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ModNation Racers seeks to do what no other kart racer has done; allow unlimited customization and involve a community to be creative and share their ideas. While it's similar to LittleBigPlanet because of the "Race, Create, Share" tag that Sony and United Front Games have put onto this title, I feel that it expands on this idea even further than Media Molecule's hit. The controls and interface a simple to navigate and the developer went to great lengths to personalize the experience with ModNation Racers.
Everything you do within the game occurs in the ModSpot. A central hub where about 5 other players (when you're online) will congregate and you can see them drive around. There are all kinds of things to do in the ModSpot. Here you have access to the races, including Online, Online Split-Screen (up to 2 players split-screen), Offline Split-Screen (up to 4 players split-screen) and the Career Mode.
The Online racing experience is pretty smooth. Players can join a random match, or they can host matches with their friends, or just for other players to join. You can choose to race with "XP Mode" where your online profile will gain XP to rank up among other players. The competition is pretty intense though, so make sure you're familiar with how to handle the karts before heading to this mode. If you're not in the "XP" mood, you can just race casually for fun. All of your stats from races are tracked to your profile, and you can see the stats for each track that you've raced on as well.
Driving karts is a breeze. I equate this something slightly more complicated than Mario Kart 64. You accelerate and brake, fire weapons after picking up the powerups, and you *absolutely* must learn how to drift. Pressing and holding the 'X' button allows you to perform a drift around corners which fills a boost meter on the side of the screen. The boost meter is used for sideswiping opponents, boosting your speed, or using the shield equipped to your kart. It will take a lot of practice to get the timing down on your shield as it only lasts a few seconds with a full meter of boost, but it can make the difference between placing 1st and getting blown away at the last second of the final lap. Weapons come in 3 different styles: Missiles, Lightning and Sonic attacks. Each powerup can be upgraded up to 3 times. Stage 1 attacks are pretty light and can only hit 1 car (the Sonic level 1 weapon has a pulse discharged from around the car so it could potentially hit multiple enemies), Stage 2 attacks will hit 2 to 3 racers in front of you, and level 3 attacks can knock everyone out (think 'Blue Shell' from Mario Kart) if you manage to fire it from last place. It can be difficult to do this though, as if you are hit with a weapon, you will lose your current weapon and have to pick up a new powerup. Weapons appear to be random too, just like other kart racers.
So far, it sounds like a pretty good game right? Well, it is; the only catch is that with each thing that you do in this game, you might as well take a bathroom break or go fix a sandwich, because you will literally be waiting over a minute for some of the tracks to load. Not that this is a game-breaking deal for me though, the developer has stated that they will be patching the game to reduce load times which will be a well-liked feature when it is finally released.
The Career mode pits you the player against 25 different courses with challenges and shortcuts littered throughout the courses. It will probably take you a few tries to beat each track, especially since there are "achievements" within each track to unlock new items used in the Creation Studios. You will likely want to collect all of these, as the creation tools expand exponentially every time you add a new item to your creative pallet. Some of these challenges are "Grudge Matches", where after defeating an opponent on the track AND finishing 1st place, that opponent will challenge you 1-on-1 for the right to use their mod in the game. These matches are TOUGH, and you will need to be an expert at the course and handling your kart if you even are going to stand a fighting chance at beating these. Also littered on each course are tokens that can be used to purchase new items in the Shop, which is located in the ModSpot and the Creation Studio.
Now for the cream of the crop: the Creation Studio. Everyone has likely been comparing this game to Little Big Planet because of the customization you can do. In my opinion, this allows way more customization of your character than LittleBigPlanet. Through the use of unlocked accessories, hair pieces, clothing, shoes, gloves, hats, eyes, ears, noses, mouths, etc. you have the option to make your character as strange or awesome as you see fit! After putting the body together, you can change the color of anything you place on your mod, including different styles (which can be tweaked with a full color wheel) that can be unlocked. The color system is something that I tremendously applaud for this game. Anytime you place an object on your mod, or use something of a certain color, that color is added to either of the "Mod Colors", or "Kart Colors", so you can easily match colors and set things up just the way you want quickly and easily. It's so easy I was able to create look-alike characters from TV shows and movies within just a few minutes. There also is an aspect of stickers for the creation studios where you can layer and tweak each and every sticker that you want to put on your mod. From shapes, letters, numbers and other decals like flames, etc. you can dream up your imagination and put it on your mod or kart. Then you can resize, rotate, skew, cut, copy, layer and repaste your sticker designs on other parts of your mod or kart and even save them as sticker sets to use again later.
Each portion of the Creation Studio is divided into sub-menus which are not too complicated, but you will need more than just the game's instruction manual to become a master. UFG really did an excellent job with the creators, allowing simple creation, or really advanced creation. Each part you put on your mod or kart can be left as is when it first goes on, or you can dive into the deep customization abilities to create something so genuine that only you could create it. The L2 and R2 buttons are used to move to the next "area" of that specific menu, and the L1 button is usually reserved for advanced / basic edit toggling. The triangle button is typically the color option, whereby a color wheel can be viewed by pressing triangle again. Once you get the system under your belt you'll be amazed at the creations that you can come up with in ModNation Racers.
To top it off, you can then select your mods and karts that you have created, OR downloaded to race with friends and online/offline. That's right. Upload your creations to the PlayStation Network, and let other people download them. You can also allow players to "remix" your creation, where they will edit your creation and then re-upload it to the PSN. You still get the "creator" credit, and they get the remix credit. This system is absolutely solid, and it works extremely well. The Share spot of ModNation Racers is really easy to use and the developers took care to make sure that the karts, mods and tracks people create would be easy to find and download. There's an area for "Most Downloaded", "Most Raced", "Newest", or you can search by keywords which are used to describe your creation when you publish it.
The Track Studio is the only creator I haven't talked about. It's massive, and incredibly deep. Choose from 1 of 4 themes for your track and you drive a steam-roller to pave your track. You can create a simple loop, or you can go back and add monster jumps, bridges, tunnels, bank the road, make it narrow, add road hazards like construction barrels, crates, even rotating platforms. I could literally write a whole review on just this editor. It is that deep. You can change the elements and the direction that the sun shines, level of the water, and the type of road you will drive on. You can also create shortcuts, forks in the road, and add boost pads and weapons. Just like in LittleBigPlanet, all of the tracks in the career mode were made using the Track Studio. It's just incredible.
I played this game for literally 7 hours straight and I could not stop playing. It is FUN to play, and the community's imagination will blow you away. I saw downright amazing mods that looked like Mario, Iron Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even the Master Chief from Halo. Over the coming months players will upload unlimited content to choose from, and race from. If you don't like what other players do, create your own! It's that easy. Oh, and if you're worried about creating a super-looking track that people would actually want to play, you can just Auto-Populate your track in the editor which automatically adds scenery and gameplay items to the track so it looks like it took hours to make, when in reality it was only mere minutes.
I've waited a long time for a game like this to surface. Finally we have something on the PS3 which rivals the greatest kart racers of all time. Long load times will be fixed down the road, but the next generation of kart racing is here. If you're skeptical about your purchase, download the demo off the PSN. Trust me though when I say, if you buy this game, you will NOT be disappointed.
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Modnation Racers is the newest Kart Racing game in the Genre, and in my opinion, it is way ahead of the competition. Of course, this game is being compared to Mario Kart. Having never played the newest Mario Kart for Wii, I can't really compare the two much. I have, although played the older Mario Kart, and if the Wii version is nearly the same, I believe Modnation Racers tops it.
The Good: Modnation Racers is the kind of game that anybody can enjoy. The Track, Mod, and Kart creator are super simple and it has loads of different hairstyles, clothes, shoes, stickers, accessories, etc. I can easily see this having a huge library of user created content just like LittleBigPlanet. When you start the game, you automatically are entered into the MRC Qualifiers race and after a brief introduction you are taken to the ModSpot. Here is where everything happens on Modnation Racers, such as entering Online races, Split Screen, and Career races. There is also an area where Top Mods and Karts are displayed. I've seen mods of Mario, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Joker, and many more. With this many mods in just a few days, I'm positive there will be a TON of amazing mods in weeks. Other players connected to the PSN are also in the same ModSpot as you and can just ride around drifting or just simply enter one of the areas in the ModSpot.
The controls are also great. Drifting is easy and insanely addicting. When racing an Action Race, collect pods and you receive weapons. If you're tired of getting blown up, select Pure Race. Before you enter a race in the Career Mode, there is a little cinematic, sometimes with these two Hosts, or with you and your mechanic. These cinematics are filled with humor to give you a laugh or two before a race.
The Bad: The load and install times on this game can get ridiculously long. Though it's not something to keep you away from the game, sometimes you'll just want to jump into a race but have to wait almost an entire minute to begin. Mic support is a good feature, but I wish there wasn't so many people cursing and talking crap through their headsets, but there isn't really a way to fix that. Other than those two things listed, there really isn't much I've run into that is degrading to the game. *One more bad I ran into recently is that it takes forever to start up an XP race, which is what gives you the chance to progress on the Multiplayer side of Modnation. I'm not sure if people just don't know their way around the menus, or they all want to just race casually. Although it's a little disappointing as of now, I'm positive that in a short amount of time there will be much more people on the XP races*
Overall, in just a few days that people have had the game, there has been some really neat creations coming from the community. Hopefully in the future, there will be an update to help the load times.
All PS3 owners, GET THIS... or at least try it. :)
Buy Modnation Now
Lets make one thing clear right off: if you liked LittleBigPlanet and you like Mario Kart and other cart racers... stop reading and buy this game now!
Especially at the current price listed on Amazon (plus 10$ credit) which leads me to beleive its not selling well becasue people are hesitant, I can understadn that, so was I but a little preorder premotion and I thought "what the heck?" and I'm glad I made the plunge even at full fair (I got my Ratchet and Clank Mods for it so I'm happy)
That said, this game really surprised me, as I said before this was somethign of an impulse for me, I enjoyed the demo well enough for waht it was, but what really pushed me over the top was the preorder R+C mods, they get me every time :)
The first thing that I was surprised by was the imediate plunge into a rather enjoyable story including cutscenes which for some reason I did not expect at all. The story is somethign of a remix between Pixar's Cars, Days of Thudner, and Talldega Nights, and althoug the influence is storng, it has its own twist and flavor coupled with fantastic voice acting, the results are gold. The two announcers really steal the show, which is good becasue you'll be listening to alot of them, they have yet to get repetitive for me but its only been a day.
The racing, which i enjoyed in the demo, was not done justice by said demo. its great, drifting is much easier to pull off than Mario Kart, even the wii iteration which is incredibly drift friendly. But thats part-in-parcell with the MNR attitude, drifting is easiy and FUN, boosts are plentiful, jumps are abundant and weapons are thouroughly satisfying (you might remember soem of them from Mario Kart, adn the rest from wipeout ;) )
Right away I was amazed with the user creations in Character Mods, Kart Mods, and Courses. I'll save discusion of coruses for one paragraph. The Mods peopel have made are AMAZING considering its day one. It's definately a diparture from the LBP attitude where Sackboy retained his likness no mattter what making certain customues something of a technical feat. In MRC the tools are much more robust, and the result is (among other's) and Iron MAn that you'd swear was designed in Maya as opposed to in-game. KArts are the same thing, I'm currently racing around on a perfect replica of the A-team van, how awesome?
Course creation is ABSURDLY easy, another departure from LBP. I made two courses in barely 20 minutes total which I'm sure would impress my friends, but when you sample soem of the things created by a truely dedicated player, well the results speak for themselves.
Unfortunately this leads me into the only bad... they did a great job which this hub world where other onlien palyers race around with you, very reminiscant of Home, but its pretty hard to get into an online game as it stands. I wasn't feling very patient so I din't bother wating around for peopel to join me, especailly as they would enevitably be strangers. Unfortuantely none of my freinds have purchased this game which might make a difference but if you liek me, most likly alone in your friend group on you interest in this game, you might find getting into an actual online race a bit of a pain. this combined with soem rather cumbersome loading times is a bit of a stumblign block on what is otherwise non-stop fun. But on the other hand the ability to access other peoples content on you own time is incredibly easiy, with fantastic AI on nonplayer opponents, adn a time trail mode which allows you to feel like your part of a larger comunnity without hte hassle of finding any of them to race with you.
And the single palyer circuit is fantastic! That alone will keep me happy for hours I'm sure.
All in all, this game is a great Kart racer, with very robust user creation tools and a well thoughout and setup infastructure for sahring them, clearly United Front Games learned from LBP in this regard. But for a game which is so clearly ment for online play its a bit difficult to get into a gme and more importantly share a game with others. To be fair, some of this is equation has to do with the ammount of user's, but it felt like I only had access to one game option when I tried to join, whcih was empty, an no one joined my hosted games, its hard to say why, it jsut was. I will edit if this experience drmatically changes. But also the laod times are a bit logner then we have coem to expect, I've heard a patch is comming but this game was day one patched as well...
But I don't want to end on hat note because this game really blew my mind in all the right ways and if you have an interest in the genre then its a steal at full price let alone what its listed on Amazon. You will not be sorry you picked up this little gem. Obviously thsoe who dislike Kart Racing games need not aply.
P.S. for the record I own and LOVE Mario Kart Wii, this game is not a MK killer, but its worthy to be right up there with it.
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To start off with, the game play of this title is Fun with a capital F. Think Mario Kart on steroids. The user created content that you can download is unbelievable. I am amazed by the artistic ability of people. But by now, you've read the other reviews about the game play , etc etc, so I will not go into the details just to beat a dead horse.
For me, as much fun and original as this game is, I find myself thinking about returning it to Game Stop or simply selling it on eBay.
One of the features that was in Mario Kart which I absolutely loved and would be game-breaking without, was the different "cup" series. Each MK cup series had its own difficulties based on tracks and opponents. MNR does not have a single player version. There is a multi player mini-series (if can really call it that), where you can play 5 tracks in succession. That's fine and dandy except I don't think I've finished a singles series. Maybe got through two or three races before the other players dropped.
The career mode was very hard and I'm not knocking it at all, but I would have liked it a lot better had they included a true championship mode (even if you need to unlock it somehow) where you can race some/all the tracks in a series against the elite CPU drivers that you faced in the career mode storyline; a series that would tally points for you and the computer, based on your finishing position of each race and let you race all the tracks and give a 'Champion' at the end. What you are given instead, is a career mode angled toward the user created content. Most of your unlocks during the play through are for cosmetic tools and graphics for your track/mod/kart creations down the line. Also, once you go through the career mode and go back and run a previous race in it...it still splashes the same cut scenes you already encountered at the same points. In fact, if you re-race a track in career mode, you actually unlock the same items you've already unlocked. I'm not sure why they even called it a "Career Mode", it should have been titled "Story Mode". Even though they do include some rudimentary stats for your 'offline' play, there really is no offline career to be had. All career-"centric" play time is centered on the online-multi player scene.
And currently the online multiplayer piece of this game is lacking. Most of the time, you enter an online race and you are the first one in the lobby. It could easily take 5-10 minutes to get enough players (4) to start a race. If you are lucky, those players will stick around for another race afterwards. If not, it starts from square one, with you waiting for other players to join.
I am sure, without a doubt, that the load times for the races and the multi player aspect of the game will be fixed with future patches and I don't have a problem waiting for it; my main beef is not having the single player option to run a series as it completely ruins the re-playability of MNR for me. So all in all, if you are into creativity and multi-player racing is your thing, then this game is for you. As I said, with the glaring problems the game has in the online world, I have no doubt they are working on a fix and you should definitely go out and buy this title.
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I've only owned ModNation Racers for a couple days, but I'm already absolutely certain this is the best kart racer ever made (sorry Mario Kart). This is, simply put, the LittleBigPlanet of racing games.
The base game and tracks are fun in themselves, but the real beauty here lies with all of the customization. Everything from your racer, your kart, to every little detail of the track you're making is fully customizable. You can choose to make your racer into somebody famous, or choose to make them into something totally outlandish. All the options and how to utilize them are easily learned, so much so that my kids were creating some pretty impressive things in almost no time at all. Even the track creator is amazingly simple to use, much more so than LittleBigPlanet's level creator.
The load times can get a bit tedious, but with how smooth the frame rates and overall gameplay are, it's well worth the wait. Replay value is tremendous, and the community is already loaded with user-created content to check out. This game is definitely kid friendly in almost all aspects, but if you let your kids play online I wouldn't recommend letting them wear a headset, as foul language is rampant and not moderated. That's not the game's fault though, it's pretty much the same with any other online-enabled game out there.
Overall, ModNation Racers is a great game, and I would highly recommend it for young and old alike.
