LittleBigPlanet Karting Review

Posted By Shaun K. about 5 months, 3 weeks ago

LittleBigPlanet Karting Review

I tend to respect the LittleBigPlanet games more than I actually enjoy them. In theory, I love the idea of a game driven by user-created content and certainly I am fan of the general aesthetic employed by the LBP titles to date. However, in practice, I find the continued slippery controls to be unacceptable in any game that is aiming to be Sony’s answer to the venerable Mario series. This was also one of the major problems I had with the company’s attempt to create their own Mario Kart killer in the form of ModNation Racers, a game that also rubbed me the wrong way on a visual level as well. So when I heard that the studio behind LBP, Media Molecule, was teaming up with the studio behind MNR, United Front Games, to create a LittleBigPlanet-themed kart racer, I immediately became nervous. As it turns out, I was right to be worried.

LittleBigPlanet Karting is the definition of a middle of the road experience on almost every level, but for a LittleBigPlanet game, middle of the road is by no means good enough. I may have my problems with mainline LBP titles in terms of controls, but I also acknowledge that on some level they are just that: my problems. I would not even say that those games have bad controls so much as they feature controls that on a personal level continually have served to take me out of the experience. I know plenty of people who have adapted to these same controls and would swear by LBP as their definitive platformer of choice. I just cannot find myself making the same level of commitment, but I still respect the hell out of what Media Molecule have managed to create with these games.

It is not just the user-generated side of the coin either, as time and time again the developers at MM have introduced new ideas and concepts that would feel exciting or groundbreaking in any platformer. Up until now, a LBP has always meant a game bristling with creativity long before a player has even touched the user-generated tools and/or levels. That aspect might be what gets the series its acclaim, but even devoid of that, what would be left is a game of a quality far above the average platforming experience. Media Molecule has never previously just fallen back on the ability of players to create their own content as a crutch and they have always strove to include in LBP a core experience that is indeed worth experiencing.

The Grappling hooks should have been a fun addition but they end feeling more pointless than anything.

This is what makes both the general moment-to-moment gameplay and the overall campaign driving (no pun intended) the pre-generated side of LittleBigPlanet Karting so disappointing. There is no need for me to even bother describing the specifics of LBPK’s mechanics, because if you have played any kart racer at any time in the past 20 years, then you know exactly what you will be getting in this one. It is all here: drifting around corners for a speed boost, picking up a variety of items to use as weapons, and occasionally taking a break from racing for other activities which primarily amount to battling it out with other racers in a closed off arenas. There is nothing wrong with using familiar elements, but there is no pizzazz, no sparkle in how they are featured in Karting and when combined with tracks that, for the most part, feel empty, bland, and lacking in creativity, it leaves LBPK feeling utterly vanilla and by-the-numbers.

Even the attempts to spice things up with the inclusion of elements like the grapple gun of the mainline games amount to little more than minor gimmicks at best and outright distractions at worse. There is nothing to compare to the kind of unique experiences offered in more recent stand-out kart racing titles like Mario Kart 7 and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and when a Mario game feels like it offers more in terms of kart customization (on a gameplay level at least) than a LittleBigPlanet game, something has clearly gone wrong. I can sum up the basic gameplay design driving LittleBigPlanet Karting thusly: There is little to separate the game’s story mode from the campaigns of any of a dozen other mediocre kart racing games released over the years.

There are different kart types but the differences in actual gameplay experience between them is slim.

Making matters worse is the fact that the one area where LBPK does accurately recreate the experience of past titles is in terms of its controls. That is to say that the controls in LBPK feel loose, floaty, and tend to leave players fighting them as much as they do the other racers. The physics of everything just feels off and the karts never seem to have the kind of weight and heft they otherwise should possess. This makes crashing into other racers/obstacles/weapon attacks something of a game of Russian roulette when it comes to how your kart will respond. Which in turn can make winning a race as much dumb luck as anything else. A racing game arguably needs solid controls even more than a platformer does and Karting simply does not have what it takes in this department.

As for the signature LittleBigPlanet element of user-generated content, LBPK drops the ball here as well. Considering how accessible the UGC tools were in ModNation Racers, I find it flabbergasting that the exact opposite is true for the tools featured in LBPK. Some of this can be attributed to the flat-out awful tutorial featured in the game (gone are the interactive individual tutorials of past LBP titles in favor of nearly 90 minutes worth of non-interactive videos), but this is hardly the only problem. Inexplicably, the auto-populate option from ModNation (one of that title’s few legitimately inspired design choices) has been completely removed and overall the user tools in LBPK have an even higher barrier for entry than the core LBP games.

Customization of karts and sacks remains as enjoyable as ever.

To be fair, these tools are more robust overall than the ones seen in ModNation Racers. That game pretty much allowed for the making of new kart racing tracks and little else, while LittleBigPlanet Karting by comparison already features creations set in genres ranging from tower defense to FPS. That being said, there is no question that even the best of these creations rarely reaches the level of, say, a $0.99 cent iOS title, much less real console examples. Also, few of these creations really stand that far apart from what was already possible using the tools featured in the mainline LBP games and honestly the truly driven LBP creator is probably better off just sticking with those games in the first place. Even in terms of its user-generated toolset, LBPK feels like little more than a pale shadow of what has already come before.

Visually, the game is an improvement over ModNation Racers‘ awkward aesthetic choices, but once again here is an area where LittleBigPlanet Karting fails to measure up to its predecessors. While the Sackpeople that populate the game are as adorable as ever and bring along karts that visually match, the levels they race through just do not fare as well. Maybe it is the switch over to a 3D perspective or the differences between what looks good in a platformer as opposed to a racing game, but the charm is just not there in Little Big Planet Karting. I know these are games that, by their very nature, have a patchwork quality to their visuals, but they also usually still present appealingly consistent environments filled with real beauty. The various details and scenery that surround most tracks are technically good looking, but they tend to feel separate from the tracks themselves in a way that leaves the tracks feeling thrown together at the last moment. The music in the game fares better at least and this is the one area where Karting matches other LBP games for a positive gain.

The visual designs for tracks often fail to hang together in a truly meaningful way.

Overall, LittleBigPlanet Karting is a mess of a game whose individual elements fail to congeal in a meaningful way. Judged solely on its own merits, the title has a host of problems that leave it ultimately feeling distinctly mediocre. It does just enough right to prevent being an outright bad game, but in a holiday season that has seen a kart racer as good as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed released that is just not good enough to justify a sixty dollar purchase (especially when the latter game is going for only $39.99 new). If a player has their heart absolutely set on a combination of user-generated content and kart racing then LittleBigPlanet Karting does indeed remain the best viable option for that particular mix. The game is never so awful that I would tell interested players to avoid it out of hand, but I do still recommend caution before taking the plunge. At the very least, give the game’s demo on PSN a try and go into the experience with realistic expectations. For everyone else though, I can safely say that as it stands LittleBigPlanet Karting is one race best not run.

A copy of the game was purchased from a retailer for review purposes and played for about 20 hours. The game is a PS3 exclusive.

Also, feel free to follow the reviewer on Twitter @bigred_13 please if you feel so inclined.

LittleBigPlanet Karting Review

By Shaun K.

LittleBigPlanet is a marked improvement over the previous Sony-exclusive kart racer... but sadly that is still not saying much.