Mario + Sweet Tooth = So Wrong Yet So Right..
ModNation Racers punches you in the face with copyright infringement the moment you take a look at all the crazy user-made karts and mods. But did this game capture that same satisfying aspect of Kart racing that Nintendo has with Mario Kart?
ModNation Racers is a kart-style racing game exclusive for the Playstation 3 from United Front Games, basing itself around Sony’s “Play. Create. Share.” It’s what you’d expect from a kart racer--kart racing, drifting, boosting and weapons--but it’s a little different from what you’re use to. Your boost bar is not only used for boosting, but for a shield as well. You can fill your boost bar by drifting, or doing tricks and spinning while in mid-air. The boost works great, of course and shielding is, well, a shield! You’ll want to use the shield when a projectile is coming at you (which there are a lot of… all the weapons are basically red shells, except for the boost power-up.) You can also use the right analog stick to swiftly car-check left or right, smashing cars into walls or off the track if timed right.
The weapons, as said before, are much like red shells. But in this case, when you first pick up a power up it starts at level 1. You can then use it, or save it to increase the level of that power up by picking up more power up orbs, which when it hits level 3 (3 orb pickups in total for max level), it’ll be a much more devastating attack. The level 3 of all the weapons in this game aren’t balanced, but they’re still fun nonetheless.
When you first get online and into the ModSpot the first thing you’ll see is the latest and most popular cars and mods; which are all available for download, free! Also from here you can do everything in the game; go to the Creation Studio, start a race with friends, download more mods/karts, career mode, etc… It’s essentially an interactive main menu, but takes a little while to load into.
The Creation Studio is wild. This is where you can make tracks, mods and karts. The track editor is what you make of it, but to those who have a creative edge, you can do anything. You could actually make a track in less than 2 minutes, by just paving it out with the simple to use road-paving tool, then auto-populating the track with whichever set of items you prefer. The Kart and Mod creation tools are out of this world. You can literally do anything. I’m actually terrible at designing Mods and Karts and its okay if you’re too; there are plenty of creative people out there creating any crazy Mod, track or Kart you can think of.
This game was released May 25th with difficult AI and bad load times. In August, a patch was released, adding casual difficulty, and 50% faster load times. The patch seems to have helped; my load times (not saying 50% faster) have been cut down, but it still feels a little excessive. The casual difficulty is a nice addition and makes the campaign a bit more attractive now to players looking for trophies or not interested in the online experience.
But to me, I just can’t find the magic in this kart experience like I did in all of the Mario Kart games before. I do love the customization, but I feel like I should have a Nintendo character in my driver seat. Wait… Yoshi and Mario are on the downloadable Mod list… Okay, you got me there. Never the less, this is a great kart game for Playstation 3 owners.
