PS3 Games Review

brought the "Play, Create, Share" ethos to the PlayStation 3, and ModNation Racers applies the same concept to the kart racer. The result is a game that offers you all the tools you need to create your own karts, tracks, and racers and then easily share your creations online with the community. These features are excellent--both simple enough for beginners and powerful enough for creative types to match anything from the developer. The fiercely competitive AI makes the single player career more challenging than it needs to be, and long load times are a bind across all game modes. However, played with friends locally or online, ModNation Racers is a fun, rewarding and novel addition to the genre.

Once you've played the first tutorial race, you're dropped into ModNation Racers' central hub, which connects all of the play, create, and share elements of the game. You can select game modes either by browsing the menu system or by physically driving your kart to the corresponding area of the hub. If you're online, the world is populated by other racers whom you can communicate with, share content with, or challenge to a race. The hub also highlights some of the highest rated content from users around the world, with statues of user-created characters, such as Mario, Ryu, and Spider-Man, and karts that have been made to look like locomotives, aeroplanes, or even the A-Team van. There's a clear emphasis on sharing at all times--you can drive up to anything you see and press the square button to browse, rate, and download items. It’s a brilliantly implemented system, with seamless online integration providing a stream of new content.

You gain points by drifting, drafting, and spinning your kart in mid-air, all of which fuel a power bar that allows you to boost for short periods of time, put up a temporary shield or sideswipe opponents. The shield protects you incoming attacks, which are preceded by a warning siren, and as long as there's some space between you and the person who fired it, you can usually time a deflection. You can also use the power bar to sideswipe your opponents using the right analog stick, which can help you earn race-specific rewards or knock players off the track.

These gameplay mechanics mean that there's a lot going on in ModNation Racers, and it's definitely one of the most advanced kart racers on the market. The risk/reward nature of the power bar adds plenty of depth, while the tracks reward replayability with an abundance of shortcuts and unlockables. The racing is fun, with many courses offering long corners to drift around and massive jumps to stunt off. There's certainly a lot to take in at first, but these elements all come together to make a deep and rewarding kart racing experience.

The career mode is a bit more frustrating than it needs to be thanks to an incredibly punishing difficulty level. The AI racers are very skilled, gaining an advantage early on in most races and becoming proficient with weapons and shields once you get past the first tour. The track designs also become fiendishly tough at around the same time, with obstacles, traps and ravines to avoid and shortcuts to find if you’re going to win. This means it can take multiple attempts to learn the best route through each course, but extra content is rewarded to those who spend the time to really master them. The career is also punctuated with TV-style race reports and story elements, and while they're cute and light-hearted with occasional laughs, they lack the charm necessary to stop you from skipping over.

The cute and colourful visual style suits the creative nature of the game well. The mod and kart designs are charming, the tracks are varied, and the frame rate remains high even during splitscreen. The soundtrack is made up of generic video game pop, and while it's not particularly memorable, it keeps things light during the menus and the gameplay. Sadly, there's a really big problem that affects all of the game modes--the incredibly long load times. The quick nature of the racing is spoiled by prolonged periods of inactivity--often about 30 seconds between races.

ModNation Racers boasts some of the most impressive creation tools yet seen on a console, and the active community is already using them to make excellent content. It also makes sharing content completely seamless, constantly promoting a stream of new material to your console. The single player career can be difficult, and the long load times quickly become a bind, but ModNation Racers succeeds in providing outstanding online sharing facilities and great multiplayer fun.