So Little Big Planet is being delayed. One of the most highly anticipated titles of the holiday season and one of the most uniquely designed games in quite some time, being held back. Game-breaking bugs? Balance changes? Nope. Get a load of this:

“However, fans of the game are going to have to wait slightly longer to get it. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has announced that it is recalling the game from retailers after it learned that the soundtrack featured some Arabic-language lines from the Qur’an backed with music. A SCEE representative also confirmed to GameSpot that this recall would be global, and could not confirm when the game would now actually hit shelves with the offending music removed.

The confirmation follows rumours that that Singing Safari level of the game features a song with two expressions found in Islam’s central holy text, the Qur’an. Cached pages on the official PlayStation forum claim that the two phrases are (literally translated from the original Arabic): “Every soul shall have the taste of death” and “All that is on earth will perish.”"

This is so random and weird and nonsensical that I really have no idea at all how it happened. Truth really is stranger than fiction. So, when is Little Big Planet’s Release Date?

It seems like games have gone in a couple of different directions in the past couple of years. There’s the big, sprawling, open-ended games where linear story or progression is eschewed in favor of placing the user in control of a virtual world where they can control the direction of what kind of experience they want. The Grand Theft Auto games, Fable, and Oblivion are the paragons of this type of “sandbox” gameplay. In Oblivion, you can choose to completely ignore the storyline and decide “I’m going to be the leader of the biggest thieves guild in the land” and take the game that way. In my experience with Oblivion, I decided to be the land’s greatest gladiator– and was well on my way until the demon invasion that I’d ignored from the main plot took over the land and killed the entire audience for my grand duel. Such is life in Oblivion.

On the other end, there are games like Portal and Assassin’s Creed where the emphasis is not on hours of gameplay, but the value and variety of experience. It used to be that adventure and console style role playing games would boast 20+ hours of gameplay to complete. But with the gravitation of the gaming industry toward casual gamers, developers have recognized the value in making short, sweet experiences that don’t take weeks to complete.

Next time we’ll take a look at the upcoming PS3 title Little Big Planet, which looks to combine open-ended customizability with a short and sweet experience.