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ModNation Racers Review [PS3]
Karting. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot…Hell, even Gran Turismo’s getting in on the act (but I hear on the grapevine that the weapons won’t be perfected until at least Gran Turismo 6). And there’s another game that’s entered the fray…
Race, Create, Share
Created by United Front Games, ModNation Racers is the second game to fit into Sony’s “Play, Create, Share” mantra that started off so popularly with LittleBigPlanet. But does it deserve the association with the aforementioned?
To take on Mario Kart, the nearly undisputed king of the genre, may seem a little ambitious. And indeed on first appearances, ModNation Racers appears to be just a bog-standard generic action kart game with a HD-makeover. From a distance, you’d be forgiven for making the assumption. However, when you take control of the game yourself, you’ll see it’s much more.
3...2...1... ... ...Go!
As a karting game, the concept behind the gameplay is pretty much as you would expect: driving around a crazy track whilst attempting to ram, drift and destroy your way toward pole position. It’s a basic concept and one that has worked for many years in this type of game, and it still works here. The game actually handles the driving part of the game extremely well. Drifting, one of the main mechanics of kart games, works intuitively and the weighting behind it feels right.
One of the major differences between the gameplay of ModNation Racers and kart games of the past is the introduction of the boost bar. This bar is replenished through the successful execution of drifts, drafts, jumps, spins and takedowns amongst other things (in a very Burnout-esque sort of system). This allows for a more controlled use of boost, meaning the game is often slightly faster than that of perhaps earlier karters.
Boosting, however, is not the only thing that the boost bar is useful for. The boost bar is also drained when zapping triggers to open shortcuts, when sideswiping and when activating the shield. It’s these little extra options that add a little bit of tactics into the racing side of things. For example, you could boost down a straight and overtake a few people, leaving yourself open to a possible barrage of attacks with no means of defending yourself. Or you could take the slower option and attempt to drift and drive past whilst conserving boost for later. This tactical choice is what gives ModNation Racers the depth that it’s competitors don’t necessarily have.
What? No Blue Shell?!
Now, it wouldn’t be a proper kart game without a bunch of weapons to disable and destroy opponents with, so the game comes stocked with a variety of weapons to choose from: Rocket, Lightning, Sonic and Speed, with each category having 3 levels of weapon and a secondary mine-like usage. Weapon upgrading is fairly simple: collecting a weapon pod gives a random selection between the four choices, collecting another weapon pod, before unleashing the weapon, upgrades the current weapon. The higher the weapon level, the further down the pack it will reach and, generally, the more shield will be required to block the attack. They might not be as imaginative as other games, but they get the job done.
The ModNation Racing Championships Begin
A game with an offline component should be able to justify it’s price tag on the single player experience alone. The bulk of the single player offering is done in career mode. Career mode follows your racer, dubbed as “Tag”, as they compete in the ModNation Racing Championships, a prestigious, high-risk, global competition pitting the best racers against each other. The career campaign consists of 5 “tours” consisting of between 4 and 8 races each from qualifying through to the championship race.
Each race offers a total of three different challenges. The first of which is the requirement for advancing to the next race (generally podium finish, although in some cases finishing 1st is necessary). The other two require certain challenges to be completed whilst the race is taking place (such as a certain number of drift points, or completing the race without striking a wall) whilst also taking the poll position. Although several of these are fairly simple and will generally be obtained through the natural course of a race, there are many that can prove to be quite challenging, and as such provide a reason to return to the career courses, adding replayability to a fairly solid, if a little short, campaign.
For the completionists amongst you, the team at United Front Games have given team best lap and race times. Although I doubt they are actually the best times, many of them are easily beatable, some do provide a challenge., There are also a total of 5 tokens to collect in each career race which, when collected, can be spent on buying (a randomly selected) kart body, engine or other miscellaneous item to be used when creating.
The Creation Station
Being under the “Play. Create. Share” umbrella, you would imagine that ModNation Racers must have some pretty substantial tools for creation. You would be right. The creation side of the game is split into three parts: Mods (the racers), karts and tracks.
The racer editor is a fairly basic affair, allowing you to customise clothes, body parts, skin colour and materials, whilst giving the ability to add stickers and such to the racer. The kart editor has a fairly similar irk to it, picking body parts, colours and materials, whilst also adding stickers and accessories for a little bit more customisation. This may sound restrictive, but the amount of brilliant content which the community has added suggests that it is indeed expansive.
As this is a racing game, most people will want to get hold of the track editor. When you do, you’ll be asked to pick a theme; desert, alpine, seaside or jungle to shape the general mood of the track, and then be let loose on an absolutely blank canvas. Placing the track couldn’t be easier, as control of the steamroller is given to the player and can be driven like normal with the right analogue stick controlling the elevation.
Following the completion of the basic track, the tweaking begins. ModNation Racers allows you to place terrain, scenery, shortcuts, hazards, jumps, weapon pods and more, as well as the ability to micromanage parts of track. Hours can be spent on creating and modifying the perfect track, but for those of us without the time to expend so much effort, ModNation Racers offers an autopopulate option. Autopopulate does exactly what it sounds like it does, adds scenery and makes the track look more professional. Options like these often give a sub-par or obviously automated looking result, but not in this game, as generally the autopopulation is nearly indistinguishable from something a person has spent a while on.
Mod-Inter-National Racing
With the game being so heavily centred with the online community, the review would be incomplete without more than a few words on the online functionality. Online life begins in the ModSpot. Although the ModSpot is available offline and is the hub for all game modes (analogous to LittleBigPlanet’s pod), online it comes alive, bringing a random assortment of the online players together for interacting: chatting and challenging each other at will. The ModSpot also displays upcoming downloadable content, the best rated community submitted karts and mods in statue form around the edges.
Racing online can come in three forms, casual race, XP race and XP series. Casual races and XP races are very similar in set up, a number of people (and possibly AI, in casual races) race a one-off race on a track selected by the host. An XP series has a number of people racing over 5 races with the winner on points overall claiming an XP bonus (XP is gained through ranked races as well as community response to uploads, and determines your online rank).
My personal experience of the online racing is that it is extremely smooth (even on a very limited bandwidth which I have access to at the moment) with very few instances of lag and generally the races are fairly even and close, making them extremely enjoyable experiences. There wasn’t much evidence of foul play or poor attitude (but I’m sure, as with most games, that it’ll appear eventually).
There are other modes that are available online. Hot Lap is a one day competition between all players to set the fastest lap on a track (either community based or one of the on-disc originals) with the top 10% of players getting an XP bonus. Like other time trials whilst playing online, the fastest lap posted online provides the ghost, allowing you to see how the best tackle a track…provided you can keep up with them!
Getting back to the creation part of things, online allows you to upload any of the tracks, karts and mods you have created, as well as the ability to download the ones that other people have uploaded themselves. These processes are fairly easy to do once you find what you want, but actually finding what you want isn’t perhaps as easy as it should be. Granted, the search function does appear to work slightly better than LittleBigPlanet’s was, but the interface is fairly clunky and annoying to navigate at times (the modem sounds in the background whilst using the sharing application is charming for a little bit, but quickly grows tiresome during long download search sessions).
Lights and Sounds
Graphically, ModNation Racers is hardly a powerhouse, but then again, it doesn’t need to be. The cartoony style suits the kart racer and has a certain charm about it that fits in well with the comedic presentation of the career mode. The game is punctuated by the commentary of the egocentric jock-like Biff Tradwell and stats-lover Gary Reasons, with TV-show-like presentation and commentary before and after races, often with amusing banter between the two.
”Putting the ordinary in extraordinary”
Although ModNation Racers is a fairly well polished game, it isn’t without it’s problems. An initial issue is the compulsory <1GB worth of patch that is required before the game can actually be started is definitely an issue for anyone without extremely speedy internet connections. The loading times are absolutely atrocious for a game of it’s standard, an issue which is exasperated by the 3GB mandatory install. If an install that large doesn’t sort out loading issues then something seems off.
If I had to add more things to complain about, it’d generally be more of a list of things to add for a sequel. A few more themes in the track editor might increase further the possibilities in the creation part of things (Arctic, for example), as well as a slightly longer single player campaign with a few more game modes other than straight racing (such as takedown challenge). It would also be a change for the better if the sharing interface was updated and made nicer to use.
The Chequered Flag
In conclusion, ModNation Racers is an extremely good kart racer that plays well in single player and translates just as well into an enjoyable online experience. Although the majority of features are well implemented, some of the community sharing interfaces seem a bit restricted and many creations may get lost under the radar because of it. Besides this, the main let-down of the game is the seemingly exorbitant loading times. I look forward to the possibility of a refined and improved sequel in the future, and when that day comes, Mario may well see a blue bombshell coming his way as he loses pole position…
Score: 8.6/10
Karting. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot…Hell, even Gran Turismo’s getting in on the act (but I hear on the grapevine that the weapons won’t be perfected until at least Gran Turismo 6). And there’s another game that’s entered the fray…
Race, Create, Share
Created by United Front Games, ModNation Racers is the second game to fit into Sony’s “Play, Create, Share” mantra that started off so popularly with LittleBigPlanet. But does it deserve the association with the aforementioned?
To take on Mario Kart, the nearly undisputed king of the genre, may seem a little ambitious. And indeed on first appearances, ModNation Racers appears to be just a bog-standard generic action kart game with a HD-makeover. From a distance, you’d be forgiven for making the assumption. However, when you take control of the game yourself, you’ll see it’s much more.
3...2...1... ... ...Go!
As a karting game, the concept behind the gameplay is pretty much as you would expect: driving around a crazy track whilst attempting to ram, drift and destroy your way toward pole position. It’s a basic concept and one that has worked for many years in this type of game, and it still works here. The game actually handles the driving part of the game extremely well. Drifting, one of the main mechanics of kart games, works intuitively and the weighting behind it feels right.
One of the major differences between the gameplay of ModNation Racers and kart games of the past is the introduction of the boost bar. This bar is replenished through the successful execution of drifts, drafts, jumps, spins and takedowns amongst other things (in a very Burnout-esque sort of system). This allows for a more controlled use of boost, meaning the game is often slightly faster than that of perhaps earlier karters.
Boosting, however, is not the only thing that the boost bar is useful for. The boost bar is also drained when zapping triggers to open shortcuts, when sideswiping and when activating the shield. It’s these little extra options that add a little bit of tactics into the racing side of things. For example, you could boost down a straight and overtake a few people, leaving yourself open to a possible barrage of attacks with no means of defending yourself. Or you could take the slower option and attempt to drift and drive past whilst conserving boost for later. This tactical choice is what gives ModNation Racers the depth that it’s competitors don’t necessarily have.
What? No Blue Shell?!
Now, it wouldn’t be a proper kart game without a bunch of weapons to disable and destroy opponents with, so the game comes stocked with a variety of weapons to choose from: Rocket, Lightning, Sonic and Speed, with each category having 3 levels of weapon and a secondary mine-like usage. Weapon upgrading is fairly simple: collecting a weapon pod gives a random selection between the four choices, collecting another weapon pod, before unleashing the weapon, upgrades the current weapon. The higher the weapon level, the further down the pack it will reach and, generally, the more shield will be required to block the attack. They might not be as imaginative as other games, but they get the job done.
The ModNation Racing Championships Begin
A game with an offline component should be able to justify it’s price tag on the single player experience alone. The bulk of the single player offering is done in career mode. Career mode follows your racer, dubbed as “Tag”, as they compete in the ModNation Racing Championships, a prestigious, high-risk, global competition pitting the best racers against each other. The career campaign consists of 5 “tours” consisting of between 4 and 8 races each from qualifying through to the championship race.
Each race offers a total of three different challenges. The first of which is the requirement for advancing to the next race (generally podium finish, although in some cases finishing 1st is necessary). The other two require certain challenges to be completed whilst the race is taking place (such as a certain number of drift points, or completing the race without striking a wall) whilst also taking the poll position. Although several of these are fairly simple and will generally be obtained through the natural course of a race, there are many that can prove to be quite challenging, and as such provide a reason to return to the career courses, adding replayability to a fairly solid, if a little short, campaign.
For the completionists amongst you, the team at United Front Games have given team best lap and race times. Although I doubt they are actually the best times, many of them are easily beatable, some do provide a challenge., There are also a total of 5 tokens to collect in each career race which, when collected, can be spent on buying (a randomly selected) kart body, engine or other miscellaneous item to be used when creating.
The Creation Station
Being under the “Play. Create. Share” umbrella, you would imagine that ModNation Racers must have some pretty substantial tools for creation. You would be right. The creation side of the game is split into three parts: Mods (the racers), karts and tracks.
The racer editor is a fairly basic affair, allowing you to customise clothes, body parts, skin colour and materials, whilst giving the ability to add stickers and such to the racer. The kart editor has a fairly similar irk to it, picking body parts, colours and materials, whilst also adding stickers and accessories for a little bit more customisation. This may sound restrictive, but the amount of brilliant content which the community has added suggests that it is indeed expansive.
As this is a racing game, most people will want to get hold of the track editor. When you do, you’ll be asked to pick a theme; desert, alpine, seaside or jungle to shape the general mood of the track, and then be let loose on an absolutely blank canvas. Placing the track couldn’t be easier, as control of the steamroller is given to the player and can be driven like normal with the right analogue stick controlling the elevation.
Following the completion of the basic track, the tweaking begins. ModNation Racers allows you to place terrain, scenery, shortcuts, hazards, jumps, weapon pods and more, as well as the ability to micromanage parts of track. Hours can be spent on creating and modifying the perfect track, but for those of us without the time to expend so much effort, ModNation Racers offers an autopopulate option. Autopopulate does exactly what it sounds like it does, adds scenery and makes the track look more professional. Options like these often give a sub-par or obviously automated looking result, but not in this game, as generally the autopopulation is nearly indistinguishable from something a person has spent a while on.
Mod-Inter-National Racing
With the game being so heavily centred with the online community, the review would be incomplete without more than a few words on the online functionality. Online life begins in the ModSpot. Although the ModSpot is available offline and is the hub for all game modes (analogous to LittleBigPlanet’s pod), online it comes alive, bringing a random assortment of the online players together for interacting: chatting and challenging each other at will. The ModSpot also displays upcoming downloadable content, the best rated community submitted karts and mods in statue form around the edges.
Racing online can come in three forms, casual race, XP race and XP series. Casual races and XP races are very similar in set up, a number of people (and possibly AI, in casual races) race a one-off race on a track selected by the host. An XP series has a number of people racing over 5 races with the winner on points overall claiming an XP bonus (XP is gained through ranked races as well as community response to uploads, and determines your online rank).
My personal experience of the online racing is that it is extremely smooth (even on a very limited bandwidth which I have access to at the moment) with very few instances of lag and generally the races are fairly even and close, making them extremely enjoyable experiences. There wasn’t much evidence of foul play or poor attitude (but I’m sure, as with most games, that it’ll appear eventually).
There are other modes that are available online. Hot Lap is a one day competition between all players to set the fastest lap on a track (either community based or one of the on-disc originals) with the top 10% of players getting an XP bonus. Like other time trials whilst playing online, the fastest lap posted online provides the ghost, allowing you to see how the best tackle a track…provided you can keep up with them!
Getting back to the creation part of things, online allows you to upload any of the tracks, karts and mods you have created, as well as the ability to download the ones that other people have uploaded themselves. These processes are fairly easy to do once you find what you want, but actually finding what you want isn’t perhaps as easy as it should be. Granted, the search function does appear to work slightly better than LittleBigPlanet’s was, but the interface is fairly clunky and annoying to navigate at times (the modem sounds in the background whilst using the sharing application is charming for a little bit, but quickly grows tiresome during long download search sessions).
Lights and Sounds
Graphically, ModNation Racers is hardly a powerhouse, but then again, it doesn’t need to be. The cartoony style suits the kart racer and has a certain charm about it that fits in well with the comedic presentation of the career mode. The game is punctuated by the commentary of the egocentric jock-like Biff Tradwell and stats-lover Gary Reasons, with TV-show-like presentation and commentary before and after races, often with amusing banter between the two.
”Putting the ordinary in extraordinary”
Although ModNation Racers is a fairly well polished game, it isn’t without it’s problems. An initial issue is the compulsory <1GB worth of patch that is required before the game can actually be started is definitely an issue for anyone without extremely speedy internet connections. The loading times are absolutely atrocious for a game of it’s standard, an issue which is exasperated by the 3GB mandatory install. If an install that large doesn’t sort out loading issues then something seems off.
If I had to add more things to complain about, it’d generally be more of a list of things to add for a sequel. A few more themes in the track editor might increase further the possibilities in the creation part of things (Arctic, for example), as well as a slightly longer single player campaign with a few more game modes other than straight racing (such as takedown challenge). It would also be a change for the better if the sharing interface was updated and made nicer to use.
The Chequered Flag
In conclusion, ModNation Racers is an extremely good kart racer that plays well in single player and translates just as well into an enjoyable online experience. Although the majority of features are well implemented, some of the community sharing interfaces seem a bit restricted and many creations may get lost under the radar because of it. Besides this, the main let-down of the game is the seemingly exorbitant loading times. I look forward to the possibility of a refined and improved sequel in the future, and when that day comes, Mario may well see a blue bombshell coming his way as he loses pole position…
Score: 8.6/10
SimGuy99 wrote:
I have been looking to get ModNation Racers for a while now. It's supposed to be like Little Big Planet but with cart racing.
If you want to know more of what it is "is like" I would suggest to read the massively detailed review that is placed in the original post. That should give you an idea...
I have been looking to get ModNation Racers for a while now. It's supposed to be like Little Big Planet but with cart racing.
If you want to know more of what it is "is like" I would suggest to read the massively detailed review that is placed in the original post. That should give you an idea...
I have been looking to get ModNation Racers for a while now. It's supposed to be like Little Big Planet but with cart racing.
I'll be honest, I only got it on rental (switched down to a 1 a month package) due to the fact that the Beta and subsequent demo left me hugely unconvinced. But once I actually got down to using the game proper with a bit of time to get used to it *not* being Mario Kart, it is...not so much brilliant, but it is very good. I plan on buying it at some point in the future...
...but there's also part of me which can't justify paying more for it than I did for LittleBigPlanet new (which would be hard to beat at £9.50) and I think that's going to be the problem.
...but there's also part of me which can't justify paying more for it than I did for LittleBigPlanet new (which would be hard to beat at £9.50) and I think that's going to be the problem.
Great review. I'm still not sure about this game. Saw it for £17.99 on the Zavvi sale but the demo put me off. I love the customisation but it's just the racing seemed to be lacking something.
ModNation Racers Review [PS3]
Karting. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot…Hell, even Gran Turismo’s getting in on the act (but I hear on the grapevine that the weapons won’t be perfected until at least Gran Turismo 6). And there’s another game that’s entered the fray…
Race, Create, Share
Created by United Front Games, ModNation Racers is the second game to fit into Sony’s “Play, Create, Share” mantra that started off so popularly with LittleBigPlanet. But does it deserve the association with the aforementioned?
To take on Mario Kart, the nearly undisputed king of the genre, may seem a little ambitious. And indeed on first appearances, ModNation Racers appears to be just a bog-standard generic action kart game with a HD-makeover. From a distance, you’d be forgiven for making the assumption. However, when you take control of the game yourself, you’ll see it’s much more.
3...2...1... ... ...Go!
As a karting game, the concept behind the gameplay is pretty much as you would expect: driving around a crazy track whilst attempting to ram, drift and destroy your way toward pole position. It’s a basic concept and one that has worked for many years in this type of game, and it still works here. The game actually handles the driving part of the game extremely well. Drifting, one of the main mechanics of kart games, works intuitively and the weighting behind it feels right.
One of the major differences between the gameplay of ModNation Racers and kart games of the past is the introduction of the boost bar. This bar is replenished through the successful execution of drifts, drafts, jumps, spins and takedowns amongst other things (in a very Burnout-esque sort of system). This allows for a more controlled use of boost, meaning the game is often slightly faster than that of perhaps earlier karters.
Boosting, however, is not the only thing that the boost bar is useful for. The boost bar is also drained when zapping triggers to open shortcuts, when sideswiping and when activating the shield. It’s these little extra options that add a little bit of tactics into the racing side of things. For example, you could boost down a straight and overtake a few people, leaving yourself open to a possible barrage of attacks with no means of defending yourself. Or you could take the slower option and attempt to drift and drive past whilst conserving boost for later. This tactical choice is what gives ModNation Racers the depth that it’s competitors don’t necessarily have.
What? No Blue Shell?!
Now, it wouldn’t be a proper kart game without a bunch of weapons to disable and destroy opponents with, so the game comes stocked with a variety of weapons to choose from: Rocket, Lightning, Sonic and Speed, with each category having 3 levels of weapon and a secondary mine-like usage. Weapon upgrading is fairly simple: collecting a weapon pod gives a random selection between the four choices, collecting another weapon pod, before unleashing the weapon, upgrades the current weapon. The higher the weapon level, the further down the pack it will reach and, generally, the more shield will be required to block the attack. They might not be as imaginative as other games, but they get the job done.
The ModNation Racing Championships Begin
A game with an offline component should be able to justify it’s price tag on the single player experience alone. The bulk of the single player offering is done in career mode. Career mode follows your racer, dubbed as “Tag”, as they compete in the ModNation Racing Championships, a prestigious, high-risk, global competition pitting the best racers against each other. The career campaign consists of 5 “tours” consisting of between 4 and 8 races each from qualifying through to the championship race.
Each race offers a total of three different challenges. The first of which is the requirement for advancing to the next race (generally podium finish, although in some cases finishing 1st is necessary). The other two require certain challenges to be completed whilst the race is taking place (such as a certain number of drift points, or completing the race without striking a wall) whilst also taking the poll position. Although several of these are fairly simple and will generally be obtained through the natural course of a race, there are many that can prove to be quite challenging, and as such provide a reason to return to the career courses, adding replayability to a fairly solid, if a little short, campaign.
For the completionists amongst you, the team at United Front Games have given team best lap and race times. Although I doubt they are actually the best times, many of them are easily beatable, some do provide a challenge., There are also a total of 5 tokens to collect in each career race which, when collected, can be spent on buying (a randomly selected) kart body, engine or other miscellaneous item to be used when creating.
The Creation Station
Being under the “Play. Create. Share” umbrella, you would imagine that ModNation Racers must have some pretty substantial tools for creation. You would be right. The creation side of the game is split into three parts: Mods (the racers), karts and tracks.
The racer editor is a fairly basic affair, allowing you to customise clothes, body parts, skin colour and materials, whilst giving the ability to add stickers and such to the racer. The kart editor has a fairly similar irk to it, picking body parts, colours and materials, whilst also adding stickers and accessories for a little bit more customisation. This may sound restrictive, but the amount of brilliant content which the community has added suggests that it is indeed expansive.
As this is a racing game, most people will want to get hold of the track editor. When you do, you’ll be asked to pick a theme; desert, alpine, seaside or jungle to shape the general mood of the track, and then be let loose on an absolutely blank canvas. Placing the track couldn’t be easier, as control of the steamroller is given to the player and can be driven like normal with the right analogue stick controlling the elevation.
Following the completion of the basic track, the tweaking begins. ModNation Racers allows you to place terrain, scenery, shortcuts, hazards, jumps, weapon pods and more, as well as the ability to micromanage parts of track. Hours can be spent on creating and modifying the perfect track, but for those of us without the time to expend so much effort, ModNation Racers offers an autopopulate option. Autopopulate does exactly what it sounds like it does, adds scenery and makes the track look more professional. Options like these often give a sub-par or obviously automated looking result, but not in this game, as generally the autopopulation is nearly indistinguishable from something a person has spent a while on.
Mod-Inter-National Racing
With the game being so heavily centred with the online community, the review would be incomplete without more than a few words on the online functionality. Online life begins in the ModSpot. Although the ModSpot is available offline and is the hub for all game modes (analogous to LittleBigPlanet’s pod), online it comes alive, bringing a random assortment of the online players together for interacting: chatting and challenging each other at will. The ModSpot also displays upcoming downloadable content, the best rated community submitted karts and mods in statue form around the edges.
Racing online can come in three forms, casual race, XP race and XP series. Casual races and XP races are very similar in set up, a number of people (and possibly AI, in casual races) race a one-off race on a track selected by the host. An XP series has a number of people racing over 5 races with the winner on points overall claiming an XP bonus (XP is gained through ranked races as well as community response to uploads, and determines your online rank).
My personal experience of the online racing is that it is extremely smooth (even on a very limited bandwidth which I have access to at the moment) with very few instances of lag and generally the races are fairly even and close, making them extremely enjoyable experiences. There wasn’t much evidence of foul play or poor attitude (but I’m sure, as with most games, that it’ll appear eventually).
There are other modes that are available online. Hot Lap is a one day competition between all players to set the fastest lap on a track (either community based or one of the on-disc originals) with the top 10% of players getting an XP bonus. Like other time trials whilst playing online, the fastest lap posted online provides the ghost, allowing you to see how the best tackle a track…provided you can keep up with them!
Getting back to the creation part of things, online allows you to upload any of the tracks, karts and mods you have created, as well as the ability to download the ones that other people have uploaded themselves. These processes are fairly easy to do once you find what you want, but actually finding what you want isn’t perhaps as easy as it should be. Granted, the search function does appear to work slightly better than LittleBigPlanet’s was, but the interface is fairly clunky and annoying to navigate at times (the modem sounds in the background whilst using the sharing application is charming for a little bit, but quickly grows tiresome during long download search sessions).
Lights and Sounds
Graphically, ModNation Racers is hardly a powerhouse, but then again, it doesn’t need to be. The cartoony style suits the kart racer and has a certain charm about it that fits in well with the comedic presentation of the career mode. The game is punctuated by the commentary of the egocentric jock-like Biff Tradwell and stats-lover Gary Reasons, with TV-show-like presentation and commentary before and after races, often with amusing banter between the two.
”Putting the ordinary in extraordinary”
Although ModNation Racers is a fairly well polished game, it isn’t without it’s problems. An initial issue is the compulsory <1GB worth of patch that is required before the game can actually be started is definitely an issue for anyone without extremely speedy internet connections. The loading times are absolutely atrocious for a game of it’s standard, an issue which is exasperated by the 3GB mandatory install. If an install that large doesn’t sort out loading issues then something seems off.
If I had to add more things to complain about, it’d generally be more of a list of things to add for a sequel. A few more themes in the track editor might increase further the possibilities in the creation part of things (Arctic, for example), as well as a slightly longer single player campaign with a few more game modes other than straight racing (such as takedown challenge). It would also be a change for the better if the sharing interface was updated and made nicer to use.
The Chequered Flag
In conclusion, ModNation Racers is an extremely good kart racer that plays well in single player and translates just as well into an enjoyable online experience. Although the majority of features are well implemented, some of the community sharing interfaces seem a bit restricted and many creations may get lost under the radar because of it. Besides this, the main let-down of the game is the seemingly exorbitant loading times. I look forward to the possibility of a refined and improved sequel in the future, and when that day comes, Mario may well see a blue bombshell coming his way as he loses pole position…
Score: 8.6/10
Karting. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot…Hell, even Gran Turismo’s getting in on the act (but I hear on the grapevine that the weapons won’t be perfected until at least Gran Turismo 6). And there’s another game that’s entered the fray…
Race, Create, Share
Created by United Front Games, ModNation Racers is the second game to fit into Sony’s “Play, Create, Share” mantra that started off so popularly with LittleBigPlanet. But does it deserve the association with the aforementioned?
To take on Mario Kart, the nearly undisputed king of the genre, may seem a little ambitious. And indeed on first appearances, ModNation Racers appears to be just a bog-standard generic action kart game with a HD-makeover. From a distance, you’d be forgiven for making the assumption. However, when you take control of the game yourself, you’ll see it’s much more.
3...2...1... ... ...Go!
As a karting game, the concept behind the gameplay is pretty much as you would expect: driving around a crazy track whilst attempting to ram, drift and destroy your way toward pole position. It’s a basic concept and one that has worked for many years in this type of game, and it still works here. The game actually handles the driving part of the game extremely well. Drifting, one of the main mechanics of kart games, works intuitively and the weighting behind it feels right.
One of the major differences between the gameplay of ModNation Racers and kart games of the past is the introduction of the boost bar. This bar is replenished through the successful execution of drifts, drafts, jumps, spins and takedowns amongst other things (in a very Burnout-esque sort of system). This allows for a more controlled use of boost, meaning the game is often slightly faster than that of perhaps earlier karters.
Boosting, however, is not the only thing that the boost bar is useful for. The boost bar is also drained when zapping triggers to open shortcuts, when sideswiping and when activating the shield. It’s these little extra options that add a little bit of tactics into the racing side of things. For example, you could boost down a straight and overtake a few people, leaving yourself open to a possible barrage of attacks with no means of defending yourself. Or you could take the slower option and attempt to drift and drive past whilst conserving boost for later. This tactical choice is what gives ModNation Racers the depth that it’s competitors don’t necessarily have.
What? No Blue Shell?!
Now, it wouldn’t be a proper kart game without a bunch of weapons to disable and destroy opponents with, so the game comes stocked with a variety of weapons to choose from: Rocket, Lightning, Sonic and Speed, with each category having 3 levels of weapon and a secondary mine-like usage. Weapon upgrading is fairly simple: collecting a weapon pod gives a random selection between the four choices, collecting another weapon pod, before unleashing the weapon, upgrades the current weapon. The higher the weapon level, the further down the pack it will reach and, generally, the more shield will be required to block the attack. They might not be as imaginative as other games, but they get the job done.
The ModNation Racing Championships Begin
A game with an offline component should be able to justify it’s price tag on the single player experience alone. The bulk of the single player offering is done in career mode. Career mode follows your racer, dubbed as “Tag”, as they compete in the ModNation Racing Championships, a prestigious, high-risk, global competition pitting the best racers against each other. The career campaign consists of 5 “tours” consisting of between 4 and 8 races each from qualifying through to the championship race.
Each race offers a total of three different challenges. The first of which is the requirement for advancing to the next race (generally podium finish, although in some cases finishing 1st is necessary). The other two require certain challenges to be completed whilst the race is taking place (such as a certain number of drift points, or completing the race without striking a wall) whilst also taking the poll position. Although several of these are fairly simple and will generally be obtained through the natural course of a race, there are many that can prove to be quite challenging, and as such provide a reason to return to the career courses, adding replayability to a fairly solid, if a little short, campaign.
For the completionists amongst you, the team at United Front Games have given team best lap and race times. Although I doubt they are actually the best times, many of them are easily beatable, some do provide a challenge., There are also a total of 5 tokens to collect in each career race which, when collected, can be spent on buying (a randomly selected) kart body, engine or other miscellaneous item to be used when creating.
The Creation Station
Being under the “Play. Create. Share” umbrella, you would imagine that ModNation Racers must have some pretty substantial tools for creation. You would be right. The creation side of the game is split into three parts: Mods (the racers), karts and tracks.
The racer editor is a fairly basic affair, allowing you to customise clothes, body parts, skin colour and materials, whilst giving the ability to add stickers and such to the racer. The kart editor has a fairly similar irk to it, picking body parts, colours and materials, whilst also adding stickers and accessories for a little bit more customisation. This may sound restrictive, but the amount of brilliant content which the community has added suggests that it is indeed expansive.
As this is a racing game, most people will want to get hold of the track editor. When you do, you’ll be asked to pick a theme; desert, alpine, seaside or jungle to shape the general mood of the track, and then be let loose on an absolutely blank canvas. Placing the track couldn’t be easier, as control of the steamroller is given to the player and can be driven like normal with the right analogue stick controlling the elevation.
Following the completion of the basic track, the tweaking begins. ModNation Racers allows you to place terrain, scenery, shortcuts, hazards, jumps, weapon pods and more, as well as the ability to micromanage parts of track. Hours can be spent on creating and modifying the perfect track, but for those of us without the time to expend so much effort, ModNation Racers offers an autopopulate option. Autopopulate does exactly what it sounds like it does, adds scenery and makes the track look more professional. Options like these often give a sub-par or obviously automated looking result, but not in this game, as generally the autopopulation is nearly indistinguishable from something a person has spent a while on.
Mod-Inter-National Racing
With the game being so heavily centred with the online community, the review would be incomplete without more than a few words on the online functionality. Online life begins in the ModSpot. Although the ModSpot is available offline and is the hub for all game modes (analogous to LittleBigPlanet’s pod), online it comes alive, bringing a random assortment of the online players together for interacting: chatting and challenging each other at will. The ModSpot also displays upcoming downloadable content, the best rated community submitted karts and mods in statue form around the edges.
Racing online can come in three forms, casual race, XP race and XP series. Casual races and XP races are very similar in set up, a number of people (and possibly AI, in casual races) race a one-off race on a track selected by the host. An XP series has a number of people racing over 5 races with the winner on points overall claiming an XP bonus (XP is gained through ranked races as well as community response to uploads, and determines your online rank).
My personal experience of the online racing is that it is extremely smooth (even on a very limited bandwidth which I have access to at the moment) with very few instances of lag and generally the races are fairly even and close, making them extremely enjoyable experiences. There wasn’t much evidence of foul play or poor attitude (but I’m sure, as with most games, that it’ll appear eventually).
There are other modes that are available online. Hot Lap is a one day competition between all players to set the fastest lap on a track (either community based or one of the on-disc originals) with the top 10% of players getting an XP bonus. Like other time trials whilst playing online, the fastest lap posted online provides the ghost, allowing you to see how the best tackle a track…provided you can keep up with them!
Getting back to the creation part of things, online allows you to upload any of the tracks, karts and mods you have created, as well as the ability to download the ones that other people have uploaded themselves. These processes are fairly easy to do once you find what you want, but actually finding what you want isn’t perhaps as easy as it should be. Granted, the search function does appear to work slightly better than LittleBigPlanet’s was, but the interface is fairly clunky and annoying to navigate at times (the modem sounds in the background whilst using the sharing application is charming for a little bit, but quickly grows tiresome during long download search sessions).
Lights and Sounds
Graphically, ModNation Racers is hardly a powerhouse, but then again, it doesn’t need to be. The cartoony style suits the kart racer and has a certain charm about it that fits in well with the comedic presentation of the career mode. The game is punctuated by the commentary of the egocentric jock-like Biff Tradwell and stats-lover Gary Reasons, with TV-show-like presentation and commentary before and after races, often with amusing banter between the two.
”Putting the ordinary in extraordinary”
Although ModNation Racers is a fairly well polished game, it isn’t without it’s problems. An initial issue is the compulsory <1GB worth of patch that is required before the game can actually be started is definitely an issue for anyone without extremely speedy internet connections. The loading times are absolutely atrocious for a game of it’s standard, an issue which is exasperated by the 3GB mandatory install. If an install that large doesn’t sort out loading issues then something seems off.
If I had to add more things to complain about, it’d generally be more of a list of things to add for a sequel. A few more themes in the track editor might increase further the possibilities in the creation part of things (Arctic, for example), as well as a slightly longer single player campaign with a few more game modes other than straight racing (such as takedown challenge). It would also be a change for the better if the sharing interface was updated and made nicer to use.
The Chequered Flag
In conclusion, ModNation Racers is an extremely good kart racer that plays well in single player and translates just as well into an enjoyable online experience. Although the majority of features are well implemented, some of the community sharing interfaces seem a bit restricted and many creations may get lost under the radar because of it. Besides this, the main let-down of the game is the seemingly exorbitant loading times. I look forward to the possibility of a refined and improved sequel in the future, and when that day comes, Mario may well see a blue bombshell coming his way as he loses pole position…
Score: 8.6/10