At a game convention in Las Vegas, where I played unreleased games, I came into contact with big, small and weird "coming soon" holiday titles. Some other week I will give you a head's up on the sequels. But this week let's look at LittleBigPlanet (Sony), the most buzzed-about non-sequel of the holiday season. You play as "Sackboy" or "Sackgirl," tiny burlap-looking doll-type creatures that are small enough to stand on a golf ball.
You can change your cute body, clothes and face. Incredible-looking background and foreground settings look like Pee-wee's Playhouse meets The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring elements such as two-dimensional windmills and wooden-but-alive tigers that roll on wheels.
As for the gaming, you push, pull, grab and otherwise manipulate these environments to forge a path through a very long adventure and solve puzzles. You can be crushed, frozen, burned and drowned. But you also press a button to show if you're sad, happy, angry or anxious.
There's so much buzz about LittleBigPlanet, if it sells as well as seems possible, it could replace "Guitar Hero" as the pop-culture icon of gaming. That would be a feat. It's coming out Oct. 21 only for the PS 3, so if you're an Xbox'er, sorry.