Posted by Gar at Thursday June 10th, 2010

#729 "B"

I mentioned ModNation Racers in tuesday's blog. While I've been mostly playing Red Dead Redemption, ModNation has taken up enough of my time for me to be able to get a good impression of it.

It's basically Mario Kart for the PS3. The weapons are a bit different and drifting fills a bar rather than just giving you a little boost when you exit the drift, but yeah, it's pretty much Mario Kart. Which is good because the PS3 didn't have a Mario Kart until now.

The gameplay is instantly familiar. Karts basically handle like they do in Mario Kart, you can tweak the handling to get better acceleration at the cost of top speed and vice-versa, and you can make it so you drift better or steer better. Basically for if you prefer playing 'Heavy' or 'light' characters. There's only two clicks on either side of the default zero ("Mario") setting, but you do notice the difference. This variation is determined by the player rather than being a property of each kart, so you can have one that handles the way you like regardless of which character and vehicle you pick.

Of course instead of classic Nintendo characters, you're driving characters that you create yourself or that have been created by other players. Creations can be uploaded to the main server and downloaded and you can give each character a rating out of five stars. Unsurprisingly, the number one download character as at the time of writing is a Mario someone created.

The customisation tools are really good. I've made McJefferstein and a McJeffermobile, Alice, Eli, and Eli's car (all of which you can download if you search for them). I've made a pretty good Hubris too, but the hat's wrong, and I have to play more of the single player to unlock a trilby.

That's the main gripe I have with the creation kit: there are hundreds of different kinds of eyes and mouths and clothes and accessories and chassis for the karts and stuff, but you get access to less than half of them at the start. You're given a Lot from the start, and it does incentivise single-player mode, but single-player is kind of hard, and I want to play with the awesome digital Lego NOW!

Also you can't edit the body shape of characters or preset car chassis, but loading times are long enough without even more deformation data for the system to handle.

Track creation's really good too. You drive a big track-laying truck around a flat landscape to get the shape of your track, then you can either spend ages fiddling with it (which produces the best tracks), or you can press a button to get the computer to populate your track with items and traps. Tracks and characters can be edited at any time, so you're not stuck with something if you don't like it.

I actually think it's a better game than Mario Kart for the Wii. The graphics are shinier, the tracks aren't as wide and empty, the AI competitors don't cheat as blatantly, and there's no fucking Blue Shell. However, there are long load times before each race (hopefully there'll be a patch to alleviate that somewhat soon) and it actually gets slightly repetitive. You'll be racing on a different track almost every time, so the racing is all reactions-based rather than being about knowing the track.

Basically it's a good kart-racing game with a Really good track and character creation kit, and thousands of tracks readily available. I'd definitely recommend getting it, but I don't think it's quite worth the price of a brand new game. Neko the Kitty gives it Zero Thumbs Up, and I strongly recommend you get it when it's about €30-35.