Review: ModNation Racers

ModNation Racers is the second game to follow  Sony's new Play, Create, Share ethos established by LittleBigPlanet. Comparison's to Nintendo's Mario Kart are inevitable, but what kart-racing game is not bound to be compared to the godfather of the genre? Fret not, for this is no Mario Kart clone, and more to the point, it's creation tools are far more accessible than the digital Meccano set found in LBP.

Play

ModNation racers is not a necessarily a hard game, especially when you get down with the whole drifting aspect of the game. Drifting is necessary not only because it will help you speed up a bit, but also because every time you drift your boost meter goes up. The boost meter can be used to speed up for a while or to raise a shield and defend yourself against other players' attacks. Thing is, you will be drifting a lot and raising that shield even more; the game's AI is unforgiving. You can do everything right in the game, you can be the first one and be a few inches away from raceline in your last lap and still lose. The AI suffers from major rubberbanding issues and it will not let you win. This wouldn't be a big issue if it wasn't because in order to move on you must finish first (in some races) or top three in others.

Each race has a set of objectives, some mandatory (like finish first) and other optional (like hit a certain racer or avoid hitting walls). It all sounds easy, but oh it's not. Completing these objectives will score you some random objects or parts that you can use later to create Mods or Cars.

There are four different types of attacks, each can be upgraded - and the AI always upgrades and always picks up the power ups before you do - to cause major pain. Some can move four five or six spots further in the race (if fully upgraded) or even send a blast of rockets who will hit every player in front of you.

Other than the AI there are two other aspects that damper the experience. One that you will suffer from whether you want it or not, and the other one that you may not care much about.

The first one - which is a big deal - is the load times. It can take up to one minute - or more! - just to load a race. You can go and make yourself a sandwich, toast it, eat it, clean up and still wait for the damn track to finish loading.

The second is that if you are playing online forget about playing with your friends in Europe or Asia. Oh no! You can only play online with other players in your region.

Create

Sure other racers let you customize your own car, they even let you create your own tracks, but ModNation racers makes it so easy that even if you think you suck it will let you create a track worthy of being played.

When it comes to creating a track you just drive around to lay down the track and then you can either let the game complete the track for you and even add trees, houses and other elements. Or you can do it yourself. You can do whatever you want, from creating shortcuts to adding traps. The options are as wide as your imagination.

When it comes to creating mods (characters) it's a breeze and with the levels of customization you can pretty much create any character you like. Go browse through the "store" and be amazed by others user's creations ranging from Pikachu and Mario, to Spiderman and The Joker.

Share

Remember, sharing is caring! It's really easy to upload your creations to the serves, but you can only upload so many until you have to start taking some out. I don't recall how many you can, but it can be an issue. Once you start sharing other users can vote in your creations (and you can vote in theirs). ModNation racers will feature also the most voted tracks and creations so you can easily access them. Every user generated content in ModNation racers can be yours - fast!

General

ModNation racers has a story, but seriously you can skip through it - although it can be funny at times, it's just filler. The story is told via cut-scenes, which again are just okay. The voice acting is decent. I wouldn't call it great by any standards, but it's serviceable. The game graphics are beautiful and have a a nice style - not as pretty as Little Big Planet, but hopefully it will improve with future sequels.

ModNation Racers offers a high replay value. Let's face it, as with Little Big Planet, there will be thousands - if not millions of levels - of user generated content. There will always be something new to play and someone new to play it with.

The Gaymers Verdict: Good for a First Date 
Alejandro Torres