Soooo I grabbed one of the modracers beta keys as soon as they became available yesterday morning and spent most of the day checking it out. The online stuff wasnt enabled, but they had three tracks available to run time trials on and they were pretty fun. Its a lot like Little Big Planet meets Super Mario Kart, if you can imagine that,

You get to drive to the various buildings in the game to get things started, and there are also spaces that were empty that had spots for the best karts and best characters, probably user voted on. They also had billboards that supposedly display the best racers and top downloaded levels (it did connect me for a second or two and one of the billboards flashed the top downloads and best racer).

I also took some pics with my sucky cell phone cam, so I hope you can see em (I had to take em sideways cause the whole screen wouldnt fit the other way). There was a farm level, which was a straight circle, with nice country scenery, you know, trees, pastures, sheep, etc and some nice looking mountains in the distance.

There was also a middle east flavored market district level, with what looks like mosques and a little patch of coastline. There are way more turns as you swerve around the buildings, but there are also a few shortcuts too.

The third level was a long desert road, with the road itself eventually disappearing into the sand. It had a bunch of turns and reminded me of that long road from Cali to Vegas where the scenic highlights included lots of sand, sand...and if you were feeling risque and turned in the right direction...more sand! =P

The creation station is where you can modify your racer, kart and build your own track, as well as upload your creation to the community, if you're the "share the love" type. The beta doesnt let you mess with the karts (well it didnt let me), but there are a good 10-12 different karts to choose from. The character creator is a lot like little big planet, as you can choose differerent "textures" for your character and there are sliders for adjusting how metallic, how rubbery and how cloth-like your character can be. You can also apply stickers to your charrie. The interface is very Little Big Planet-ish, with small boxes representing all the materials you can use.

Controlling your racer is pretty easy, you use the left stick to move, and R2 accelerates and L2 brakes and reverses. You can also use the d pad arrows to taunt your opponents.

All in all, it seems like a pretty fun game, especially if you enjoyed Little Big Planet and/or Super Mario Kart.