Good news everyone! Someone has FINALLY managed to create a karting game that is not an exact clone of Mario Kart! Surprised? I was too! In fact that game is so far from anything Mario Kart, the only thing it has in common is part of the word “Kart”
This is actually set as a direct sequel to Little Big Planet 2, set in Craftworld, you play as Sackboy and have to race against “The Hoard” a gang of Kart bikies who want to take all the objects and stickers from the world to keep for themselves. Sackie must race, battle and destroy these bikies to claim back Craftworld through 71 single player levels, that’s right 71! This is not your average karting game!
Apart from racing, you also have battle stages where you must destroy a certain amount of enemies, an amazing multiplayer multi-verse where you can create, play and share your own designs and race online in either story or user created levels.
Stephen Fry provides the amusing and engaging narration again through this game and provides the ultimate LBP experience, a feat that they have managed to carry through every game consistently and nothing is different with Karting.
Each different world is inspired by previous LBP games with some new ones added in, adding some potential new characters for future releases. I did notice that there are not many trophies when you start playing the game, it is actually a challenge to unlock them which is becoming a rarety for games these days.
One of my favourite parts of this was the multi-player, it is set out exactly like the previous LBP games with user made tracks, worlds and challenges. I played around with the multiplayer 3 hours after the games release and it was already rich with user-generated tracks and worlds that kept me playing for an 8 hour session before I realised that people love L.B.P. and this game only enhances the universe and brings a worthy challenger to the karting genre.
Little Big Planet Karting is not only the best karting game I have ever played, it also takes into account that karting can be great single player and build and expand on previous game installments. Little Big Planet Karting is out now exclusively on Playstation 3.
Review by Alaisdair Dewar
