Its not often that a arcade racing game comes along like ModNation Racers. Simply because Mario Kart has it head firmly up its own arse so that no-one can look it in the eyes for good sportsmanship.
Anyway ModNation racers is exclusively for Sony consoles and its their version of Mario Kart to the skidmark, more or less.
The story to ModNation is simple, you start off as a wannabe racer and work your way up the ranks to the top of the MRC (ModNation Racing Championships). You attempt to place 3rd or better in each race to progress or complete mini-challenges to unlock extras for the ModSpot.
The ModSpot is the world hub where you can access the campaign, multiplayer, leaderboards and create sections.
The cars handling is definitely not a marmite situation simply because it cant make its bloody mind up. The majority of the time it is extremely floaty and fast but for some reason likes to change mid corner on occasion to make it feel like a racing sim with realistic turning at 200MPH. The controls are all in the right places but can be customised. The power ups are all great and have 3 tiers which increase in power/effectiveness. The AI is smart....too smart, to the point that the game is stupidly hard, kart racers are meant to be challenging but with the broken steering mechanic and powerful weapons makes this one of the hardest racers out there, seeing as this is aimed toward children over adults it seems like a pretty poor design choice.
But enough of that, the graphics and sound are beautiful. Textures are smooth and brightly coloured and the sounds are crisp and ear pleasing.
The game is designed for kids in mind so everything is smooth and brightly coloured, no sharp corners on anything or anything darker than the grey of the tarmac on the track which is nice. All the characters have big eyes and inviting smiles, well apart from the odd frown when a race is lost. The soundtrack is new and funky, its got enough lift in it to keep the kids entertained but it has enough guitar solo’s and a great beat to most of the tracks to keep the rest of us happy too. Its like the designers went through every possible resource to make this game accessible to everyone possible.
The game prides itself by being one of the Playstation’s exclusive “Play, Create, Share” range along with titles like LitteBigPlanet. This means that the game, which makes it in a completely different league from most other racing games, is that nearly everything in the game can be unlocked in the studio. This includes items for your racer, car and tracks. The editors are extremely well built making it easy to create the most intricate of things in minutes. I re-created Daxter from the Jak and Daxter games in a matter of minutes by making the skin orange, orange T-shirt with a yellow oval in the middle of it. Goggles for the head and a orange tail for the back.
I then went on to make the Warthog out of Halo, this took a little longer but I managed it. I also got down to including battle damage dents and needler bullet rounds that were left on it.
I was pretty poor at trackmaking but its easy enough, you sculpt the land like you would in a city simulation game, drive a big roller round that lays the track and then include any decorative features you want afterwards. I created a simple figure of 8 with a jump in the middle in about 3 minutes.
However everything has to be unlocked by getting 100% in solo play and even then you’ll need to get the DLC to access everything. I cheated by downloading the “Starter Pack” DLC which unlocks everything the campaign would get me instantly as It would take weeks to get 100% on it.
Overall ModNation Racers puts kart racing games back on form and on firm level ground with Mario Kart again. However the AI can be a little tough and the handling has a mind of its own it doesn’t usually retract much from the overall enjoyment of the game. This is the perfect family party game or for anyone who loves arcade racers, but don’t buy the game if your not much of a creator or don’t have a lot of time on your hands as that is the games main premise.
ModNation Racers – 7/10
+Solid Fun
+Great Visuals
+Awesome Creation Tools
-Too Difficult
