SupremeAC said:

To be honnest, I think that LBP was (is) a flash in a bottle, that just fit the zeitgeist very well when it first released.  Would it receive the same scores if it were released today?  I hardly doubt it.  I don't mean to say that one is better than the other, but saying it's better because it won prizes is a bit farfetched in my opinion.  And then there's the matter of one game being a spin-off and thus will be seen as the odd duck in the pond, while the other is it's own thing.  And then there's the matter of how both franchises have an identical score when all games released are considered.  

It's better cause it's better. LBP is light years ahead as a player create tool and a community of user levels. No one is saying Mario maker set any standards, no one every said "this is so much better than LBP".

That said it looks like Nintendo is fixing the game piece by piece.

Dvader said:

Lol right, just look at reviews. You think the gaming media and general gaming historians think Mario Maker is better than LBP. That's absurd. Mario maker will quickly be forgotten, not win a damn thing. Meanwhile LBP was one of the best new franchises of last gen.

Dvader said:

LBP is so much better than SMM, it's not even a contest.

My opinion on LBP is already well known here; I'm not going to get into that. Comparing the two is not really wise though. With Mario Maker you have the ability to use elements and enemies ripped straight out of some of gaming's best, most highly regarded, best reviewed and beloved games of all TIME to make levels VERY reminiscent of what came before. The levels are not interconnected into a greater "game" kind of structure... but really... how were they connected in the actual games? World maps? Level numbers? Your motivation for playing the actual games was a plot that consisted of: "Rescue the Princess! Get a cake!" How the levels were strung together was irrelevant versus playing expertly designed levels. Again, SMM let's you make THOSE kinds of levels. Making them is EASY as hell. Sharing them is EASY as hell. Nintendo gave you the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom and the ability for ANYONE to make any MARIO LEVEL they desired. All the nostalgia, the pixel perfect controls of each and every game included.

With LBP, you don't have the nostalgia. You absolutely DO NOT have the sense of control of SMM. That they included single player was almost irrelevant because, really, who cares? The story was utter nonsense and the entire mode existed as a Tool Unlocking Adventure for the creation mode. What you DO have is an INSANELY in-depth game creation tool. Yes, there were some absolutely brilliant things done with it... Things that stray sooo far away from simple platforming, it's hard to tell what game the creations came from. LBP ALSO created a kind of community that DID NOT EXIST on Sony platform before. It's fans reached a devotion normally reserved for a Nintendo franchise...

SMM has history and Nintendo backing it up. It's insane how easy they made it to make levels. NO OTHER creation game has achieved THAT as well as it. LBP, while award winning and genre defining on Sony platforms, IS and ISN'T the same kind of experience. You need to have A LOT of time patience and devotion to make viable levels on it. Travo Junior was making levels on SMM, DAY ONE...! Comparing the two is unfair.

I don't see eye to eye with Vader when it comes to LBP... or SMM for that matter... but I also DON'T LIKE seeing multiple people arguing against one. He has the right to hold his opinion as much as we have the right to hold ours on SMM.

I also think Vader's assessment of SMM is a bit premature and harsh but that's partially due to the opposing opinions found here, egging him on... Let's ALL just try to respect each other's views at least, OK?

Gagan said:

A: argumentum ad populum



B: LOL video game historians



You're arguing a game that actually plays well vs a game that plays poorly no matter how many ways we slice it.  Little Big Planet as a creation tool only looks good to people ignorant of PC gaming, to those of us that aren't oblivious to that shit Little Big Planet's creation features, while yes a bit more fleshed out than Mario Maker, aren't up to snuff with fucking Gary's Mod, much less actual mod tools, much less mod tools to games that don't suck. Half Life's mods gave us Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead. Warcraft's mods gave us Dota. Little Big Planet gave the world really shitty mario knock offs that made anyone playing them go "honestly I'd rather be playing actual Mario".

That's little big planet's real legacy.

Amazingly ignorant post. LBP was not just a creation tool, it was a game platform that allowed the players to create share and play creations and tied it all together with an in game community. You don't start half-life 2 and have access to counter strike from the menu, those are mods, LBP is not a mod maker.  LBP was its own enclosed video game playground and platforming was just one thing that was possible, so no it's not a Mario knockoff cause actual platforming is just a tiny part of the game where in Mario maker that is all it is. It was a tool that allowed artistic freedom, allowed creators to run free with their ideas. It wasn't ever going to be something that spawned its own games, again it's NOT A MOD, its a journey through others creations. And if you were talented enough to be a creator it allowed a whole other aspect to it.

Gagan said:

Halo 5 multiplayer. Apparently they added a campaign that is like The Power Rangers if the Power Rangers were devoid of fun and took themselves seriously, but the multiplayer is fucking rad at 60 frames. Can not believe I've played Halo at 30 faps for so long. Going back to unplayable framerates is going to be torture after this game : (

Then it's lucky Halo 2 runs in 60FPS on Xbox One!

Dvader said:

I had a long post, it's gone now. Basically I agree with all your thoughts on the gameplay and the creator tool. But I believe there is an aspect that are directly comparable as Nintendo basically tried to copy it and failed so far, the community sharing center. Right now in MM it's a mess, it's a pain to find good levels. Nintendo has done nothing to highlight the best levels, unlike MEdia molecule (lol MM is both Mario maker and media molecule) which was improving and involved with the community from day one. Knowing nintendos history with online I don't know if they ever will fix it nor care too.

That's how I felt about LBP's way of highlighting the good shit: anything good was impossible to find, no matter how I tried. I found lots of stuff that looked cool, but not a single decent platforming level. Which is a shame because as abysmal as the mechanics were, there were a couple of cool levels in the campaign and it would have been nice to play more.

But, hey, at least LBP didn't accuse me of piracy and have Nintendo try to confiscate my console like SMM did...

SupremeAC said:

I would say you are innocent untill proven otherwise.

SMM basically slandered me.

Dvader said:

Amazingly ignorant post. LBP was not just a creation tool, it was a game platform that allowed the players to create share and play creations and tied it all together with an in game community. You don't start half-life 2 and have access to counter strike from the menu, those are mods, LBP is not a mod maker.  LBP was its own enclosed video game playground and platforming was just one thing that was possible, so no it's not a Mario knockoff cause actual platforming is just a tiny part of the game where in Mario maker that is all it is. It was a tool that allowed artistic freedom, allowed creators to run free with their ideas. It wasn't ever going to be something that spawned its own games, again it's NOT A MOD, its a journey through others creations. And if you were talented enough to be a creator it allowed a whole other aspect to it.

>LBP is not just a creation tool


Except as a platformer it's not exactly good, and as a platform for making multiple genres it still comes with the same issue the platformer part comes with. Because it's limited both in engine and doesn't allow you to mess with physics or mechanics ergo you get  poor mechanics. Half Life's mods created some of the better mp games, none of them actually play like Half Life, hell Counter Strike to this day has better gunplay than any entry of Half Life. It's mod tools are creation tools, and that's an area the PC crowd has been bless with in advance. Entire modding communities for Doom with less consumer friendly features, but more complex developing options created entire game ideas that shaped genres to this day in gaming. LBP's place in gaming history is a sham when measured against how dramatically inferior it was to modding on the PC.


All of which were played and shared among the community. The games themselves may have been sold on the creation of the dev, be it doom, half life, or warcraft, but what little big planet ultimately is; is very much a stripped down version of what modding is, but with an accessible UI. The fundimental concept and goal is actually the exact same. Let the community create and share an endless supply of games/ideas using our engine. The label is the label, but at the end of the day that's exactly where LBP owes its lineage to. That modding scene, and its exactly that reason that LBP's actual place in history is pretty limited. It is the first of its kind, on a console, that qualifier is necessary. When judged on everything it achieved and has actually done, If you game exclusively on consoles, yeah it comes out smelling like roses, it's pretty neat, but to a PC gamer, especially one that played through the hey days of those modding scenes, you go to that game and come away asking "what's supposed to be impressive here?"

Because as a tool it's limited, wildly so, in terms of impact on the history of gaming? It barely has any. Mario Maker is actually no diifferent in that regard, I get not having the same options as a rom hack, but the fact that interconnected levels aren't an option? Come on, and yeah Nintendo botched the metagame completely by not having a more comprehensive search system with tags. It at least plays well.

Dvader said:

Lol right, just look at reviews. You think the gaming media and general gaming historians think Mario Maker is better than LBP. That's absurd. Mario maker will quickly be forgotten, not win a damn thing. Meanwhile LBP was one of the best new franchises of last gen.

And yet you chose Mario Maker over Splatoon?

I don't know what you're proving here except that you make bad choices.

Sorry, I had to

SupremeAC said:

Gagan, I agree with Vader in that you can't go comparing a console game to mods on PC.  They're different beasts.  And there's also a profound difference in that mods on PC require actual effort and understanding of what makes a game tick, whilst LBP and SMM are much more intuitive.

You might not think much of LBP as a creation tool, but it kicked off the whole community/share thing on consoles that is now well embedded in both PS4 and Xbone.

Different in the sense that one definitely requires way more effort, and arguably unnecessary effort? Sure. But it is what it is, MediaM took modding, and made it into a product, reductive as that statement may be, it is exactly that. And in that context It deserves its praise for being intuitive, but I don't think that necessarily makes LBP devoid of criticism for its limititations, more so I don't think the sentiment that LBP's impact is limited becomes less correct.

Plus kicked off the whole community thing? Microsoft's back ground is in PC gaming, games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Time Splitters had map makers, Far Cry for the 360 actually, to this day still has one of the more robust map makers for a console shooter. And that was 06, Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 had mods, Halo 3 had forge with celebrating the community and file sharing in 07, through bungie.net and their file share stuff, a year before Little Big Planet. There was stuff like the machinima stuff. Microsoft had that XNA program. So saying it kicked off any of this, would be debateable.

Even the basic share functions on the Xbox One/PS4 are more a product of Twitch, Youtube, social media, and the basic act of taking screen shots.

It is the first product of its kind, I'll agree there, that much it absolutely deserves praise for. But it's place as this influential thing in gaming history? Would still argue its pretty limited in that department.

SupremeAC said:

Gagan said:

Different in the sense that one definitely requires way more effort, and arguably unnecessary effort? Sure. But it is what it is, MediaM took modding, and made it into a product, reductive as that statement may be, it is exactly that. And in that context It deserves its praise for being intuitive, but I don't think that necessarily makes LBP devoid of criticism for its limititations, more so I don't think the sentiment that LBP's impact is limited becomes less correct.

Plus kicked off the whole community thing? Microsoft's back ground is in PC gaming, games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Time Splitters had map makers, Far Cry for the 360 actually, to this day still has one of the more robust map makers for a console shooter. And that was 06, Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 had mods, Halo 3 had forge with celebrating the community and file sharing in 07, through bungie.net and their file share stuff, a year before Little Big Planet. There was stuff like the machinima stuff. Microsoft had that XNA program. So saying it kicked off any of this, would be debateable.

Even the basic share functions on the Xbox One/PS4 are more a product of Twitch, Youtube, social media, and the basic act of taking screen shots.

It is the first product of its kind, I'll agree there, that much it absolutely deserves praise for. But it's place as this influential thing in gaming history? Would still argue its pretty limited in that department.

So I supose you also don't give Apple credit for anything because MP3 players existed prior to the Ipod, smartphones existed prior to the Iphone, and tablets existed before the Ipad?  

LBP pushed creating content and sharing it to the forefront and into the general public's eye.  That other games had done it to an extent before LBP is a moot point.  On console that is.

My stance would be that I think Apple is actually influential, what they've done with IOS has absolutely been something their competitors have directly responded to. Both hardware and software.

LBP again, we're saying it pushed this thing, but it came out in 2008, the next user generated thing we got was Project Spark. For The Xbox One. And Microsoft sold it for free, so the next product like Little Big Planet would be Super Mario Maker in 2015. We start getting a few more things like Mario Maker, yeah then I get the argument for LBP pushing this stuff, but  with only 2 things like it, I'm saying where is the influence? The share functions on the Xbox One and PS4 for taking screenshots and videos is more in line with people recording and putting their gameplay on youtube than what LBP was doing. Games adding elements of having user generated content (Infamous 2 in 2011 had something like this) wouldn't trace back to just LBP, and if we're talking public eye, Halo 3 and Forge had a way bigger audience in that regard a year earlier.