By sheer luck I got into the beta over the weekend. Can I just say, pure awesome and fun.

I do have some complaints, I'll get to that in a bit. First the awesome.

The dev's put a ton of thought in the design of story levels. It's amazing how deep they are. Prize bubbles are hidden everywhere and can be tricky to find. Even though the beta only has 3 story levels (the fourth being a game of "jump rope" and not really anything beyond jumping rope for points, lol), I had to use a faq to find all of the items. I can only imagine what later levels will hold.

Playing levels with friends is a blast and hilarious. *Someone(not sure if they want me to reveal they have the beta)* and I spent some time redecorating each other with stickers and spring stars and eyes and leaves and paint...too funny.

There are some absolutely genious levels out there already. I created a level but don't let me fool you, it is no easy task. It's going to take some time to really get all of the mechanics down for the way each item works. Springs, strings, buttons, nuts, bolts, motors, you name it and they all have their own properties that can be tweaked. With patience and more practice, I might be able to make some awesome stuff, I think.

Now for the bad. Not really bad as it's more frustrating.

There are three planes that you can walk on in LBP. Moving between them isn't too bad when there isn't a lot on screen but as I played some levels online, particularly one based on the show Scrubs, the moving between the planes issue became extremely apparent. The level, mind you, was absolutely awesome and very well done but the moving between the planes really became an issue.

It can be tricky at times to get the planes right and I hope that they can tweak the controls to make it easier to move between them. At the moment you have to press up or down and then hit the jump button to move between them. I hope it's made a little easier down the line.

At the moment, that's really my only complaint.

That and I can't figure out how to wash my pod so I can redecorate it.

Ladies and Gents, this game is a must have. Ever since I saw the first video of it at the one GDC, I've wanted it and I have to say from playing the beta it feels like it's totally gonna be worth it.

Getting 100% in the bikes (which i didn't get to relish because the trophies came out so fast) had me missing out what you got for 100%.

New paint jobs. That means no more bunnies on the second best bike...since the best bike doesn't have a female rider. Not fair.

Anywho, she was kind enough to pose for me:



And since I'm so nice, lol, I had said to people on my friends list that if they needed help with the online trophies, I'd be down with that.

So tonite someone asked me if I would help. Looks like I won't be leaving paradise just yet. Though not that I mind too much, the online is the fun part. It's the single player that sucked the life from me.

Edit: Perhaps I never mentioned the awful bunny bike in burnout. Seems the dev's felt it fitting to give the female riders pink bunnies and bodies dipped in latex. I took offense to the bunny bike cause, well, it's a poor choice in singling out females. Blah Blah Blah. Anywho, it's the second best bike in the game and since the best bike doesn't offer a female rider, I was stuck with bunnies. I hated seeing a giant pink bunny on the back of my riders painted on rubber suit that was so far up her butt...I digress. Lol. I wanted flames and awesomer paint jobs other than bunnies for my buxom female rider. But no, had to have pink bunnies. So begone vile bunnies and hello chrome paint with no bunnies!

So in about a week I finished off the burnout trophy pack. Having to redo a good portion of the car section and 100% of the bikes section...I am done with burnout till the new island comes out.

Man, I can't believe back when this game came out, I actually played it to 100%. It gets soooo fricken tedious at the end. By the end of the game, you've played some event three or four times. Talk about repetitiveness.

I just hope the new island doesn't end up feeling like a chore.