Apparently Sumo Digital didn't quite pick up the reins and carry on in the footsteps of Media Molecule quite in the way that many gamers may have been expecting. LittleBigPlanet 3 appears to be riddled with some rather uncomely launch day issues that have rubbed many long-time fans the wrong way.
Game Informer collected some of the information from users who have taken to the forums and Reddit to express their distaste and dissatisfaction with the current state of the game.
One user on the forums wrote out a very sad state of affairs, going by the handle Tron-X, stating...
“Wow - as much as love this game, I'm finding I have to force quit and reload a number of times each evening. Tonight I went to try out one of the new team picks - (that new Traffic game is amazing) and upon exiting back to the pod, it remained stuck on the white loading screen...eternally; had to reset and exit game.” [...]“Last night, I had a corrupt data error and thought I lost the game, but I shut down my PS4, and went to the community levels, then back to the main game and I was able to continue (whew). The day before, every time I tried to enter the Tower of Swoop level (inside Ziggurat), the game would report a "fail to load" and kick me back to the pod - MINUS the pod itself. “
The post finishes with Tron-X stating that the patch from Sumo Digital and Sony can't arrive soon enough.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of levelheaded people in the thread expressing both their love and disappointment for the game, as they mention how fun the title is but the bugs and glitches are preventing people from truly enjoying the experience.
The top comment on the Reddit thread from kartoffel_65 offers a similar experience, stating...
“From the BF and I's playthrough (he is currently replaying the last level we did together last night because the game did not save properly), we've crashed no less than seven or eight times. We've had glitches work for and against us.“
Over on the main forum page for LittleBigPlanet 3, the community manager for the series, Steven Isbell, offered a series of workarounds for specific problems that have been plaguing the community in various levels and scenarios.
There's a lot of hoops and ropes to get around for certain problems and issues, and it's going to be hard to restore the faith in some members of the community given the rocky launch. It's a sad trend that's been happening lately in the AAA business, where big name games – sequels, even – have been launching in less-than-playable states for some gamers. This has been reoccurring issue with games like Assassin's Creed Unity, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and now LittleBigPlanet 3. There was also the issue of a lack of dedicated servers causing problems for multiplayer games in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. This launch-first-fix-later mentality will eventually come back to bite the industry hard on the rear-end.
