Little Big Planet Karting vs Sonic & Sega All Star Racing: Console to Mobile Matchup

Karting games have been around since the advent of video games. They take racing and distill it to its most simplest form. From there, karting games have evolved into cartoonish menageries of outrageous weapons and physics defying circuits. Little Big Planet Karting was recently released for the Playstation 3, but how does it compare to Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing for the iOS? Which one offers you silly thrills with less frills and a racing experience to keep you coming back again and again? And does anyone still care about Mario Kart?

Little Big Planet is one of the best franchises to appear on the Playstation 3. Its adorable hand-stitched aesthetic makes it difficult to cast aside as just another game. With the addition of Little Big Planet Karting, the LBP universe has expanded considerably. What used to be an ancillary feature in Little Big Planet 2 has come center stage. Your favorite sack characters can now be found rocketing round a track with the help of power-ups and fantastic weapons. There is even a story tossed in for good measure to keep your throttle hard pressed to the floor.

Sonic & Sega All Star Racing lets you take control once again of that excitable hedgehog and a few of his pals. They are the same scamps that you know and love. What makes a karting game great isn’t just the controls or graphics, but the charm of the characters involved. Diddy Kong Racing or Mario Kart wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if they didn’t have such recognizable characters at the helm. Plus, how long has it been since you’ve played a Sonic game that didn’t suck? It's nice to to see Sonic back to form.

The real crux of the Little Big Planet Karting experience isn’t just the racing, but the building. Like the other Little Big Planet games, you get a level builder to engineer anything your crafty imagination desires. You can even customize your characters into whatever little roguish sack people you want. Little Big Planet Karting is a game that you have to make your own in order to get the full experience. In addition to that, you get access to hundreds of other user generated levels from the online Craftworld community.

The controls for both games are tight and responsive. You won't go spearing off into the underbrush of Craftworld or outer space by accident. If you crash, it is your own fault. But, Sonic & Sega All Star Racing has a gameplay ace up its sleeve. You can use the gyroscope in your device to steer and this makes for a much more immersive experience. You get to tilt your device to steer a blue hedgehog through a race track full of molten lava. What more could you want?

Just because Little Big Planet Karting's home is on your TV doesn't mean that Sonic can't blast his way onto the tube. That's right, Sonic & Sega All Star Racing supports tethering to your TV so you can enjoy the game with all the screen real estate you could ever want. Multiplayer isn't something exclusive to the console games either. Sonic can bring along three of his friends into the all out race to the finish.

Did you really pick up a karting game to build levels and play dress up? It’s OK if you wanted a little playset where you could precisely set trees around the oval track you just made. If you didn’t want to bother making your own game, then you’d do well to pick up Sonic & Sega All Star Racing from the App Store. It is mobile karting of the highest order and holds its own against the big boy console games with ease. It might even blow the doors off of them. Sonic is the fastest hedgehog after all.

DECISION: SONIC & SEGA ALL STAR RACING