to the Factory of a Better Tomorrow from LBP2, and OddSock goes to The Gardens from LBP1, in that order.
- Several of the Challenges are based on levels from the previous two games, e.g. "Pixel Pace", which is basically "Fight of the Bumblebee" from the second game minus the Bee 2.0, or "Skipping Class" which is pretty much "Tie Skipping" from the first game plus a Creatinator.
- Old Save Bonus: You can import your profile from the second game to this one, and it will still have the things you collected from the first game if you imported your profile to the second. If you're moving from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, the game gives you all of the items for the first game if you've played it before and uses your pin progress for the second game, giving you the items you would have gotten based on said progress.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Some occurs during Vitium In Opere in the level with the chain monster.
- Overly Long Scream: Newton does it as he along with Sackboy and his friends fall to their doom.
- Newton: We're DOOMED, DEAR FRIENDS!!! [starts screaming non-stop as he and Sackboy along with the heroes fall until they land on his dad's ship]
- Plot Coupon: The player must get the Marbles to unlock the new characters to continue the story.
- Premium Currency: Bubbles are the most common form of score items, but this game introduces Collectabells, hidden currency that, with a fixed amount appearing in game, are much more valuable and able to be spent on new cosmetics.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The "I. AM. INVINCIBLE!" trophy.
- Putting the Band Back Together: This is the premise for the third game. You have to reunite the three legendary heroes, OddSock, Toggle and Swoop. There's even a trophy for doing so, aptly named "Put The Band Back Together."
- Ring Menu: The Sackpocket is Type 2.
- Rubber-Band A.I.: The chain monster in "On The Link Of Disaster."
- Rule of Three: There are 3 heroes and there are 3 Titans. It takes 3 Marbles to unlock OddSock and Toggle (not Swoop, he only needs 2 for some reason).
- Save Scumming: The Popit Powerup allows you to pause and rewind your game progress, each savepoint is created when you close your Popit. Although you cannot save your game this way, it's more than enough to warp reality and undo failures before you take damage.
- Say My Name: Captain Pud does it after Newton told him that...
- Newton: I don't remember being a strict rule... Captain Pud: (angrily): Newton! (Cue Newton letting out a Loud Gulp)
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Literally. The Titans were sealed in a tea tin.
- Self-Deprecation:
- The "FIX ME HOOK HAT" shirt. In short, when editing a Sackbot, you can toggle what powerups they can use. The powerups are represented in the menu with pictures, except that the Hook Hat didn't have a picture, just a gray box reading "FIX ME HOOK HAT". This wasn't fixed up to 7 months after release, so when they finally changed it to a proper icon of the Hook Hat, they let the joke live on in the form of a free DLC shirt with those 4 words on it. SACKBOY® FOUND A BUG! Oops, it looks like you're seeing something you shouldn't! What does “Fix Me Hook Hat” mean? Sackboy® has no idea, but he likes it! It’s quite catchy, don't you think? You better move quick as once the bug blasters get here, it might be gone forever… or maybe it will pop back up someday, who knows?
- One common criticism of LBP3 is the Loads and Loads of Loading. Level creator Mars-Park3 made a level called "Loading... Rocket" in which you control the rocket from the loading screen and fly through rings to earn points while avoiding the loading messages. That's not the self-deprecating part though; the self-deprecating part is that the level received a Team Pick, the highest honor for a level.
- Self-Plagiarism: Those who played Tarsier Studios's DC Comics level pack were likely underwhelmed by OddSock and Swoop because they reuse abilities introduced in said DLC. Specifically, OddSock's wall jumping ability was already done with the Wall Jump Material and Tweaker, whilst Swoop's move of the same name was introduced via the Hero Cape.
- Shaped Like Itself: Newton pulls one of these when he's teaching Sackboy about Layer Launchers. Newton: That's it! Bounce in and out like a... erm, err... a bouncing in and out thing.
- Spelling Song: The SpongeBob SquarePants DLC's song "Let's Be Chums" has a robotic voice spell out "P-L-A-N-K-T-O-N" in its beginning and middle.
- Spring Coil: The Springinator powerup that OddSock gets, which allows him to bounce higher than he can jump.
- Stylistic Suck: In "The Journey Home", "Spring Time in the Gardens" is not just done in the style of the original world, but the style of the first game. That means that there are visible connectors everywhere, even for things that look like they're supposed to be flying, such as birds, ghosts, and stars.
- Stress Vomit: During the final act of Even Bosses Wear Hats Sometimes..., Newton was shown in the boat sea sick and was shown vomiting even if he's nervous.
- Suddenly Voiced: In "The Journey Home", the King and Frida the Bride from LBP1 appear. Unlike LBP1, which had no voice acting and only used simlish stuff, LBP3 has full voice acting, and these characters are no exception.
- Teleport Gun: The Blink Ball allows Sackboy to teleport to a Blink Panel when he fires a Blink Ball at it.
- The Voice: The head guard in "High Stakes Heist" is only ever heard yelling at his guards through an intercom. The guards themselves appear, but the one leading them never shows up in person.
- Third Is 3D: Well, the game itself isn't 3D, just sixteen layers, but the community can finally make 3D Sackboy movement that isn't top-down.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Happens to Newton in this cutscene.
- Third-Person Person: El Jeff.
- Tremor Trampoline: The main mechanic of "Bear With Us". This sidequest is set in a dance academy where Oleg has accidentally turned on music that made the bears angry. The bears' periodic jumps launch Sackboy and various objects on the ground.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: This is how the Contraption Challenges work. You are initially given a few low-grade parts to build a contraption to use in the challenge, and by participating, you can earn better parts to build a better contraption, rinse and repeat until you have good enough parts to build a contraption that can win the challenge.
- Triumphant Reprise: Industrial Evolution is this to The Factory of a Better Tomorrow's Interactive Music.
- Unexplained Recovery: The last time we saw the King, Queen, and Collector, they were partially roboticized in Newton's base, which explodes after you defeat the final Titan. The three of them show up in the "The Journey Home" DLC perfectly fine. And even before that, in LBP2 they were in an asylum.
- Uvula Escape Route: Happens to Pinky at the beginning of "Belly of the Beast".
- Wall Run: OddSock can "scamper up walls", which allows them to get some height on a wall by running up a curve, before transitioning into a wall slide which can be jumped out of. A special material in the last few levels allows for OddSock to engage full-on running along the walls and ceilings.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Zom Zom, pronounced "Zoom Zoom" by him.
- Womb Level:
- "Belly of the Beast" from Bunkum Lagoon has you going into, well, the belly of a beast. Seemingly a whale-like creature, but it's not given a species.
- Defeating the final Titan involves throwing a bomb into it, then getting swallowed so you can detonate said bomb.
- Worthy Opponent: Gustavo sees Sackboy as this if he does really well in the race.