Archive: 1 post

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Mr_Spoonylegs is a level creator that left me with this unusually simple level. There's nothing especially complicated about it, it's just a good old fashioned challenge level. I really enjoyed it. First of all, I need to point this out beforehand in case anyone decides to play this level, but if you look up either the author or the level title, you will find one entitled "Solidplace" and another entitled "Solidplace - SE" (which I gather stands for Special Edition). The level I'm reviewing here is the SE version. That's not to say I only played the SE version, because I actually played them both and determined that they are exactly the same level. The only difference is that the SE version was significantly more refined and more visually appealing. With that said, let's review Solidplace. Solidplace is by all definitions a straight up puzzle platformer, in other words one of my favorite types of LBP levels. There are no fancy gimmicks, no lurking predators, just you and a puzzle to solve room after room. Notably, in levels like these, the puzzles usually aren't intensely difficult to figure out (as is the case here), yet for some odd reason you are left with a bewildering sense of accomplishment every time you solve one, like being asked to draw a circle on a piece of construction paper and feeling "giddy" when you're finished. Usually for a level like this to operate well, it needs to give itself the proper amount of breathing space. In the case of Solidplace, the puzzles are solved usually within the confines of large rooms and skill platforming is confined within long/tall narrow passages, so you are always given more than enough room to solve the available puzzles and the skill platforming becomes somewhat more skill-based as a result of the slim passages. Simply put, the space management and proper dedication to that space makes Solidplace, pardon the pun, "solid". Try as I might, I won't be able to nit-pick this level that hard since the level type happens to rub all over me in all the right ways (Oh la la), but unfortunately there are a few things to nip in the bud. First off is the appearance. While the aesthetic of the stage is many times better than the non-SE predecessor, the overall variety is still somewhat on the lacking side. The entire stage is made, head to toe, out of generic wood. Sure, there's some patterned sponge placements here and there, and all of the objects are either of the sponge or glass variety, the use of small colored lights give the stage an occasionally fresh feel, and to be even more generous I'll be willing to say that the overly-wood appearance actually creates a somewhat plausible and appropriate theme for the level to follow; nevertheless, the whole stage has been made almost exclusively out of one of the most basic materials in the game, with very staggeringly little variety. It can be somewhat nerve-wracking to have to stare at the same scenery for the entirety of a level, but at the very minimum I can't overly fault what still looks like a very thematic level. If I were to find other factors to harass, the next would be the magical scale of unforgivability. See, when you make long jumping gaps with absurdly small margins of error, you need to create an appropriate scale of "forgiveness". Now, trying to describe forgivability for platforming is like trying to decribe Alice's Jabberwock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky). I'm afraid there's no great way to decribe it outside of example, experimentation, and trial and error. Lucky for whomever's reading this (IE no one), I can pull some examples that work within this level. There are a lot of these really long jumps that kind of require you to get a nice running jump and do your best to delay the jump until just before you would fall off the edge. Basically, you have an incredibly small margin of error available to you within these jumps, so your timing needs to be fairly decent. However, I often found myself getting killed right as I landed within a point of surviving by a hair's breath. Now, if the jump was perfect you should be fine, but if the jump was slightly off you might still land on the corner of the platform (coming in at an odd angle, and will have a split-second change to jump off the corner and re-establish your equilibrium to live. However, in the case of those jumps in Solidplace, I would land on that corner ready to save myself but due to the top of the platform being incredibly thin and the remainder of the platform being electric, my sackboy's body would sometimes touch the electricity before it would give me that chance of redemption, thus guaranteeing me the inability to make the jump outside of pure perfection. An easily fixed problem (replace some of the lightning board with wood), but as it stands now it's like punching your child in the stomach for bringing home a B+ on their test. Outside of that, I can't say a whole lot more on Solidplace, the rest is there for the player to experience. It's well paced, simply made, and full of old fashioned platforming gold. Far more challenging than most levels these days, and certainly fun and playable for just about everybody. Final Score: 8.0 / 10 A little too harsh with some of the platforming segments, relatively dull aesthetic, but the rest is excellent. On a side note, I just completely revamped my "Trial of Skill" on the network. Go try it out, it's completely redone.

2010-03-22 11:13:00 Author: Shining Aquas Posts: 353

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

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