CES 2008: LittleBigPlanet’s emoticons, Fluff, side-scrolling nature

SCEA‘s Kyle Shubel dropped a couple of interesting tidbits about LittleBigPlanet on the CES 2008 show floor. The game’s gotten quite an addition of interesting features like emoticons, a change in the name of the in-game currency, and some clarifications on its side-scrolling nature. And just like that, LittleBigPlanet just grew a little bit bigger!

How well do you know your Sackboy? More details at the full article.

Sony sure is putting up quite a show on the CES 2008 floor. SCEA‘s Kyle Shubel just revealed some new details on the Media Molecule-developed LittleBigPlanet. From his speech during the event (recounted by GameDaily), we’ve managed to unearth some juicy tidbits.

First up: emoticons. You can express yourself via your Sackboy avatars in-game. Face it (pun not intended), you’d need to express yourself eventually – a big part of the game involves communication and cooperation after all.

Emoticons in LittleBigPlanet can be executed using the D-pad. Hit “Up” and your Sackboy smiles. Hit the same button again, and the expression gets more prominent – from smiling, to grinning, and so on. For the “Down” button, you get the reverse: a frown. More than this, displaying these real-time emoticons will affect gestures – a peace sign here when ecstatic, clenched fists there when angry.

Next, we’ve got Fluff. This is what the in-game currency/resource will now be called. Before, it was simply called Sponge. But as Shubel points out, the problem with calling it Sponge is that the money would only look like, well, a sponge. With Fluff, however, they can extend what the in-game currency looks like.

Now contrary to popular belief, despite showing so many gameplay videos depicting its left-to-right stage layout, LittleBigPlanet actually allows your Sackboy to move from foreground to background. Suddenly, the world seems to be that much more of a bigger place, eh? Don’t confuse this by assuming that the game is instantly classified a free-roaming 3D game.

It’s actually just barely noticeable in some gameplay videos; but if you look closely, the movement between foreground and background is limited to an extent.