PSN id: Vagabond7
Now that the beta is over and I've invested a good 24 hours in the past 3 days playing this game, I can say that everyone must purchase it. It's not all good, but it's all pretty amazing.
The level creation has the obvious fault that 90% of the levels suck. And in the beta at least the "rating" method also sucked making it nigh impossible to tell what people enjoyed and what they didn't. Each level has 3 of the most picked descriptions pasted up front, but most of them are neutral, things like "fast" "fiery" "gas", and when you beat a stage they recomend to you a few random descriptions, so most people are not likely to keep hitting "none of the above" to get to what they really think. Also you can "heart" a level if you really like it, but the heart ratios where quite pitiful. Even the best and most popular levels had less than 20% heart to played ratio. This is problem is probably exacerbated by the fact that in order to heart a level, after you beat the stage, select your descriptive term and then return to the stage menu, you have to pull the stage up again, scroll down and select "heart this level". So even if a person likes a stage, there is a good chance they will beat it and move on (I was guilty of this a number of times without even realizing it). So there definately needs to be a better way of giving recognition to the great stages.
The good news: It doesn't matter. Even the bad stages are alot of fun, doubly so if you're playing with other people. Terrible stages that the creator didn't spend five minutes play testing, that are a train wreck of physics, unpredictable rockets, and stupidly hard perils are a blast if you have 3 other sack boys smacking each other, crying, laughing, pasting stickers on things, getting squished, riding poorly built contraptions to their doom, and then beating the hell out of the winner of the stage at the end.
The level editor is more difficult to use than I expected. It's quite complex, and you're often time left frustrated wondering why this thing isn't working like you wanted it to, or like it seems like it should. You will spend hours making even a simple level, and many many hours making something really worth while. If you have some brilliant idea for a level, DON'T TRY TO MAKE IT FIRST. Save it until you've got some practice. Build a practice stage or two, mess around with the various tools, and get used to it. THEN try to make your brilliant stage.
The good part: The creator is sooo elastic it's incredible what some people come up with. I've seen pinball games, shooting ranges, action shooters I've seen gigantic creatures, episodic story based adventures, music video's (The radiohead one is waaay better produced than all the other ones), and more. And best of all it can all be shared. Alot of stages are just sort of concept stages to show off some cool machine, object or idea, and for completing the stage they give it to you and it gets put in your inventory for your own use. When the full game is released rather than just the beta and it's sold at retail, the explosion of creativity will be incredible to see.
All and all, the game isn't without it's faults, but it is a ton of fun to play, usually relaxing and cathartic to just go through one player made stage after another, and hopefully it will have a community large and creative enough to keep it going for years to come. I highly recommend everyone with a PS3 get this game. I'm not sure I'd buy a console for this game alone, but it's a must have for everyone that's already put the money down on a PS3.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
