ModNation Racers is a promising new title that was announced at last year’s E3 as a PS3 exclusive. As with most Sony exclusives these days, a port for the PSP will be released close in tandem with the home console version. I received an early demo code from our friends at Sony PR and would like to share my thoughts on this brief and very limited demo.

My initial reaction to the demo was one of surprise. The car and character models seemed to be displaying uncharacteristically polished details and animations for a PSP title. Outside of the menus and in the game’s only racing mode, the luster begins to wear off.

The vehicle controls feel lose and imprecise. You may think this is part and parcel with ModNation Racers being a cart-style racer, but after trying both the analog nub and D-pad controls, I was left with the disappointment that this was simply how the game was going to control. The two available pre-made tracks are full of detail and would be fun to play with friends if the driving was more solidly implemented and tweaked to provide a fun sense of speed and control.

Since the primary selling point of the ModNation Racers titles is user-generated tracks, I spent a large chunk of time on to the track editor. You would think Sony would have taken the golden opportunity the game affords by allowing you to create and share at least one single track over PSN. Sadly, the editor (in the demo at least) limits you to a few dozen props and does not allow you to save your tracks, even locally.

You can understand my confusion and frustration after spending 45 minutes on a fun little track, the game simply discards the track once you exit the editor with no option to save. All of these limitations make for a crippled user experience in the demo, but the full version is sure to have content and features in spades. Nearly every piece of content and feature is either locked or grayed out giving you a tantalizing look at the full game’s feature set.

The way a user designs the path of the track is by “driving” a cart over a blank space. While this feature has been applauded in most of the PS3 previews, the sluggish response and jerky performance on the PSP makes this process one more of frustration than that of elation. I left this mode with the impression that the tracks you design yourself will not be nearly as complex as those the designers have provided. Only the most dedicated users will be able to fight with this frustrating interface and create a track worthy of your download.

Obviously this is a very limited demo, but I don’t have much interest in playing ModNation Racers on the PSP. The PS3 version will have to be a very compelling package to wash out the bad taste left by its smaller sibling. The demo for the PSP version will be made publicly available on PSN on May 11th.