ModNation Racers is an arcade style kart racing game for the PS3, replete with a hodgepodge collection of improbably undersized vehicles tearing around fantastical tracks while armed with assorted weaponry to blast opponents along the way.

As a spin-off of Sony's critical smash, LittleBigPlanet, a whacky action/adventure bursting with a global pool of user created content and modifications shared for free online, to call ModNation Racers a Mario Kart knock-off is a simpleton's simplification. It's all that but so much more, what with that LittleBig-ish pool of user created cars, tracks and assorted sundries also available. If anything, it's Mario Kart meets a lifetime membership to an all-you-can-eat-buffet the size of Texas...

Play it and you'll either like it or love it with a caveat. Thing is, though there's little not to like about the racing and the tinkering in ModNation, the amount of time wasted before getting to the good stuff is embarrassing. You're talking excessively languid load times and a whole lot of menu surfing before you're actually doing anything meaningful. For example, it takes about four minutes from the moment you put the game disc in, get control of your Mod and "drive" over to the career mode and start a race - and that's if you skip all the cut scenes and download no new content before you get there.

Simply stated, the entire menu system is clunky as all get out. For a game that has "all ages fun" written all over it, it certainly goes out of its way to frustrate neophyte gamers and younger players with a counter-intuitive menu system, not to mention agonizingly long-load sequences that you can't cancel out once initiated. Weird.

Still, when it's got its kart-style racing game on, ModNation is rock solid. The racing itself looks amazing in that hallucinogenic-ly proportioned way of fantasy go-cart derbies. And though it takes a little while to get used to how your cart handles, the racing is genuinely fun, mainly because the variety of weapons and the strategically placed shortcuts always keep thing fresh, varied and interesting - as does the diversity of online opponents should you choose go there and take them on.

More than that, the real reason to get into ModNation Racers is for the customization of it all. You're not only afforded the opportunity to create your own driver - or "Mod" - and kart, but your very own tracks as well, shared by the millions with all the other ModNation Racer users out there (shout out to Zukie - s'up, Zukie!). In this regard, the game is absolutely staggering. There is just so much stuff to work with that the only apparent limitation is your own creativity - or the amount of time you have to spend on the creative process... or the amount of patience you have with the excessive languidness of sharing uploads and downloads mentioned earlier.

ModNation Racers is definitely a game you will want to rent first, just to see if its ludicrous load times are beyond your patience threshold. If not, then the rest of it - the creating, the sharing, the racing ad infinitum - is fantastic.