As much as I try to spend some time outside of work hours talking about anything but games, and as much as my time in local pubs is intended to be spent eating Quavers and drinking all sorts of fun ales, rule of thumb tends to dictate that any moments spent in such establishments results in me chatting about the console wars at length with at least one person. Up until about three months ago the conversation used to peter out slightly when it came to the PS3 and I would go back to cramming my mouth full of cheesy snacks, but last weekend was a little different.

See, LittleBigPlanet is just the tonic the console needed. Metal Gear 4 has stood on its own as a system seller for half a year now and the momentum from that was beginning to die down, so having another stellar exclusive plop onto shop shelves just in time for the Christmas rush is quite the dose of salts for Sony and their black box of tricks.

On the face of it, LBP is a side-scrolling physics-based platformer in which you control a cute little cloth doll in order to get from A to B by navigating jump C and puzzle D. It sounds entertaining enough, sure, but what really sells LBP is that it features so much creativity and downright bonkers humour that it leaps off your telly screen like some kind of bizarre puppet show. Has any game before allowed you to create a level where you can have your cat at an obstacle to jump over, or a seesaw that launches your girlfriend into a stack of milk bottles? Not that I can recall, although I have had dreams remarkably similar (don’t judge me on that).

The platforming part itself is good fun once you get used to the basics, although it is far from perfect. As you potter across the screen you can tap the analogue stick up or down to move your little sack dude between three planes of depth so you can hop over things, drag things about and the like, but rather often you find yourself jumping back and forth without intending to do so and tumbling off objects or ledges.

This is a bit of a shame, because it’s quite a crucial aspect to the way the game plays out. It makes what is mostly a fantastically enjoyable platformer fiddly and awkward at times, leaving some of the more layered levels a tricky test of patience. Having played the thing through one can come to the conclusion that it’s not a complete game-breaking scenario and the amount of enjoyment that you’ll squeeze out of the game more than makes up for it, but an annoying issue it remains.

The single player levels that are in the boxed product are a mixed bunch, but include some wonderful pop culture references, such as a curious appearance of Rick Astley and a suspiciously Monty Python-esque foot stomping section. The game starts off silly with you hopping around cartoon-styled gardens riding on oversized skateboards and wooden horses and continues along the same whacky road throughout, through jungle levels, inner city environments (featuring an awesome lowrider complete with bizarre talking skull) and much more, and at each step it’s sure to nail a smile on your mouth, even if you are as morose as Jay.

The use of physics as a key tool in progression is also welcome, with many puzzles being solved by a bit of lateral thinking and use of the scattered scenery, such as dragging boxes over to edges so you can jump up to that little shortcut you have just become aware of, or using the momentum you gain from swinging on a windmill to propel you through the air and onto a platform. Most items you find in the game can be tampered with, knocked about and experimented with to varying results, and as a result you can run through a level a good few times and get different results each time. Yay for longevity! There’s also the option to pelt around any of the game’s levels, be they original or created, with a chum, and working together you can access certain areas that one player can’t. It’s a neat idea, and it’s great fun.

Had this been the be-all and end-all of LBP then it would have been merely a decent, quirky title, but it’s the emphasis on user-created content and customisation that developers Media Molecule have really hung their feathered caps upon. From running around collecting stickers to splash liberally across whatever you want to, be it levels, your sackboy or your little home pod that the game uses as the main menu, to collecting new clothes and level design items, the idea is that the single player portion of the game mainly acts as a collectathon so you can add new customisation options to your little sack of wonder by finding them dotted around each level.

The biggest part of the creative process is undoubtedly the level design suite, and to give credit to Media Molecule they have done wonders in giving users something that offers pretty much like-for-like scope to the main game. By popping up your little sackboy menu and selecting from different materials and objects you can litter your initial blank palette with all sorts of jumps and set-pieces for people to navigate, and the results so far from the more dedicated folks out there have been really awesome.

There are negatives associated with this level of creativity in a way – the fact that only the more dedicated people will be able to sit around for long enough carefully balancing things out to make good levels could hurt things. At the moment there are plenty of talented folks out there, thankfully, and we are getting a steady stream of quality user-created content to play through, but how long this will hold up is anyone’s guess. Hopefully it will, as it adds tremendous value to the package and in effect makes the game’s lifespan endless. The creation of levels isn’t such a simple process, though, and even though the front end is quite friendly once you get used to it there’s still a heck of a long process to work through as you pick a material, draw a platform, pick an object, place it, check it balances properly, pick a material… you get the idea.

The second issue is the rather thorny copyright matter that’s been cropping up a lot recently, with peoples’ uploaded efforts (including the above-linked Sonic one) being taken down as they infringe various intellectual property rights. That’s not to say that there aren’t fantastic fresh ideas coming from the general public of course, but at the moment there’s an uneasy feeling that Media Molecule may have opened somewhat of a can of virtual worms that they’re going to have a heck of a hard time controlling. Plus, hey, we need other developers to look at this in a friendlier manner, as surely imitation is the first form of flattery?

You can’t really criticise the game too much for this, of course, as it’s always better to offer people the chance to do something of their own than to not offer the creative route at all, no matter how time-consuming it might be. As it stands, LittleBigPlanet is every bit the creative hive that it was intended to be.

It also has plenty of nice little touches that really set it apart from anything, such as the option to have your little sack fella dance by holding the shoulder buttons and moving the analogue sticks and waving the controller around, or being able to change his facial expression between a number of amusing offerings. Bagging new clothes for him (or her) can get quite addictive too, and with lots of nods toward previous Sony-based characters as Solid Snake and Sephiroth on their way you can’t help but fall in love with it. Alongside the crazy, colourful and cute graphics and stylings we have the ever-wonderful Stephen Fry narrating tutorials and the like as only he knows how, and that adds great dollops of amusement to proceedings, whilst you can use a PlayStation Eye to capture images and post them into the game. It’s a well rounded, entertaining game that encourages you to keep plugging away at the exploring and creating at each step.

Of course, quite how much you get out of the experience is dictated by how involved you want to get, and to that end LittleBigPlanet could end up being somewhat of a disappointment if you are just looking for a decent platforming title and are not bothered about the customisation on offer. To mark the game down on that, though, is not particularly fair as it ticks a heck of a lot of boxes that it set out to, and encourages the community to support each other with new content. The bare bones of the game, i.e the platforming, may occasionally be somewhat fiddly and the level creation is a dedicated, often long-winded process and hence I can’t justify slapping a perfect score on it at the end, but it came darn close. At the moment the social side of the game is flying along nicely, and one can only hope that this remains the case for the foreseeable future.