Is this everything we really waited for?
For the most part, that's entirely the problem with the game.
For the most part, LBP is simple. You run, you jump, you grab, and you collect your way through various amounts of levels to reach the end goal. Occasionally there will be a race or two, but the goal generally remains the same. To keep things interesting, there's also a point system and internet scoreboards for both story levels and user created content. It's a simplistic platformer at heart.
The other side of LBP is the level creation tools. The game urges you (after hours of tutorials to unlock items and tools, of course) to go out and create your own levels using the exact tools used by the game developers to create what you saw in the story mode. The possibilities are nearly limitless in what you can make, and you're free to use your imagination to it's fullest extent. After you're done, it's possible to publish level into the LBP Community where it can be played by others.
Here's where I see the game start to fall apart. For one, the simplicity; no matter how hard you try the game will literally be the same thing. There's only so many actions you can do, and in that respect there's only so many things you can see. Many of the online levels seldom show anything absolutely unique, although there is a few that do stand out. Many of the levels I played were absolute rubbish compared to what I could see in the story mode. Hell, even I couldn't seem to come up with anything I felt would be worthy of publishing when anyone could hop into story mode and pretty much see everything I made in a different order; the only difference between me and others in the community is that I realize what I create for the most part isn't worthy of being posted.
One of the larger annoyances is the community itself. The easiest way to see this problem is to go onto any LBP forum. There's seldom anything constructive I would expect like unique ways on using tools or objects to create something awesome to help out level designers, but rather 500 pages of HEART MY LEVEL PLEASE or PLAY MY LEVEL. A larger exploit of this would be the comment system in the game. Every level's comments, including the story ones, and completely PACKED with HEART FOR HEART and PLAY MY LEVEL comments. It takes 4-5 pages sometimes just to see a real comment for what people just played. It's the most annoying thing I've ever seen and I would absolutely hate to be someone with a successful level only to have thousands of comments for people begging for others to play there levels. Even when you sucker up and do this, their levels are atrocious to the point where, once again, I'm simply moving back to the story and seeing more creativity. There has been some creative levels, and the deserve being posted. I've gone so far to see makeshift Guitar hero levels or even fully functional SHUMPS.
Finally, the largest problem I see is that with all these tools they are never able to be used to their true potential. The game forces you to see things in two dimensions, and when you desperately want to move the camera and put something behind another or twist something to work the way you wanted the game cuts you out. The amount of things you want to do but can't is stifling when you would just wish the creators would have let you rotate the camera and put another working motor bolt on the opposite side of what you are making. It's really easy to screw up, too; I've ruined several hours worth of work because for some unexplainable reason I may have glued my entire level together and ruined some of the more intricate contraptions I have made. There's a rewind button, yes; but sometimes it's hard to pinpoint when exactly things went wrong. As for the gameplay itself, the developers did try to throw in the idea of a powerup but never explored the concept further. This game could have had so much potential for different concepts if they would allow people to do things like pick up customizable powerups or weapons for Sackboy to pick up. The lack of what you can do gameplay wise is stifling, and you will see it sooner or later.
So is Little Big Planet everything we wanted? Well, in this regard; we got everything we basically saw. There was no hidden surprises in what you could do; the gameplay remained rather unchanged from the videos we saw two years ago. I feel there's so much wasted potential and I constantly just find myself running back to Garry's Mod where I can do everything I'm missing, as well as what we see in LBP today.