The LittleBigPlanet area of the Sony booth will have four areas where you can play LittleBigPlanet 2, and a merchandise stall with lots of Sackboy related gubbins to get your mits all over.
We’ll also have some of our community all-stars at the event who will be jamming and creating things live, so you can see what kind of things can be made with the new tools, and get some handy hints and tips from them on building your own levels.

Additionally we’ll be presenting various aspects of the game at the LittleBigPlanet ‘Genius Bar’, and we should have some special play challenges and other crazy things going on, so pop on by and say hey! See you at PAX!

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This week on the LittleBigStore, the final Marvel Costume Pack – featuring Magneto, Green Goblin, Hulk, Punisher and Storm! The other packs are still available, bringing the full roster of costumes to the following huge selection…

Marvel Costume Pack 1

• Daredevil
• Iron Man
• Thing
• Doctor Octopus
• Mystique

Marvel Costume Pack 2

• Spider-Man
• Thor
• Human Torch
• Elektra
• Ghost Rider

Marvel Costume Pack 3

• Wolverine
• Captain America
• Rogue
• Invisible Woman
• Venom

Marvel Costume Pack 4

• Magneto
• Green Goblin
• Hulk
• Punisher
• Storm

Don’t forget that the Marvel Level Kit is also available, featuring 4 new Marvel themed levels for you to play! The Final Marvel Costume Kit will hit the store this week, depending on your region’s regular store update day.

An exclusive Marvel wallpaper featuring all of the heroes from the packs is here for you to download right now! Enjoy!

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Unless you’ve been hiding yourself under a rock for quite some time (which must get uncomfortable), you’ll already know about the importance of CREATIVITY in LittleBigPlanet. You’re given access to the same tools as Media Molecule, so that you can create your own amazing levels and contraptions to share with the rest of the world. LittleBigPlanet 2 takes the possibilities of the first game, and supercharges them, giving you the opportunity to create whole new type of gameplay experiences: top-down racers, side-scrolling shooters, sheep-launching-bazooka-anti-grav-deathmatch-arenas… and that’s just the obvious ones.

But LittleBigPlanet 2 isn’t just about creating – first and foremost, it’s about fun in all its forms. So aside from all of those creative tools, there’s a whole meaty Story Mode to explore. It’s an epic adventure through time and space, featuring awesome gameplay types, cool new power-ups, and a quirky cast of new characters. And on top of all of that, up to four players can get involved for maximum multiplayer merriment (thanks, Mr Thesaurus).

So, take a peek at all of this by checking out the new ‘Adventure’ Trailer…

There’s going to be lots more LittleBigPlanet news to come over the next few weeks (especially once GamesCom gets started). But I’ll be down there in the comments for a while, ready to answer as many of your questions as I can. In particular, some of you may have seen some of the news that Mark over in the US announced during ComiCon about Collector’s Editions, pre-order items, release dates, etc. We’re not quite ready to confirm all of these details for PAL folks yet, but I want to reassure you that there’s some cool stuff on the horizon, and that you can expect to see LittleBigPlanet 2 in stores right around the same time.

Enjoy the trailer, and look out for more Sackboy-related news soon…

- Alex, EU Blog team.

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This week on the LittleBigStore – the 3rd Marvel Costume Kit, featuring Captain America, Venom, The Invisible Woman, Rogue and Wolverine – look out for his Adamantium Claws!

This is the 3rd of four costume packs due to hit LittleBigPlanet, and we also released a level kit with four levels to play in and a whole ton of stickers and things to collect!

Stay tuned for news on the fourth pack, and in the mean time, check out all the Marvel content released to date!

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The second Marvel costume pack is here, bringing Thor, Spider-Man, Elektra, Ghost Rider and Human Torch costumes to LittleBigPlanet.

These super-duper costumes will be hitting the various stores this week, so keep your eyes peeled!

This is the second of four Marvel costume packs, so if your favourite character isn’t here yet, hold on to your hats and see what’s coming around the corner!

Also, If you didn’t already see Marvel Costume Kit 1, and the Level Kit to match, which happens to contain four new playable levels, maybe you should check those out too!

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It’s good to be healthy. And what better way to reach your five-a-day than with apple, strawberry, banana and pineapple costumes? Download the Fruit Salad Costume and Level Packs for some fresh and fruity goodness!

Look out for these packs on the PlayStation®Store this week!

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LittleBigPlanet is under attack from the villainous hordes of the Marvel® Universe, and Sackboy must summon all his skill, courage and cunning if he is going to stop their evil scheme and save every Player Moon from certain destruction!

Fortunately our Sack Hero is not alone and will receive help along the way from legendary Super Heroes as he races against time to put a stop to the villains’ dastardly scheme.

Sackboy must battle his way across rooftops and the city streets to reach the villains’ secret laboratory, where he must stop them from launching their deadly weapon, or LittleBigPlanet will be changed forever!

Do you have what it takes to guide Sackboy through four levels of peril? Are you a worthy match for the Super Villains of Marvel? Will you battle side by side with the most famous Super Heroes of all time?

The Marvel Level Kit is out next week, along with the first of four costume packs, and it’s up to you to save LittleBigPlanet before it’s too late.

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It’s the July 4th weekend! A North American Holiday, filled with lots, and lots of fireworks, accompanied by the enticing smell of grilled hamburgers, hotdogs, and whatever else you can find to sling on the BBQ.

Independence Day may not be celebrated world wide, but wherever you are you can make this weekend a little bit more special by heading to the LittleBigStore and grabbing this FREE Sacktue of Liberty Costume for your Sackboy. Have a good weekend everyone!

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Here’s something special for all you creators who like making magical, mystical, fantastical levels: a background that’s not quite of this world, with majestic white mountains and a huge serene lake. Put it to good use, it’s gorgeous.

Look out for this background on the PlayStation®Store. It’s free, gratis, without charge, complimentary, a big fat gift from us to you.

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Coming soon to the PlayStation Store will be a whole series of official Marvel comic Super Hero and Super Villain costumes for your Sackboys and Sackgirls. Starting July 7th and every other week following, we’ll introduce four different Marvel Costume Packs, each with five different costumes depicting Marvel’s mightiest Super Heroes and most dreaded Super Villains. Starting Monday, Marvel.com will unveil the glorious details for each costume. But for now, here’s the full list to let your imagination run wild…

• Captain America
• Daredevil
• Doctor Octopus
• Elektra
• Ghost Rider
• Green Goblin
• Hulk
• Invisible Woman
• Iron Man
• The Human Torch
• Magneto
• Mystique
• the Punisher
• Roque
• Spider-Man
• Storm
• The Thing
• Thor
• Venom
• Wolverine

Plus, we’re also unveiling a spectacular Marvel Level Kit, which includes a four levels of adventure against the evil plans of Magneto. And of course, while you play through the levels, you’ll collect a huge assortment of Marvel-themed music, objects, materials, stickers, and a special “Rooftop” background to help you CREATE your own dastardly levels. Stay tuned to more details on the Marvel Level Kit next week. Until then…

Make mine Marvel.

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LittleBigPlanet Central’s excellent in depth articles about some of the interesting and creative characters that populate the world of the LittleBigPlanet continues, and we missed a few to boot! We’ve got three excellent features for you to read through, watch the videos, and get some inspiration for your own levels, or just sit back, happy that these people are filling our lives with so much fun!

Teebonesey

If you could list your favorite thing about LittleBigPlanet, what would it be?
My favorite thing is twofold – First is the ability to prize your brain open like a dusty old crate and let loose the wild beasties within in an unheard-of capacity. The second is the ability to actually experience in a strange way the untamed insides of so many other peoples’ brains.
Part of that experience is how the “LBP level” is its own medium and we’ve been able to explore it, to innovate with it, to invent with it. It’s a microcosm of every major new art form. We are the first filmmakers, the first recorders of music, the first photographers, all in the shoebox diorama version of the universe that is LittleBigPlanet.

Read the full article.

Jump_Button

What creators and levels (if any) have inspired you to create?
There are a lot of good creators and levels that inspired me to do better and to keep going, a lot I wish I had the idea or the know how. But I don’t like looking into LBP for inspiration, I feel that they are [other creators’] levels and wouldn’t want to take from them. Being inwards-looking is very limiting and do we really need more of the same? That’s why we see fads like the sharks.

Read the full article.

Poms

What was the first full level you ever built? And what was it like?
I had already finished story mode and had picked up nearly all the prize bubbles. I thought there was not much else to do with it. Everything changed during a conversation I had in New Year’s night back in 2008.
A local friend talked to me about the “endless” possibilities of the level editor and he really encouraged me to try to build a level. Back home I started to play in create mode, and picked up the Metropolis motorcycle and built a circuit. I spent a week trying to make it work properly and published it under the name of “Hell’s Angels”. There were no loopings, no lighting effects, no Devils, etc. It was a really noobish level (it probably still is), but I had a really great time making it and learning to use the tools was great fun too.

Read the full article.

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A firm favourite of last year, the Solstice Druid Costume will be hitting the LittleBigStore again this week, bringing with him one of the longest and most awesome beards known to Sack-kind.

The Solstice is when the tilt of the earth’s axis will mean the northern hemisphere is the closest to the sun that it will get all year, making it hotter, making it summer time!

In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, a strange race of people called the Druids celebrated the when the sun was at its strongest – at midday on the Solstice – by performing mystical rites and combing their beards.

We too shall celebrate the Solstice, by once again releasing this free costume, and once again re-using an old joke about just how long their beards are…

Download the costume for free on the store this week!

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Aliens have landed! Well, alien costumes anyway. Sackboy’s dressed up in a lot of very cool costumes before, but now he can transform himself into (deep breath) ‘a creaturrre from another worrrld’. Download the Unidentified Sacking Objects Costume and Level Packs for some alien encounters.

Look out for these packs on the PlayStation®Store.

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Last weekend we invited a selection of Creators from around the world to come down the new Mm studio in Guildford, have a go on LittleBigPlanet 2, and put the new creation tools to the test!

The 15 strong selection of hardened Popit-eers spent 24 sleepless hours building all manner of crazy things; from top down shooters to competitive wrestling games.

LittleBigPlanet Central has a full lowdown of the event, written by the very people who attended, well worth a read if you want to hear first hand about how all the new tools come together, and how they can be used to build your own games….

The first hour or so was chaos. Straight up. We literally didn’t know where to begin. The vast selection of new tools, features, and options left us all flying off in different directions. Some of us messed with the circuit boards, some of us made little contraptions, while others explored the new materials, objects, stickers, and decorations to be used in LBP2. Others played with sackbots and switches and gravity controls. Meanwhile, the MM staff buzzed around behind us, offering tips and hints and explaining the workings of some of the more mysterious tools. It was wonderful to be surrounded by people who shared the same passion for exploration, tinkering, and creation.

We’ve also put together this short video of the event to share with you all… check it out

In a few weeks time we’ll have an even longer edit of the video, showing more of these wonderful creative folks, and of the games they made, so make sure to look out for that. The Community Game Jam was hopefully only the first of these type of events to come, we’ll have to see!

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We like Motorstorm, and we like the crashes in Motorstorm in particular. The way the poor bike riders fly through the air like rag dolls is brilliant. So who better to be a motoring rag doll than Sackboy himself? Download the Motorstorm Hessian Stitch Costume and Level Pack and make Sackboy your very own crash test dummy, heading to the store next week!

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Time to get out your trilbies, the Heavy Rain Costume pack hits the LittleBigStore next week! Five costumes and a set of stickers based on characters from the PS3 Thriller, including Madison, Jayden, Shelby, Ethan, and the Origami Parajita with a great big red jam stain all over it, sticky!

The Heavy Rain Costume Pack will be available next Tuesday for North America, Wednesday for the UK, and Thursday for the rest of Europe.

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To celebrate the launch of the Play, Create, Share inspired cart racing extravaganza ModNation Racers, Sackboy’s tailoring department have been hard at work making sure that you can look the part.

Take Sackboy to the racetrack in style with the ModNation Racers costume and stickers from the LittleBigStore, out now in North America, Asia and Japan arriving in Europe next week!

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Step right up and see the amazing elephant Sackboy! Marvel at the incredible Sackboy strongman! Laugh at the silly Sackboy clown! Download the Sack Circus Extravaganza Costume and Level Packs and enjoy the stars of the circus. Look out for these packs on the PlayStation®Store this week!

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Daga daga daga! If we’re perfectly honest, the jump jet caused us rather more problems than we would have liked. It’s such a cool vehicle though we struggled through, since we couldn’t bear to let it fall by the wayside. The plane itself again follows the military style from the last two levels, so you can now expand your domination of land and sea by taking control of the Little Big skies too!

As with all the other vehicles we designed what the jump jet looked like before we designed the level, because its capabilities really defined what sort of gameplay we could use. This one took a little more thought than most of the others however. The first major decision we made was to build the jet from a front-on perspective, whereas all the other vehicles (barring the pogostick) are portrayed from the side. This was because it had to be very balanced in order to have as much control over flight as possible – the solution to this was to make it symmetrical, and enclose Sackboy in a small space so that his weight wouldn’t upset the balance as he moved from side to side.

Originally it only took up two thin planes and one thick plane, but fairly early on we decided to make it use two thick planes and two thin planes, so that it had space for a cockpit that could be reached by running up the wings.

Recreating the jet out of 3D meshes was simple because the design was so dependent on its shape to start with that all we needed to do was give it a splash of colour. Actually this was probably the easiest part of the whole level! Did you know you can manually alter how big the bevel on a material is? Using the Corner Editor tool, move one point (one near a corner usually works best) really close to another and you should see the bevel get smaller. If it doesn’t work at first, try picking another point to move. Since our stickers only cover the front of an object, this is really useful for using stickers to disguise materials that have a noticeable bevel, such as dissolve, pink and peach floaty.

From an artistic point of view, the main problem that we’ve had while building this level is that the jump jet’s flight is blocked by objects in any plane except the front thin (unless they’re made of gas). In addition, we’ve had to be careful that there aren’t any weird nooks and crannies that the jet could get snagged on. To maintain the freedom of flying we’ve had to leave as much open space as possible without allowing you to wander off and get completely lost (eek!), whilst at the same time providing enough interestingly shaped landscape to let you know exactly where you are in the level. This means being really cunning with our materials in order to signpost the different areas of the level as much as possible, and the stickers have to be really punchy and stand out. As Andy said, headaches all round.

Since this is the last level in the ‘Turbo! Pack’ we won’t give too much more away. Those tricksy toy soldiers are up to something though, so expect big explosions and tons of destruction. Oh, and a nice happy ending. :)

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The final level. No pressure, then! To be honest this level was a bit of a headache. And not just a normal headache, but a big, fat headache, one of those ones that the ibuprofen doesn’t even take the edge off.

The main reason for this was that, like Jon’s submarine, the jump jet is effectively ‘floating’, and so can be really difficult to control. Now, Jon’s luckier than me because the sub’s supposed to be underwater, so moving really slowly is a good thing. Not for a jump jet though, eh? Oh no, something like that’s got to be moving pretty quickly. And we want it to have controls for four directions, not three (the sub is naturally buoyant). Four controls for one cockpit. Grrreat.

And another thing: the trouble with something as big as the jump jet being made to move at any speed greater than ‘quite slow’ is that you can’t see where you’re going. With the tank, for example, you can point the camera in front of it, and as long as Sackboy’s on-screen, everything’s fine. But the tank only needs to move forwards in its levels; the jet has to be able to go forwards, backwards, up, down, in fact it’s more than four directions because you can go diagonally as well.

The point is, I cracked it. The jet has a variable counter thrust when the player lets go of a control, making it stop quickly, so that you don’t fly into any of the hazards. The cockpit walls, floor and ceiling are all controls, meaning you just have to grab in the direction you want to move. The jet also gets locked into place whenever a magic mouth triggers making sure the player doesn’t fly off in a random direction while they read the text. The cameras are set up in the level (and not on the jet) so I know they’re always pointing in the right direction.

Okay, that’s my last development diary for the ‘Turbo! Pack’. We hope the insight into what we did was helpful to you. We’re looking forward to what you, the community, start doing with all these magnificent machines.

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