Modnation Racers will bring you hundreds of hours of fun and challenges
The tracks are designed so that it is possible to perform drifts all the way through the lap, and doing this is crucial for success. By pulling off successful drifts, you accumulate points which can be used for either boosting or shielding against incoming threats. This is a great dynamic in gameplay, as it gives you options, if you're in the lead you might save it for in case some rockets come flying from behind, but if you're last nobody is gonna shoot at you so it's a great way to catch up with the crowd. However things are not so black and white once you're in the middle, as that is where all the fun takes place. Playing Modnation Racers takes skill, and it's the nature of such kart racers that usually it's the first one ahead of the pack that gets fired at the most, this is something you will just have to accept, as staying in the lead is what counts.
There's quite a few tracks available to play in career mode, and many of these have dastardly traps, sharp turns, forks in the road or hidden shortcuts. These hidden shortcuts are particularly well done, as they are designed so that taking them brings great risk but gives out rewards for doing so, as these paths might sometimes even be slightly longer than the regular path, but has powerups or boost pads up for grabs. Tuning your car is also possible, performance can be modified a bit to better suit your style of driving, so might want to decrease acceleration to increase top speed, or decrease handling to increase your drifting capabilities for example, regardless of the size or look of your car.
Weapons are acquired by collecting pickups scattered throughout the track and there are only four different types (rockets, lightning, boost and sound blast). You might think this is a small arsenal, however it really is not. Each of these can be upgraded twice by picking up additional power-ups, as well as dropped behind as a mine whenever you so desire. The option to use any weapon you might have as a mine is also a great dynamic, as you don't have to worry about getting weapons you simply won't be needing when you're in the lead. The higher your weapon is upgraded the larger the trigger area of the mine will be.
Each of the weapon upgrades is distinctly unique, the first and the most basic one is hard to aim with, but it's fast and unpredictable to shield against. The second level of weapons have a larger range and are slightly more powerful, as well as also homing for the racer in front of you. The third and final level of weapons are the most powerful and deadly of all, these projectiles will hit all of the racers that are located in front of you throughout the entire track. Every time an enemy projectile is incoming you get a little warning signal in order you can prepare and time your shield accordingly, however all of the different combinations of weapons have slightly different timing, so everything is not as easy as it might sound.
Now I know what you're thinking, but you cannot just keep gathering pickups and upgrading your weapons to max all of the time, that's because every time you get hit by someone else you will lose your current powerup or get lowered to a previous one, so sometimes you will have to make quick choices and decide what's best suited for the current situation. The game will also sometimes throw you a bone, players that are falling behind will frequently get the speed boost power up, while players in the lead won't, making it easier for players that are either less skilled or are out of luck to keep up with the pack. Despite all of the deadly weapons you'll be needing to watch out for, your biggest enemy is actually the wall. Hitting the wall will not only make you lose all of the momentum you had, but will usually also make your car take an awkward turn as well, so being able to drift smoothly through any kind of corner is of utmost importance.
Online can be pretty chaotic at times, if you end up playing in a full lobby be prepared to respawn often. Thankfully you can still earn experience points even if you don't finish in the top three, as experience is awarded for both stunts performed and combat as well, though technically experience doesn't offer you any kind of rewards apart from leveling up. Sometimes it can be quite fun just staying back and shooting the guy in the lead with homing rockets. Split screen play is also available, up to 4 players can play both offline and online. Part of the fun in playing is due to it's dynamic factors and randomness. There are many moving and rotating elements placed on and off the track, so you never know what their state might be when you get near. Avoiding these or risking safe but faster passage makes the whole experience into a more a give or take kinda approach, as you will often be calculating what is the best possible route or decision you can make in your current situation.
So is the customization any good? You bet it is! In fact, there are so many possibilities available that it might even be a bit too much for some players to take in. Characters, cars and tracks can be modified and customized with a crazy amount of detail. Thankfully if you don't feel like meddling with any of this you can quickly randomize to get something fun or awkward, or you can simply just download something that other users have created, your favorite characters are sure to have been recreated already. Creating new tracks can be pretty easy as well, as it only takes a couple of second to lay it down. The tracks can be populated automatically. It's pretty practical, but that often isn't the best solution, so if you're planning on creating a crazy and perfect track, be prepared to invest quite a few hours into this. Weapons cannot be customized, but it is possible to turn them off and have a normal regular round of fair racing if you desire so for your custom tracks.
Unfortunately, everything is not so fine and dandy in the land of Play, Create, Share. User generated levels are often not properly balanced, ugly or even downright unplayable. There are filters to use for browsing content, but when playing casual online matches there is no way of knowing what kind of track the host will pick next, and playing a track with many paths and forks where only the creator knows the fastest and shortest route isn't really all that fun, especially if he made some hidden passages for him to take advantage of.
The loading time between races seems to be Modnations weakest link. It's not all that much aggravating, as sometimes it can only take 5 seconds, but sometimes it might even take 20 or more seconds, depending on how big or cluttered the track is. However while it loads you do get to read on some tips and also take a quick rest which you will be needing between any of the hectic races. Thankfully once the track loads, it stays like that. Restarting an event is done instantly so you can quickly reattempt any of the difficult challenges the game will have to offer. If you once enjoyed a similar game like Crash Team Racing, know that Modnation is just as good and will bring you hundreds of fun hours and challenges, as well as infinite content thanks to all of the people out there creating new tracks every day. There really is no reason why you shouldn't support United Front Games when they even let you play their DLC tracks online without even having to buy the DLC itself.