I friggin’ love kart racers. Always. SNES Mario Kart is still king in my eyes. Other versions are shiner with more crap but the original is still the most fun for me. Then I hear about ModNation Racers. Hot on the creative heels of LittleBigPlanet, this PS3 exclusive kart racer is the new mysterious brunette in the smoky room that is the gaming world. I suppose I could go into more detail, but if you haven’t heard of ModNation Racers at this point, do a little research and then come back to this article. For all who are caught up, click the link.

The customization that is available here is about on par with what I had in mind, which is to say that it’s a veritable cornucopia of options. Even the hub area that you start in is designed like a shopping plaza. The ‘Creation Station’ is the big attraction but the area is filled with places to race and to view things like top racers, top karts and the like. At first you have very limited items to customize at your disposal, but put a little time in and the world opens up to you. Just like LBP you find yourself spending more time creating and tweaking your characters, karts and tracks than you do actually racing (the option to place giant nails inside the head of your racers is something I can’t get enough of, and don’t even get me started on the selection of crazy-eyes for your character). The controls used for creation are intuitive and provide a high degree of ease for the player – which in a game like this is only second in importance to the racing itself. Then of course there is the ability to share your creations and download the creations of others – just about every superhero and video game mascot has been created by somebody and made available. I have to say how impressed I am at the size of the community that has already formed and the sheer volume of content they have uploaded, especially for an early Beta. You can literally lose many, many hours viewing all the stuff that’s online.

Then of course there is the racing itself. So far the controls are spot-on with the happy addition of the jumping-slide made popular by SNES Mario Kart. This being a next-gen kart racer the feel of the game feels a little…empty in some ways. There really isn’t much to be said beyond that. Everything you’ve come to expect from a solid kart racer is here – and considering that this is a Beta that is some pretty damn high praise. The online racing is great and the karts you go up against have pretty good hit detection. Really the only thing that is really wrong here is the atrocious loading times, which can break 2 minutes easily. In video game time this is the equivalent of an hour. Hopefully that gets fixed before release.

All said I’m very happy with ModNation Racers so far. As with any negative feedback with a beta you have to remember that’s just what it is – a beta. And considering that the release is still a ways off I am amazed at what I’ve seen so far. If this is just an inkling of what’s to come, then my faith is high that developer United Front Games will fashion together a kart racing masterpiece that will wow people for a long time to come.