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Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a 3D platformer by Sumo Digital, the developers of PlayStation’s LittleBigPlanet 3, featuring the series’ lovable sack-covered character.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure was originally released for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on November 12th, 2020 and is available for PC via Steam since October 27th, 2022. In Sackboy your mission is to navigate colorful worlds full of jumps and slides, collect bells and blue orbs all while avoiding or battling minions of the infamous VEX who wants to enslave other sack creatures. Like it’s predecessors, Sackboy is sock full (see what we did there?) of charm. From realistic looking textures of cloth and everyday objects in unique stages, to funky fun music that accompanies every level.
Gameplay can be a mix from extremely laid-back easy to controller-slamming difficult in later worlds. But, even though some parts can be annoyingly difficult, everything is achievable with patience because the game has several options to make losing not so frustrating.
For one, you can set the game to infinite lives, so at worst you get set back a little bit in a level as the game does feature checkpoints. At worst, you lose all your progress for that level and have to start over. It’s not that harsh as each level can be completed in minutes.
One thing you will learn soon enough is that each level is meant to be played again later, as you get scored on several different factors: How many blue orbs you get, how many bells you get, and if you found all the items in the game. By the third world, this will become an actual challenge.
What sets this game apart from LittleBigPlanet is that there is no mission editor or level editing. While a lack of creativity is disappointing, you do find wardrobe parts to outfit your Sackboy in an array of different costumes.
Bells earned in levels can be traded in to buy unique clothing options. The blue orbs you collect go toward unlocking later worlds. For example, to pass one world, you might require 20 orbs, and each level gives about 3 or 5 orbs each, so getting enough orbs shouldn’t be too difficult, even for younger players or those less inclined to do a stage repeatedly. Every so often special bonus areas will open up that give you access to locked levels for collecting massive amounts of bells.
The story is a common “beat the bad guy’s minions, then fight the bad guy” theme, but the story isn’t really the focus. Having fun during the journey is the what you should take from it.
The first few levels are rather simple, but difficulty starts ramping up and by the third world there are just same orbs and places we just can’t get to. Maybe more experienced platform players would have no trouble, but some of the timing and precision requirements just feel ridiculous. Even so, by the time you get to the third world, you should have enough orbs that you can still progress through the game without worrying about every single orb and it does give the player some extra content to try and master.
Most of Sackboy is a single-player experience, but it does have a full-fledged multiplayer/co-op experience, and on the PC version, you can do couch/local co-op if you have more controllers or one player wants to use mouse and keyboard. There are a few stages that are multiplayer-only, but they are not required to complete the game.
There are also timed speed challenges that require the player to navigate tricky levels within a time limit to score extra bells. To get a gold score, you either have to be really good at platformers or re-do the levels over and over.
If you’re looking for a LittleBigPlanet game, this is not it, as this is a separate, self-contained Sackboy adventure set in the LittleBigPlanet universe. If you’re looking for a mature, deep story that will have a lot of plot twists and intrigue, this is not it. However, if what you’re looking for is a somewhat laid-back, fun experience that you can just pick and play with your child or younger siblings, this might be right up your alley if you can overlook the idea that getting a gold star every level might take a lot of dedication.
Maybe one day PC players will be graced with the full LittleBigPlanet experience, but for now we’re content to be jumping through worlds to the song “Uptown Funk” with Bruno Mars.
TITLE: Sackboy: A Big Adventure
DEVELOPER: Sumo Digital
PUBLISHER: Sony Interactive Entertainment
PS5/PS4 Release Date: November 12, 2020
PC Release Date: October 27, 2022
We captured the screenshots with the Steam version Sony provided.
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