Something of a hybrid of the legendary Mario Kart and the much more recent Little Big Planet for the Playstation 3, ModNation Racers is a racing title that relies on the creativity of the gaming audience to create a library of custom content for racing. There’s a heavy focus on the customization of tracks, cars and racers, specifically giving players the tools to create a very unique design before heading out into multiplayer. Ironically, I did see a plethora of popular video game characters on the marketplace like Mario and Link, not quite the most unique designs.



The developers were really smart to allow players to instantly share their creations with the community. Anyone can take your creation and modify it as well. Hypothetically, a group of friends could each work on elements of a large track design and split up all the parts of the track. The PC gaming community has seen this type of interaction for years, but bringing it into the console world has never been done this well before. Tracks can also be “auto-completed” if you get tired of creation. The tracks are filled with a variety of the standard scenery elements and track boosts as well.

Unfortunately, the single player mode of ModNation Racers isn't quite the quality of the amazing creation tools, mostly due to a punishing artificial intelligence. When you pull into the lead, the entire group of racers behind you launches all of their attacks in conjunction. This rips the heck out of your shield quickly and almost always sends you several racers deep in the pack. It's extremely difficult to consistently find your way into the lead and makes the career mode vastly more frustrating than any kart style game that I've ever played.



The way to play this game is with friends, more specifically as a party game. Playing with four players in split-screen mode is an absolute blast and allows you to relive your fond memories of the Mario Kart days past. You can also make the jump out into the online arena with up to 12 players, real or bots. A 12 player match can get very hectic, but highly rewarding. XP matches allow you to build up online points for your character as well. Between races, your little custom creation can kick it in the Modspot, a place to check out other player creations and challenge racers to a quick match. It's basically a fun little lobby system that's very visual compared to a standard matchmaking service.

Graphics

• The color palette used in the game is very bright, cheery and fits the playful style of the gameplay. The standard tracks are pretty unique in terms of different design as well. The special effects don’t do a thing to the framerate, which is rock solid in fullscreen or splitscreen.


• Sadly, it takes what seems like forever (compared to current generation load times) to actually get into a match. This really isn’t surprising since there’s so much custom player created content to load up, tracks and player cars. The load times typically range around 30 seconds when entering a match and there are lengthy load times when first starting up the game. It’s unfortunate that the developers couldn’t offload more of the game’s files onto hard drive rather than the disc.

Audio

• The soundtrack is light and bouncy, very similar to Little Big Planet. It can be a bit cheesy at times as well. There isn’t a ton of voice work in the game beyond the humorous announcers. The surround sound effects do an excellent job of alerting the player to weapon fire and often allow for quick shield blocks if paying attention.

Conclusion

Despite a terribly unbalanced difficulty level in the single player career mode and very annoying load times, the incredibly deep character / track creation tools and the highly entertaining multiplayer offers a great deal of enjoyment and replay value. Similar to Little Big Planet, the game is very dependent on how creative the community is and how long they plan on continuing playing the game. Players interested in building racers and tracks will find a title well worth the entry fee.

Discuss This Game on Our Forums Here