As with its PS3 cousin, LittleBigPlanet PSP is a kaleidoscope of delight.

The play is fun and simple: run, jump, grab. It’s accompanied by a bright, poppy soundtrack and Stephen Fry as a friendly narrator.

While it seems like this handheld version is just a port of the original console version, the levels designed by Cambridge are completely new and the developers there wisely opted for only two levels of depth to the play, foreground and background, as opposed to the three of the PS3 edition.

The only thing I found lacking is that while the PSP and PSPgo screens are bright and crisp, they are small, so you can’t really see the details and expressions that make Sackgirls and Sackboys so cute and charming. They are rendered mere objects as a result.

LittleBigPlanet PSP (Sony; PSP; rated everyone)

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

Everything about The Saboteur is cinematic. That’s both good and bad.

Good because the game is looks and sounds wonderful.

The characters are crisply defined and engaging, even if they are cliched. Sean Devlin, the protagonist, is an Irish mechanic turned race car driver who becomes a member of the French resistance.

The setting, Nazi-occupied Paris, is recreated with flair. The superb art direction makes use of black and white – with flashes of red, blue, and yellow – a bold choice that works. As Sean liberates the city colour seeps into the environment.

The perfect score is ’40s-era big band and jazz, ranging from all-out fanfare to the muted horns that I associate with Montmartre of the time.

Unfortunately, while The Saboteur is presented with cinematic polish, it does not provide a satisfying game play experience.

The display on the screen is cluttered with icons that seem to have been scattered all over the place, the controls are clumsy, the animation stutters. Making Sean run around, sneak, and climb is more frustrating than fun.

It wants to be an open world action game, a racing game, and a stealth game all at the same time, but the action lacks, the racing is sub-par, and the stealth is mostly a lark.

The Saboteur has style and panache, but it’s not much of a game.

The Saboteur (EA; PC, PS3, Xbox 360; rated mature)

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

This week in Calgary’s Fast Forward Weekly is the annual Joystuck holiday gift guide for gamers. It’s true that buying for those interested in video games is easy. You just need a little guidance, is all.

In today’s Georgia Straight is my look at the video game adaptation of James Cameron’s Avatar. Ubisoft’s Patrick Naud and Kevin Shortt were revealing about how open Cameron was in involving them, and in keeping his hands off the work that they were doing.

James Cameron is known as an innovator. The Canadian-born filmmaker creates visually arresting movies that rely on visual effects: the killing machine and the creature in The Terminator and Aliens, the underwater environment of The Abyss, the seamless Titanic. With his latest project, the 3-D science-fiction movie Avatar, he has expanded into video games.

The problem is that the film and the game are built on the idea of the noble savage, and that arrogant point of view taints everything.

Not far into the video game based on James Cameron’s upcoming film, I had to choose a side. Avatar: The Game takes place on Pandora, a beautiful but potentially deadly moon far from Earth. Humans mining Pandora’s resources have been surviving in the strange new environment with the aid of the Na’vi—the indigenous population of intelligent, bipedal, blue-skinned creatures. But the RDA, the Earth-based organization running the operation, wants more freedom to remove resources without worrying about the locals, and the Na’vi are showing signs of resistance.

In the issue of the Georgia Straight that published today is my annual gift guide for gamers.

Admit it. Video gamers are the easiest people to buy gifts for. Every year, dozens of new games are released during the months leading up to the holiday season, and there’s bound to be a gap or two in the libraries of even the most hard-core. Shopping for a gamer might be intimidating if you can’t tell the difference between a shooter and a platformer and you can’t differentiate between good and bad games. That’s where Trigger Happy comes in. We give you the cheat sheet you’ll need to brave your local game retailer.