AT&T iPhone 3GS launch details. I’ve got work on the 19th, so if I did go in on at 7am I’d need to be out by 8am.

How quickly are pre-orders usually handled?

LittleBigPlanet retail: first impressions (day 1)

So after getting a week with the beta and then the week long delay I finally got my retail copy of LittleBigPlanet yesterday. So far I got to play through some Story Mode levels with my girlfriend last night.

The Story Mode levels are outstanding and provide great examples of what can be done in the Edit Mode with enough time. There are tons of objects and costumes that can be found in each level and encourage replay. The variety of esthetic themes in each grouping of levels is also very impressive right down to the music.

Offline co-op play, just like in the beta, is outstanding. The only slight annoyance can be when each player get too far separated; players who stray too far off screen “die” after a 5 second countdown and they get re-spawned at the next check-point. You have to work together a bit let everyone keep-up. Besides that, it’s seamless. I also look forward to trying online co-op.

The only really bothersome thing I’ve noticed in the retail version of the game is the load times. I don’t know if this is just my copy, (I hope so; so I can return it) when levels are loading (50% of the time or more) the screen freezes for a few seconds, even the load indicator…
Also transition animations like; zooming into the “level patch” on the planet can get really choppy. I don’t know if it’s just the frozen screen, but the load times feel really long. Loading saved costumes and pictures can also take a long time even impeding the gameplay because you cannot close the “poppit” until it’s done loading.

Note/Update: I’ve seen it suggested on forums etc that the slow load times may be due to the launch rush overloading the servers that track stats etc. I sure hope so because it’s almost unacceptable.

Update 2: The servers crashing was apparently the cause of my offline load issues, (thank goodness). Apparently the servers were turned-off later so they could sort-out the issues and fix the load times.
LBP Servers AWOL, Media Molecule On It [kotaku.com]

I’ll post more about the game after I have more time with it.