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| What on earth IS that thing?! |
The team that unleashed Sackboy and LittleBigPlanet onto the world have given creative folk even more tools and toys to play with in Dreams, and unfortunately for me this damned thing has become as addictive as catnip to a ginger tom.
So after a few more hours in Dreams, things began to finally click.
Dreams is separated into several areas - such as:
1) Game creation - yep there are a ton of pre-existing Game templates that you can 'remix' or you can just start from scratch, with all the tools you'll need to make awesome little games (or something more crazily ambitious if you have the disposable time - which you'll need a lot of!)
2) Art creation - You can make mini scenes and dioramas from your favourite movies. You can create works of art that you can 'get inside' and walk around in. Or you can just spend a messy and merry afternoon mucking about.
3) Sculpting - this is the bit I'm now completely hooked on (see the above result of my first attempt to wrestle Dreams' sculpting tools to the ground, a 3D golem fellah made of shiny plastic!)
4) Tutorials. I've done all of these - twice or three times through in some cases - as they really do teach you how to use most of the tools and tweaks.
So what is Dreams? I haven't even really said yet, and that's because it's a very difficult thing to define. It's not a game so you can't review it like one. It's more like having a whole bunch of creative suites to indulge your imagination in.
Though MediaMolecule claims you can make practically anything in Dreams, it swiftly becomes apparent that you need to get extremely good at using the basic tools (particularly the painting and sculpting tools, which can really mess with your 3 dimensional sense of space if you're doing so with just a Dual Shock pad) before you start trying to create your very own detailed model of Yoda from scratch.
I've previously used quite a few different packages that attempt you allow you to model in 3D (ZBrush is prohibitively and hideously expensive, and you don't really get enough time in the Demo to get to grip with the tools. Blender is better, but again very firmly and rigidly wrapped around a practically unusuable UI). Dreams' modelling feels a lot more intuitive, but I'm finding it as tough as nails to be precise in. Ever tried drawing anything with a mouse or joypad? Doesn't work very well does it!
Despite the toughess of getting used to Dreams, the problem is I now find myself thinking about this damned thing more than I really should, and it's put a hole through my other creative efforts (particularly drawing / painting elsewhere).
Dreams is currently in early release, with the full version releasing very soon. Get in on the ground floor via the PSN store for £24.99 and it may be the best money you'll spend this summer if you're into anything creative at all.