Last weekend, United Front Games held the North American public beta test for their upcoming LittleBigPlanet Karting game. The LBP series is one of Sony’s anchor franchises on the PlayStation 3 and the game that epitomizes the “Play, Create, Share” brand/campaign that Sony championed with LBP’s launch. Now it makes the transition from platformer to racing game with developer Media Molecule being swapped for UFG who developed the critically acclaimed Play, Create, Share game ModNation Racers.

So how does the LittleBigPlanet Karting beta stack up to the rest of the LBP series and how is it shaping up ahead of its fall release?

When starting the beta, I expected the game to be like UFG’s ModNation Racers. However, this game is definitely a LBP game through and through. While MNR was a proper kart racer, though tongue-in-cheek cartoonish, for those of use who grew up on Mario Kart and Crash Team Racers, LBP Karting targets the LBP crowd. It’s fairly easy and forgiving to play but there’s some depth there for older gamers who have played other LittleBigPlanet games.

Creation is the name of the game with LBP games. Despite the change in developer, creating levels and sharing them with the community is still a big part of this game. The track/arena creator seems fairly simple to figure out and has some depth to allow some real customization. It reminds me of the track creator in ModNation Racers which even I was able to figure out after plugging away at it. Given some of the tracks already floating around the community, UFG has done a good job with the track creator which is allowing users to create some pretty cool tracks already that rival and surpass the tracks UFG released in the Beta for complexity and level of detail.

Customization for the drivers and cars (or Sackthings and karts) is exactly what you’ve come to know from LBP. For once, I don’t think that’s good enough. I was hoping for a bit more in terms of customization for my driver’s helmet and my car’s body. That might be included in the final release and I’d be shocked if we didn’t have some more customization options as the splash screen at the start of the Beta indicated that we didn’t get the full set of customization tools with the Beta. For now, it’s a little lacking compared to the near complete customization of drivers and cars we saw in MNR.

The actual racing isn’t as racing-centric as MNR. By that I mean it’s less of a game for hardcore racing game fans than MNR. There’s no boost button per se but you get an automatic boost if you drift long enough or land a trick off a jump. There’s no specific defence button either. You can fire a weapon when prompted to defend yourself from another racer’s shot but it’s hard to get right. All in all, it is a very simple and easy to learn racing set up. There’s just enough depth there to find some speed to put you at the front of the pack. That being said, it’s more reminiscent of Mario Kart than ModNation Racers. Considering that the LBP series can appeal to a broad audience, that’s what they’re trying here. It really does play like Mario Kart in LBP clothing.

The online component needs some work before the final release. There isn’t a specific online (vs. single player) component in the Beta so you can run any track in single player or online by selecting the track. The pre-race lobby system is pretty good as you get 60 seconds of free practice before the race. I’m a fan of getting some practice in on a new circuit because it levels the playing field slightly between frequent track runners and rookies. Unfortunately, I was kicked from races a few times in the load time between the lobby/practice and the race. I also noticed some glitching as cars would be floating in mid-air or off-track and not all user cars would start on the starting grid but at various points around the track. The lag was also a bit more noticeable in LBP than it was in MNR with a little bit of warping but not so much that it affected the racing. Presumably all of this will be fixed in time for the release.

Having gone through the gameplay and creation components, I realize that I still haven’t looked at the graphics and audio. I might sound like a broken record when I say this but you can’t mistake this for anything but a LBP game. The levels feature similar elements and colour palettes as LBP 1 and 2. Some of the music used is right from the last two LBP games. Whether that’s a matter of it being used for the Beta or UFG going for nostalgia, we won’t know until the final release. Mind you, I don’t mind some musical nostalgia in games (as I mentioned in my Mass Effect 3 review).

Obviously the LittleBigPlanet Karting Beta isn’t a representation of how the final product will play. There is definitely some work for United Front Games. However, the game is accessible to players of all ages, they’ve improved on load times from MNR and it feels like a LittleBigPlanet game. I have no doubt that the game will be as good as the rest of the LBP series when all is said and done. I also realize that I want my racing games to be a racing game where the reward is pushing for every tenth en route to the checkered flag so this probably won’t appeal to me as much as MNR. It’s not like they have to make wholesale changes to what they’ve released as a beta. It’s just a matter of polishing what’s here.