Written by Ezoiar and ZephhyLeo
Wow, this week has been something, can’t you believe it? Who knew we’d have some LittleBigPlanet news, especially something this huge? Today we are going to review all of it, so maybe you can school your collection of Sackboy plushes about what’s going on?
What is LittleBigPlanet Hub?
Over 10 years ago. LittleBigPlanet Hub was announced for the first time. However, a year later LittleBigPlanet 3 was announced and launched. Agreed to be silently cancelled in favor of LBP3, LittleBigPlanet Hub began to enter obscurity.
LittleBigPlanet Hub would have been a free-to-play game which would allow users to play online levels and a few levels from story mode. However, every story theme from LBP1 and LBP2 would be available separately via microtransactions. For example, if you wanted to play the Wilderness theme and use objects and materials from that theme, you’d need to purchase that particular theme. This title was likely supposed to get constant updates, similar to games like Fortnite and Fallguys.
How Was LittleBigPlanet Hub Recovered?
On February 23rd, a Russian YouTuber with the username LittleBigRussia revealed that they were one of the select few to beta test LittleBigPlanet Hub and LittleBigPlanet 3. LittleBigRussia happened to have both old footage from 2013 which was then uploaded on YouTube and the copy itself still available to download.
Note
We have chosen not to directly link to the Archive.org listing for LBP Hub’s dumped beta. Keep in mind, unreleased builds of LittleBigPlanet, even if they were intended to be free, are technically illegal to distribute. Only Sony has the legal right to distribute those builds. Sony could hypothetically send a DMCA takedown request to Archive.org to remove it if they wanted to. Download the LBP Hub Beta at your own risk.
The community members in the comments of the video strongly recommended dumping the game for preservation, which LittleBigRussia agreed to. With the assistance of a few community members, it was made available on the Internet Archive by Imagisphere. Shortly after it was announced, it got so much attention it crashed the Archive.org page for many users!
LBP Union Needs Your Help!
Ready to make a positive difference in your community? Check out our open roles to see where you can pitch in!
What’s in the Game?
LittleBigPlanet Hub’s beta has some interesting new content, including a new introduction level and other unique features.
Introduction to Hub
With the release of LittleBigPlanet Hub, we would have been greeted by a new level once you booted up the game. It’s a very sunny level that develops into a beach.
You may know the level theming if you are familiar with cut LBP content and or played the Seaside Suprise Level Kit in LittleBigPlanet 3. That’s because this is the cut LBP theme English Seaside being repurposed for the introduction level in LittleBigPlanet Hub.
Eventually, as you walk through the level you’ll find yourself in a face-off against a ghost, it’s time for a race to the end!
Challenges
Another new addition are Challenges. When you play through Introduction To Hub again you may notice your ghost friend is gone. This time a tutorial prompt on how to make a challenge appears.
The game tells you to run from one checkpoint to another to create a challenge. After stopping at any checkpoint further through the level you can stop the challenge, afterwards a menu will appear.
This new menu allows you to customize the challenge in whichever way you want. Wanna make a challenge for the Fastest Time or the Highest Score? What about the least amount of Lives Lost? You can also retry a challenge to try and make it harder. All of this can be done with a UI menu.
It’s also possible to play existing story challenges. These challenges were intended to be weekly so you can keep trying to get the high score when new ones come around.
The game will pick levels from the story mode and offer exciting challenges to do. You can partake in challenges even if you don’t own the DLC. You can challenge and compete with your friends too.
It looks like you can also play user-made challenges, but that probably isn’t going to work without reverse engineering the features on the server-side.
Downloadinator
Another interesting addition is the Downloadinator. Since this game is a collection of LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2, this looks to be intended to allow you to download all the content from the former games as well as new content. However, the feature doesn’t work in the beta version of Hub because it requires a server that doesn’t exist.
What Works and What Doesn’t?
This build lives up to its ‘beta’ name. Not everything works correctly. Most of the game is limited in what it can do. Here are some of the highlights of what we could find.
Story Mode
We aren’t quite sure if all of the stories are functional in this beta build. This title has some strange oddities. What we do know is that Davinci’s Hideout is available in the base game. If you wanna play the rest of LittleBigPlanet 2 or even LittleBigPlanet 1, you’ll have to get the Downloadinator working, which just isn’t possible at the moment.
If you were to somehow progress to Victoria’s Lab, a UI box appears prompting you to purchase the theme. It also offers you the option to play a demo, but the option doesn’t work.
Microtransactions
It is unknown if the beta had a working microtransaction system, and there isn’t a known working demonstration. However, what we do know is that LittleBigPlanet Hub was able to access all main stories and DLC stories. This title would have been a pretty neat collection of all the DLC.
Unfortunately, because this copy of the game is an EU copy it’s safe to assume you’ll need the EU versions of LittleBigPlanet’s DLC. That means if you are in the US, the DLC you own may not work.
Tutorials
Tutorials function in an almost similar way to LittleBigPlanet 2. However, there’s one slight issue. You won’t be able to access the huge selection because the Downloadinator can’t download them. You can play Tutorials from Acting, to, Placing and Editing Objects. Some of the tutorials are missing videos and tend to freeze the game for a few seconds.
Create Mode
Materials, stickers and decorations are very limited in the base game. However, thanks to the Downloadinator not being fully accessible, several materials are unavailable.
That’s not even the worst of it. Material shapes aren’t available either, except for squares. You can use the sticker cutter tool, but shapes like triangles and circles aren’t available. The tools bag is unfortunately quite small. Other than the severe limitations, everything else seems to be functioning as normal. This means your wildest creative dreams will be heavily limited in this title. Poor old Sackboy.
With the few materials that work, you can make some simple stuff in create mode.
UI
Most of the UI is functional from an offline perspective, although there are a few elements that may decide to clip off here or there. Some may even try to escape out of the confines of the whole screen.
Profile Importing
As you may have noticed this version of LittleBigPlanet Hub looks very similar to LittleBigPlanet 2, is there a chance we could import our profiles to it? A user by the name of Cheggmaster wanted to find out.
Cheggmaster explained how LittleBigPlanet 1 profiles import work with this title. They unfortunately weren’t able to get LBP2 profiles to work. They believe that LittleBigPlanet Hub is a fork of LBP 2 version 1.25, so you could potentially import a profile from that version.
if you import your profile successfully, you won’t have the objects that the game doesn’t come preinstalled with or access to the DLC. As a result, many of your items will be missing.
Unfinished DLC
Interestingly, LBP Hub’s private beta seems to include files for a nearly finished DC Comics DLC pack. It’s supposedly in a state one month before it’s official release.
Online Functionality
Online is a major part of LittleBigPlanet Hub. Most of the game is inaccessible, more so than LittleBigPlanet 1 and LittleBigPlanet 2 without connectivity. Since you can’t download anything you can’t play the big set of levels the game supports.
It’s possible to make the LBP Hub Beta connect to custom servers, like Beacon.
We honestly don’t know if there are any game-breaking bugs for online connectivity or any other issues at all. It’s safe to assume it’s going to be a pretty buggy experience. The missing objects bring a ton of problems to this title. It’s probably not a good idea to run LBP Hub online on a PS3, since Sony will be able to see you playing it. It’s probably not a big deal, but do it at your own risk.
LittleBigPlanet Hub on Project Lighthouse
LittleBigPlanet Hub can access Project Lighthouse custom servers. We’ve seen some of our users connect. The server thinks they’re playing LBP2! However, there are a few issues. Levels published from Hub to a custom server will appear as LBP2 levels. This normally wouldn’t be a problem if someone playing LBP2 could access the levels, but unfortunately, they can’t because the levels fail to load depending on what objects are currently in the level. You can load these levels on LittleBigPlanet 3. However, any new object Hub introduces will be missing in the levels.
The Future of LittleBigPlanet Hub
With LBP Hub being dependent on online features, it’s possible that perhaps those features could be reverse engineered in the future. However, at the end of the day it’s a lot of work for not much payoff. The LBP Hub beta is still buggy, and it’s a barebones version of much more fleshed out games. It may not be worth it to dedicate all that time and effort programming a backend for an unfinished game.
Still, LBP Hub’s beta being released to the community is an exciting chapter of LittleBigPlanet preservation, especially after the recent official server crisis.
Thank you for reading! If you found this article interesting, please share it with your friends so they can learn more about LBP Hub’s Beta!
