Race, Create, Share

Hot on the heels of LittleBigPlanet is Sony’s second title in their “Play, Create, Share” genre, ModNation Racers.

ModNation Racers is a cartoon-styled kart racer for the PlayStation 3 by United Front Games. It has been called the love-child of Mario Kart and LittleBigPlanet but as I’ve never played Mario Kart I can’t say how true it is. What I can say though is that it’s a very fun game to play.
Being in the Play, Create, Share genre, it obviously isn’t just a kart racer. The game allows you to customise your “Mod” (racer) and your Kart and also lets your imagination run wild with the track editor. There are thousands of combinations for your Mod and Kart without even bothering with the huge number of possibilities you can create with stickers!
The track editor is an extremely powerful tool but thankfully it’s also a lot simpler to use than the LBP editor. The track is laid by just driving around a steamroller and once finished you can use the auto populate option to cover your track with everything to make it fun to race and beautiful to look at. This creates a perfectly drivable track which can be fun but to really make an amazing track you have to be willing to put the time in. That’s where the rest of the track editor comes into play.
You have the power over everything, both on the track and off. Want a track with a romantic sunset? No problem. Fancy creating shortcuts or multiple paths around your track? Simple. Want a high banked turn or really tight tracks? Easy. You really do have the power over everything.
As with LittleBigPlanet, anything you create can be uploaded to the community and downloaded by the great unwashed. This means there will be an endless supply of tracks to race or characters to play as. In fact as I type this, the top 3 Mods are Mario, Luigi and Spiderman and they’ve all been created by the public.
You cannot forget about the race side of this game either. The driving controls are really simple and drifting is as easy as pressing a button and turning the direction you want to go. In fact drifting is one of the key things you have to master to stand any chance of winning races. Most of the tracks are full of tight curves which just ask to be taken sideways!
The other key thing you have to master is the weapons. There are four different categories of weapon pickup and each weapon has three “levels” and each level has a “secondary” mode which is dropped behind your kart. The categories are Lightning Bolt, Rocket, Sonic and Boost. The first level is usually a unguided attack in a straight line. The second is more powerful and is guided to an extent and the third level is like dropping hell on an opponent!
Thankfully there exists a defence against these kart-destroying menaces: the shield, powered by the boost in your boost bar. Boost is exactly what it says it is and is generated by drifting, drafting and getting airtime while racing and, along with boost pads positioned on the track, is a sure-fire way of shooting you from last to first!
The career mode is where you unlock more tools and items for the creation areas. Each race in career mode has 3 challenges which unlock the parts. The first is required to move to the next race and is usually only “Finish third”. The other two require you to finish first in the race and also achieve another target i.e. getting a certain amount of drift points etc. You don’t have to complete the last 2 challenges to progress, but you may lose out on some interesting parts for your mod or kart.
The game is amazing and thanks to the sharing side it will always have something new to offer but there are a couple of flaws that take this game away from being perfect. One is the sometimes unbearable loading times. Even moving between the ModSpot (main hub) and a menu requires loading! Track load times are a little on the long side but comparable to other racing games. The other flaw is on the navigation side of things, specifically when leaving parts of the game and going back to the ModSpot. For example, once you finish a race you are send back to the ModSpot. Not a problem, right? I’ll just wait for it to load and enter a race option straight away. Well, no you won’t because for some reason you always spawn back at the same spot, away from everything. Why? If I finish a race online, take me back to the Online Race section in the ModSpot so I can select another race without having to drive to it!
The flaws are not major game-breaking bugs but just annoyances in what is a fantastic game. If you loved LittleBigPlanet and don’t have a kart-racer-caused rash then I strongly recommend you buy ModNation Racers. You will not be disappointed.