Firtsly, we created our own Sackboy, which acts as your in-game avatar. Like the rest of the game you have the creative freedom to go as minimalist or over the top as you like. Another journalist sitting nearby during our hands-on recreated Final Fantasy villain Sephiroth complete with minature wooden sword. We went for a more subdued Solid Snake ensemble in a camo suit and cardboard box headgear for our on-screen character.

LBP is an incredibly social game, so it makes sense that the team at developer Media Molecule is including trophy support to allow gamers to show off to their friends online. No doubt the extra month the team picked up delaying from September to an October launch timeframe is helping tweak this aspect, too. While it's unlikely you'll need the incentive to customising your Sackperson, switching out a few items of clothing was enough to unlock a trophy in our play. Rewards play a pivotal role in LBP and throughout the game you'll come across bubbles containing unlockable items. Collecting these will grant you new costumes, pre-made items which you can place in your own levels, and objects which can be used in the creation of custom levels, such as backgrounds, music, and templates. You'll even have the option to create custom items and share them with your friends and strangers by offering them as prizes for completing your homemade levels, achieving a certain score, or finishing your within a certain amount of time.

The early part of the single-player game is ostensibly a glorified tutorial, giving you a indication of what you'll be doing in the remainder of the game. Here you'll get a chance to familiarise yourself with the three planes of depth--essentially the foreground, middle, and background of any given level--you'll need to traverse between using the analog stick. Sackboy is also clever, so jumping between two planes will see you land safely where you intended. The standout feature of this first level was a sticker puzzle requiring you to open your Pop-It item menu, locate the three matching stickers, before using them to cover a wooden canvas. Even with sloppy pasting provided you hit part of the target you'll pass this obstacle, unlocking a bridge to allow you to continue. The sticker beast--who looks like Henry the Eighth wearing sneakers--follows you until he reaches a trigger point. Once here a collectible item bubble is triggered and released and once picked up unlocks a new costume element for you to try on. Level two was much the same, but mixed things up a tad by including ramps, destructible bridges where you would fall to your death, a spinning wheel, and a rideable skateboard. There was also a miniature wooden horse vehicle used as a makeshift ladder to reach a wayward bonus bubble.

LittleBig's Pop-It menu system--brought up by pressing the square button on the controller--is how you'll get to all the action, be it "hearting" items to indicate what you and other players like, customising the way your Sackboy looks, or getting to the many menus for creating and editing items. Once inside the menu you'll navigate using the left thumbstick with the L1 and R1 buttons used to skip between the pages of item categories.

LittleBigPlanet imposes very few restrictions on you as the creator, though it's worth mentioning that even with a relatively small palette of objects and materials at your disposal it can be a daunting experience. Having so much creative control and being able to complete goals using many different approaches is a bit like being given the keys to the city and then told you can do anything. Where do you even start? Our first hour was spent considering what we wanted to make and then attempting to prototype a couple of ideas.

Because LBP is so heavily physics driven you'll need to think a few steps ahead and at times work in reverse to build platforms for other items to sit on. Luckily there are two functions you'll want to immediately familiarise yourself with. Up on the D-pad disables your stage's physics to allow item placement and where necessary secure objects to the ground by holding the X button. Down on the D-pad engages the hover mode which you'll use to zoom around your level untethered. One or both can be disabled when you're ready, and you can try out your physics playground in real time to make sure everything is working as intended. On the left hand side of the screen is a large red thermometer to indicate the maximum number of objects which can be placed per level. It's not nearly as restrictive as it sounds, and inserting items included on disc only has a small associated memory footprint as they simply get saved as vector coordinates for the game to reassemble on another user's console. Custom items such as images captured using the PlayStation Eye camera and then placed in your level will attract a higher space charge, although the sheer size of the levels we saw being made in both height, width, and complexity shouldn't leave too many of you wanting for more space. We began our demo with only a modest material list spanning cardboard, wood, rubber, metal, sponge, stone, glass, and dark matter, but between these and the freedom to pick and alter shapes, you'll be able to start building your jumping puzzle, trebuchet, or skateboard ramp in no time.

The modular nature of LBP extends beyond the items you can drop into levels, and includes the levels themselves. Variables such as the lighting or fog in a level can be tweaked independently, turning an outdoor day environment into a spookier night-time setting ripe for ghosts and ghouls. Likewise, many items have their own tweak sub-menus, accessed by holding the square button when selected using Pop-It and allowing you to adjust relationships, radius trigger distances, sounds, and more using sliders.