Ooh I say a review. Enjoy folks:The PS3 has had a pretty good year of exclusives so far, with God of War 3, Demons souls and Heavy Rain. Joining this list is Modnation Racers" a kart racing game which belongs to the "play,create,share" range of games which is already home to the fantastic Little Big Planet. But can Modnation Racers live up to the quality of these aforementioned titles? Why yes, yes it does.
Let's get stuck into the main bulk of this game, which is customisation. Modnation offers a gigantic amount of freedom when character creation is concerned. The characters, Mods,start off as plain white vinyl figures and it is up to you to design your character from scratch. At first this may seem daunting, but whipping up a character couldn't be simpler. There are hundreds of pre made clothes and hairstyles to make a simple character with ease. However, for those who want to get into more detail there is the sticker system. The stickers can be manipulated into any shape and size you choose, and you can spend hours working on just one mod if you put your mind to it. The track creator is a work of genius as well. Once you have laid a track out, you can either auto populate your track (which adds weapons,obstacles and scenery to your track) or you can do it all yourself with the easy to use tools at hand, but don't be surprised if you end up auto-populating your first few tracks. The kart creation is slightly disappointing, lacking the in-depth customisation seen with characters and tracks.
Of course, what would be the point of all of this if the game wasn't fun to play as well? Thankfully, the game is extremely fun controlling very similar to mario kart. The one thing this game has that it's nintendo rival doesn't is the game-changing boost feature. By drifting,catching air and performing tricks you have boost added to a boost meter which can be used to boost or to bring up a shield, which becomes a constant dilemma in races, do you boost ahead of the competition and be left defenceless, or do you play it safe with the shield and lose precious speed? It's all a matter of balance.
Balance, however, seems to be thrown out of the window when you start the career mode. Like Mario Kart, the A.I racers are brutal and relentless and all the skill in the world wont stop you from being destroyed on that last stretch. The game has its own version of a blue shell, known as the hydra missile. On races towards the end, hydra missiles are very common and shields are used up before you have a chance to earn it again. It's a sometimes fun, but frustrating experience (and thankfully, developers United Front have made a patch which calms the A.I down a bit)
The Online mode is fantastic, thanks to the sharing of mods,karts and tracks. Search for any pop culture icon in the mods section and you can guarantee it will show up.Not in many games can you see Winnie the pooh racing along side Jigsaw. There is Hotlap mode, where users compete daily for the best time on a chosen track. The online racing is a highlight, much like Mario Kart Wii, where it is all down to the skill of the racer not dumb luck. It takes getting used to, but after a while you'll find yourself riding along the top 3 each race.
Finding races takes it's time, and the loading screens can sometimes take a bit too long but United front have promised that a new patch will fix this up.
Overall, with all of the user created content, this game can last for a very long time as long as users remain original and imaginative with their ideas. Bar a few niggles, I think this is one of the best games the PS3 has to offer, and it certainly gives you a break from all the hyper realistic games at the moment. See you on the race track.
Good Points:
.Fantastic customisation
.Visually impressive
.Endless replay value
.Bags of charm
Bad Points:
.Loading times can be a drag
.Unbalanced A.I in career mode
.Feeling your creations are being ignored.
Final Score:92%
