Finally, a kart racer that mixes things up and while it looks cute, it's not made for your little kid brother.
First, let me say this is not your little brother's Kart racing game. This game is challenging, sometimes almost unfair in how difficult it is. It really makes you work to win and sometimes the AI is just nasty difficult. There will be moments when you want to throw your controller through your TV. But that's ok, that means the game is challenging, anything easier and you would be bored, anything harder and you would give up. But ModNation Racer is an addictive game and is almost certainly going to keep you coming back for more.
I should stop for a moment to say that yes, the load times are long. But not overly-so, yes we've come to expect more. But the game plays like a dream. It's colorful and simply amazing to look at. The driving controls are tight, kart-like and simple. Once you're racing you immediately forget about the 45 seconds you spent waiting for the race to load. Once you're zooming down the track drifting, spinning, getting power ups, getting closer to the edge of your couch, everything else slips your mind.
The Career mode is deep and engaging. Each race has three different objectives. The first is often simple as completing the race finishing third or better which allows you to progress to the next race. But the other objectives include finishing first and getting 10,000 drift points. Completing the more complicated objectives allows you to unlock more things for the more creative side which has been endlessly compared to Little Big Planet.
I'm going to admit when I first saw this game, I thought it was just another Kart knock off game. They had it playing on a demo PS3 hooked up to a 60" TV at Best Buy and I still hadn't decided whether or not to get a PS3 or an xbox 360. This is one of a few games that caused me to lean towards getting a PS3. I wasted hours in that Best Buy playing this game and experimenting with the creative options, which are what really got me hooked on this game.
Let's face it, making cool characters is nice (and with 10x more options than creating your Mii on your Wii, the sky is almost the limit to your creativity), making Karts is fun, it's the Track builder that really shines. Ever imagined what it would be like to play Mario Kart with your friends on a track that you had built? No more imagination needed, the reality is here, my friends, and it's called ModNation Racers. The Track editor/creator is AMAZING. It is intuitive and yet has a depth to it that is incredible. I can get lost for hours trying to make a good race track and I've only scratched the surface, I am by no means good at making race courses in this game.
The last thing I want to tell you about this game, and it's the power up system. Let's face it, Mario Kart allows for some pretty limited skills when it comes to playing, giving the person in last place amazing power-ups while the person in first place putts around the track holding a green shell behind them or a banana, hoping to use it shield themselves from the impending doom of a blue shell or whatever thing-a-ma-jig the racers who are eating their dust are getting with their power-ups. The power-up system here gives you various kinds of really cool power ups, but the more time you hit the power-up things, the more your power up becomes more powerful. It's worth it to get to level three, almost always. Protecting yourself from this mayhem rest in your drifting, airtime which fills your boost meter which can either be spent on boost power or shields adding a whole new level of amazing, challenging greatness onto this kart racer. Like I said before, this is not your little brother's Kart racer.