Whether you fell wildly, profoundly in love with the original LittleBigPlanet, or whether you were turned off by its occasionally imprecise controls -- a foible which spells certain doom for platformers -- it's hard to deny that Media Molecule created something magical. Not only was it charming from toe to tip, it placed an unprecedented amount of attention on user-generated content. The most fervent, active members of its community understood the true joy of the game came not from being its player but, rather, its author. In other words, the creation tools weren't a compliment to the game: They were the main course.

However, even though some of the creations whipped up by LBP's master architects had convinced me otherwise, the game's tools couldn't be used to make everything. Media Molecule was clearly counting on this element of surprise when it came time to one-up the title. At GDC last year, studio co-founder Alex Evans quoted Henry Ford, saying, "If I asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. But I gave them a car."

Even in the half-joking manner in which the quote was used, I thought citing one of the grandfathers of automotive innovation seemed like hubris when coming from a video game developer. Now that I have the unimaginably expanded tools of LittleBigPlanet 2 at my disposal, I'm convinced that I was dead, dead wrong.