Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves - Review

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Like many PS3 owners I was quite disappointed when news of LittleBigPlanet 2’s delay was announced. It seems Sony has heard our collective cries and read my diary. Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves is a chance for everyone who wishes they were already playing LBP2 to get a little taste of Sackboy fun before the full game comes out in January. Is this a suitable appetizer or will it ruin your appetite for the main course? Sorry, I wrote this review while watching Iron Chef.

Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves is a cooperative gameplay level pack that is free with a Playstation Plus subscription or $6 without. The set up is similar to one of the level packs for the original LittleBigPlanet; booting up the game brings you into your pod, which you can decorate if you like, but only with a relatively limited assortment of decorations compared to the full game. After you pick your costume (I went with the dinosaur skeleton) you’re ready to start.

I mentioned before that this game is all about cooperative gameplay, but it isn’t about cooperation between two or more sackboys. Instead, the cooperation is between a sackboy and another player using the Playstation Move. Using the Move as a pointer one player can help up to three sackboys through the obstacles of the level by spawning platforms and manipulating objects. You can’t manipulate everything in the level, but anything with a pink colored material can be interacted with. This means that the Move use is rather restrictive. My other complaint is that some of the obstacles are too small to easily point at with the Move, which is exasperating in a situation where time is a factor. That’s not to say that it wasn’t fun; I really enjoyed some of the uses of the Move, such as dragging a roof to protect your friends from a meteor storm, or emitting platforms. The Sackboy side of the gameplay is unchanged, as one would expect.

The visual presentation uses the engine from LBP, but with a theme based on the prehistoric era, hence the name. I was really hoping that this game would at least show off some of the new tricks and the engine that will be used in LBP2, but beyond the introduction of Move that isn't the case. The home-made look is in tact and you’ll traverse through volcanoes, caveman villages, and jungles, which is about as much variety as one can expect from such a specific theme. Sound design was similarly disappointing, since I didn’t notice any new music, but I did enjoy the new voice over by Stephen Fry.

Value is the real killer for this game. For $6 you only get enough levels to take up an hour of your time. Now, admittedly, I did get a good amount of fun for that time, but it’s simply a pathetically short amount of time. You can replay in order to ace each level but that will only net you a trophy since there are no costume parts or stickers to be collected.

Sackboy’s Prehistoric Moves is a fun little game (with an emphasis on the little). It has some interesting use of the Move and did give me a welcome fix of sackboy, but that just isn’t enough to make it worth a purchase. If you can get the game for free and want to test out the teamwork of your friends then it's fun enough, but if you aren’t a Playstation Plus subscriber then I would suggest just waiting for January 18th when you can get this for free with your purchase of LittleBigPlanet 2.

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