Yesterday evening, Sony invited myself and several other gaming journalists to have a go at LittleBigPlanet. We were shown the level building tools and then let free, with two of us to a console, in order to have a go and see what we could do. We had the choice of either building levels or playing through the actual game if we wanted to (I did both).

My first partner had to leave early for a dinner appointment; which may have been for the best as while we were messing around with the level building stuff he managed to kill me by dropping a giant wheel on me. My second partner managed to not kill me, which I was grateful for.

For those who haven't been following the development of Sony's new community-based game, the LittleBigPlanet experience starts with players learning about their character’s powers to interact physically with the environment. There are obstacles to explore, bits and pieces to collect and puzzles to solve – requiring a combination of brains and collaborative teamwork. As you begin to explore, your creative skills will grow, and soon you'll be ready to start creating and modifying your surroundings – the first step to sharing them with the whole community.

Building/editing a level is all handled within the game's levels. Unlike other games with complicated tools and screens, LittleBigPlanet has you building the levels while still running (or flying) around the level. It's very simple to do, and while some of the controls take a bit of getting used to, this is still by far the easiest modding tool I have ever seen for a gaming engine.

And what an engine! LittleBigPlanet is just gorgeous; from the textures and the clean, crisp 3D graphics to the adorable Sackboy character you play as. There is nothing about this game that doesn't look good. And it plays well too.

I should point out I am not a big fan of jumping games (platformers). In fact, I usually hate them. LittleBigPlanet though, I don't know what it is about it, but there is just so much charm in this game that even when you are failing constantly on the same few jumps (or watching your partner fail and have to wait for them) you are still having fun. I never once noticed myself or the person playing with me get frustrated, which is very good considering the number of times we were both messing things up for each other.

There is one thing I will say for LittleBigPlanet; this game will end friendships. I can very easily see the best of friends throwing controllers at each other out of sheer annoyance. This is mostly because the camera focuses on the person leading in first place, and therefore if any of the other players fall behind or go off the screen, they have five seconds to get back into view or they die. Granted, it won't really matter if you do lose a friendship or two over this game - Sackboy can be your new friend.

Sackboy is probably one of the cutest characters I have ever seen in my life. He just has such huge appeal to so many different people. He's cute but wimpy, and best of all, you can customise your own Sackboy from an extremely large variety of looks. I was a trenchcoat-wearing googly-eyed ninja. My mum always wanted me to be a doctor, but I had to follow my heart.

I never actually did end up building a good functional level; however the people next to me seemed to build a very impressive level involving a rocket platform that activated when you pressed a button. You'd then have to fly by jumping up at a slight angle to land on a higher platform, and continue to the end of the level. It was very cool, and considering it only took them about two hours to make it, impressive to boot.

Once your level is built you can also decorate it with various items, including stickers, and all of these items can be found by playing through the single player game (which is filled with tons of great and interesting levels) or by using an Eye-Toy camera to take pictures and decorate the world (or your Sackboy) with them. We were shown a level that had a "Go The Warriors" sign on a mountain side.

The level of creativity is truly only limited by your imagination. I overheard someone talking about how they're going to build levels for their kids as a way of telling them stories (how cool is that?). You can even go and edit the levels already created within the game. Or, if you see someone else's creation that you like, you can select it and add it to your list of favourites, which is a lot easier than trying to rebuild it yourself.

Personally I don't know how much time I would spend building levels in this game, but I definitely would play them and have tons of fun doing it.

I was reminded of two things while playing LittleBigPlanet. The first was thinking about YouTube. The way you will be able to upload built levels with friends, and share them for others to play, rate and comment on.

It's very much like a YouTube for gaming and that's extremely exciting. The other thing it reminded me of was playing with Lego as a kid. Just the excitement and simpleness of having these basic building blocks and seeing what people come up with. I am still enthralled when I see some of the amazing things people accomplish with Lego.

I can't wait to see what people do when they get their hands on LittleBigPlanet. I also can't wait to play it with some of the people in my life who usually aren't that into games, but who I know would love this.