From my perspective, no console launch is truly complete without an excellent platform game and thankfully, Sony and developer Sumo Digital deliver exactly that for PlayStation 5 with Sackboy: A Big Adventure. It’s a beautiful game, and a fascinating example of how one developer aims to straddle the generational divide – while Sackboy champions the power of PlayStation 5, there’s also support for PS4 and PS4 Pro too. The question is, has Sumo Digital delivered the kind of magic we expect from a platform exclusive next-gen launch title still deliver a good experience for owners of existing PlayStation hardware?
First of all, it’s worth stressing that Sackboy: A Big Adventure may well be tapping into the characters and aesthetic of the Little Big Planet titles, but game concept itself is something quite different: think of it as 3D platforming experience more along the lines of Super Mario 3D World – fun, quirky, exciting and attractive. The key point of differentiation compared to the LBP titles is that there’s no creation mode. What you get instead is superb platforming, plain and simple, delivered with visuals that really put the underlying Unreal Engine 4 through its paces.
And that starts with the real-time 60 frames per second cutscenes, which look simply spectacular. As the camera zooms into the world of the Sack people, the sheer amount of detail on display is breathtaking but it’s the carefully crafted lighting and materials work that steals the show. The mix of volumetrics, glowing dynamic lights and ambient shading create something that looks and feels realistic fantastical. It’s stunning. This is doubly true of the materials authored for the game. The physically-based sack material itself combines with small transparent alpha bits designed to simulate rogue fibres across the surface. Little Big Planet has always centered on real world materials, but Unreal Engine and impressive art design really allows it to shine. An exceptional bokeh depth of field also works in tandem with the dynamic camera work to create something stunning. Basically, the team is using many of Unreal Engine 4’s features in tandem with strong art direction to create something that looks almost like a pre-rendered film at times.
So what about the game itself? Well, as always for the series, Sackboy combines real world objects and materials for its worlds. You’ll run across wooden planks with realistic grain patterns, you’ll swing around on spindles made of spongy material, run through fields of yarn threads, climb on pieces of leather and more. It’s all mashed together to create this impressive, detailed world. Like Super Mario 3D World, the camera is fixed and follows up to four players around the environment and it just looks and feels great all around.
The game also makes great use of techniques like screen-space reflections. Yes, SSR is old news at this point but I was surprised at the application in this game. SSR is applied to many glossy and shiny materials but because it is limited more often to such objects rather than large surfaces, it’s really effective and the limitations are rarely evident.