LittleBigPlanet is one of the most popular Playstation titles to be released and it is easy to see why. With the addicting “create just about anything” mentality of the series many just can’t stop playing. What would happen if you took that mentality and combined the Little Big Planet franchise with kart racing? Obviously you get LittleBigPlanet Karting, the soon to be released kart racing title for Playstation 3, a game that I got to play as the PlayStation Spring Preview Event a couple of weeks ago.
LBP Karting will bring a lot of comparisons to Mario Kart from plenty of gamers, but LPB Karting is more similar to ModNation Racers when it gets down to it as it is pretty much a duplicate with a much more familiar face lift. Like LBP, and the afore mentioned ModNation Racers, you can let loose your creative juices and customize your own Sackboy & Karts and even create your own tracks, missions, games and adventures. All of these customizations can once again be shared with the community which allows everyone to expand the game just a bit more.
Some of the pre-made karts were interesting to say at least with a wide variety which included a bumble bee, tank, dinosaur and a pig. There is also a selection of pre-made outfits which can be customized using the familiar PIP from the LittleBigPlanet series.
The controls were quite easy to pick up and jumping into any of the game modes was just as simple. I got to play a race mode where you go around the course collecting powerups to take out your foes, drifting around corners, and taking short cuts to come out on top. The other game mode I got hands on with was the battle mode which turned out to be quite a bit of fun. As the name would indicate you battle up to 7 other combatants using the tools in the arena like missiles and land mines to take out an foe to earn a point. The battle starts off with a countdown timer and the person with the most points at the end of the battle wins.
Little Big Planet Karting plays up to the popularity of Sackboy, and from my experience with it is pretty much ModNation Racers with a LittleBigPlanet cosmetic facelift, which is not particularly a bad thing. With the title coming out later this year I hope they develop some more unique aspects into the title and flesh it out so that it stands apart from other kart racers as some freshness would be greatly appreciated.
