Parent's Guide: Little Big Planet Karting - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Little Big Planet Karting is a kart racing game in a similar format to Mario Kart. Letting up to four players race together, skidding around over the top courses, boosting out of corners, and chucking various over the top weapons at each other as they try to cinch first place, if your child's a fan of games like Mario Kart, on Sonic and All Stars Racing, the chances are they'll be on good footing here.

The bulk of your time in Little Big Planet Karting is taken up with a story mode, which loosely attempts to tie together a string of races with a ropey story. Letting four people to play together co-operatively in split-screen, the story mode is great for family play, especially as you don't all have to come in the top four positions in order to win - instead, only the person who finishes in the best position is counted, meaning so long as you've got someone who's good on your team, your entire group will be able to carry on to the next stage.

However, the game does suffer from some pretty drastic difficulty spikes, with things getting substantially more difficult as soon as you move onto the second set of levels. Even when playing on the easiest difficulty, there's a noticeable increase in the level of challenge, which may frustrate younger players, who suddenly find themselves unable to come first. Similarly, the battle mode, which pits you against a number of other racers in a square arena, where the goal is to blow each other up, rather than win a race, represents a rather stiff challenge, that may throw a spanner in the works for younger children - at least, until they perfect the technique.

But perhaps the best feature, for children and families alike, is the wide raft of creative options the game provides. With a fully-featured level editor on offer, you have the ability to create your own track from scratch - starting by painting out a track design, before adding decorations, obstacles, shortcuts, weapons, and more! It's an incredibly powerful tool, yet one that's fairly simple to use, so if your child's the creative type, or you want a game to encourage their artistic side, you could do worse than Little Big Planet Karting.

As a karting game, there's little in Little Big Planet Karting for parents to be overly concerned about. While the game features the ability to shoot at your opponents with weapons, everything's rather stylised and over the top, with weapons causing a little explosion that blows your enemy up (temporarily), before they quickly respawn and start again.

It is worth bearing in mind that, as a game with a large focus on community created content, there is a chance that something inappropriate may slip past the moderation and filters - although such levels will usually be quickly reported and deleted.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 3