ModNation Racers

Posted: 05/10/10

Following in Sackboy's footsteps, ModNation Racers continues Sony's "play, create, share" mantra, giving players the tools to create their own characters, karts, and tracks. Is it the LittleBigPlanet of kart Following in Sackboy's footsteps, ModNation Racers continues Sony's "play, create, share" mantra, giving players the tools to create their own characters, karts, and tracks. Is it the LittleBigPlanet of kart racing, or is it worth little more than a test drive?

Believe it or not, ModNation's actually does take the time to tell a light story between career races. With the help of a retired racing legend, a rookie racer named Tag works his way up the ranks, proving himself amidst the glamour, rivalry, and commercialism of the racing world. Much of the story is relayed by a pair of sportscasters, giving context to the ModNation world while constantly taking jabs at each other.

The tale plays on stereotypes and it seems aware of this, but it still comes across as being more cheesy than tongue in cheek. Still, it's the game's greatest source of personality, and each cut-scene features your current kart and character.

Your central access point in ModNation Racers is the ModSpot, a lobby you can drive around to interact with other players, see the top creations, compete in hot lap challenges, and access all of the game's various features. Head over to the race hub to play online with groups of 12, jump into split-screen with friends, or complete more than 20 events in career mode. You can choose to race with weapons or without, but unfortunately, there aren't any Mario Kart-style battle arenas.

You can build your own karts, characters, and tracks in the creation center. Your characters are all built from a base model. You can't change the height or width or give it a square jaw, but you can paint it with various colors and patterns, affix stickers, and attach 3D parts like ears, hats, and facial hair. There's plenty of room to get creative, and with a goal in mind, you can recreate your favorite characters. However, some parts, like hats and hair, simply don't play well together, so you'll have to choose between the two.

The kart creator is very similar, but includes a range of bodies to choose from, including classic cars, trains, and duct-taped boxes of cardboard. You can also slap on lollipop rims, hamster-wheel engines, or a TV antenna. Like more serious racing games, ModNation Racers lets you layer stickers on top of each other and save groups of them to create custom logos and designs that you can use on multiple vehicles or characters.

Central to ModNation's appeal is the track creator, which lets you map out your own courses to share with other players online. Creating a simple course is a breeze. All you have to do is drive out a course with a steamroller, link the beginning to the end, and initiate the auto-populate tool to fill in the details. Going deeper than that gives you access to a full range of tools, and any of the game's career courses can be deconstructed and rearranged with the in-game editor. You can set your lighting, alter the background terrain, lay down props and traps, bank turns, and so on.

It's a deep toolset for those with a passion for level design, but for intermediate players who want to make courses with big jumps and multiple routes, it can be a headache to navigate and find the right tools. While there are some instructional videos, ModNation could really use an interactive tutorial to teach you how each tool is best used and give tips on good track design. Once you do make a decent track, though, it's fun to have friends test it out so you can see where the trouble spots are and continue tweaking from there.

Gameplay in ModNation sticks to kart racing essentials like power-ups, drifting, and big air, with a few tricks of its own. There aren't as many unique weapon-types as you might expect, but each one can be leveled up. You can use a level one bolt to blast a guy in front of you, for instance, or you can pick up a couple more item boxes and blast everyone with a level three bolt storm.

There's also a boost system in place, so as you drift, slide in to opponent's draft, or perform other stunts, your boost meter will increase. In addition to letting you blow past the competition, you can also use boost to shield yourself from enemy attacks or to sideswipe opponents who get close enough to trade paint.

The result of all these extras is a slightly more complicated control scheme, and manually spinning your kart during jumps can leave you facing the wrong way every once in a while. The handling is a bit loose in general, resulting in a bit of a learning curve before you master your drifts and hit smaller ramps with precision.

Advancing through the career is a bit restrictive. You can't just squeeze in at the bottom of the bracket and hope to do better on the next track. You'll have to finish in the top three at a minimum to move on, which can become frustrating in a kart racer when the AI drivers save up their weapons to blast you in the final lap.

Winning races awards you with more parts for your vehicles and characters, and each race also has additional challenges to complete for more goodies. You might have to rack up points for drifting or take out a specific number of opponents, but you'll have to meet these goals and finish in first place, which can be pretty tough. Some races also have grudge matches available if you complete all the achievements, and you can pick up tokens scattered throughout the courses to spend on random rewards in the shop.

While it tries at times, ModNation Racers just doesn't have the charm or originality of LittleBigPlanet. The environments in particular are rather generic and lack variety, and the framerate is inconsistent, noticeably dropping in the lobby or split-screen. The music has some funky flair, but with a few exceptions, most of the race songs are fairly monotonous

ModNation Racers is a fun if not particularly inspired kart racer with a few frustrating elements added for good measure. The creation tools offer a lot of depth for dedicated track designers, though whether they're accessible enough to achieve critical mass remains to be seen.

Reviewed on Sony PlayStation 3.


ModNation Racers

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