14 DAY TRIAL // 
I caught all the power ups along the track, got the rocket swarm and kept a twitchy finger over the Square button of the PlayStation 3 controller, just in case a dude or two were faster than me and needed to be blown off the track.
I must hang on to this number one. As I slide along one corner, I get sideswiped by one guy and miss the perfect track, hitting the concrete wall on the side of the track. Just as I manage to get rolling again and use some of my boost get back into the race, someone deploys the sonic weapon and makes my avatar cover his ears in terror. I was first, now I'm seventh and have little hope to get back on the podium. And it's all happened in just one lap.
That's what great casual console racing is all about and what Mario Kart did so well on the Nintendo Wii. This is what United Front Games and Sony manage on the PlayStation 3 with ModNation Racers, adding customization and community options that push it well beyond the Mario-powered racer.
There's also a PlayStation Portable version of the game but as long as you own the Sony home console, it's worth getting the game for it simply because of the community features and better graphics.
The core of the actual racing of ModNation Racers is in knowing when to drift and when to boost. I would go so far as to say that every moment spent on the track not drifting, drafting, blowing someone up or aiming for a power up is a wasted one for the truly competitive racer. Anyone can easily understand the rule and driving skills alone will only get you so far with judicious application of violence towards the other competitors needed to get to number one. Once a player gets there, they become the target for the violent impulses of others and the track also has some serious hazards at times. The game is fast and every track needs to be played through at least one time before a good placing can be achieved, especially when facing off against other humans. The weapons are never overpowered and can never alone decide the fate of one race but the constant shifting between drifting around corners and boosting on straight lines can be a bit repetitive after a while.
ModNation Racers has all the options you would expect from a racer. There's a Quick Race option, which allows the gamer to choose a track and then jump straight into the action and a Career mode that introduces the kart competition as a big sporting event in a fantasy universe with the player cast as the newcomer who relies on a odd old mechanic and on their mother to get ahead of the competition. It's cute but it's not the main draw of the game.
The real highlights of ModNation Racers are the creation options. To give you an example from the time I got the videogame and till I finished my review, the top drivers created by users included a Mario image, which was so good it could be adopted by Nintendo as an official one, a Spider Man clone that was a bit too shiny and a replica of Iron Man that also suffered from a hyper reflection issue. One of the top cars was a Ferrari clone, one looked like a Thomas the Engine attempt and the other resembled the minibus of the Ghostbusters. It's not clear how the developers at United Front Games and Sony are planning to deal with copyright infringing user created content (judging by the Little Big Planet example, everything that is questionable might disappear) but the fact that the abovementioned creations exist is a testament to how ridiculously easy to use the creation options are in ModNation Racers, when it comes to drivers and karts.
The process seems to be a bit more complicated when actual tracks are the focus, but it's still way easier than in other editors. There's an option to just lay down some track by actually driving around and then having the game itself fill in the rest of the elements, like power ups or speed pads. The developers at United Friend Games have tried to make the experience simple to understand and easy to use but it still takes some skill to put together a truly good track.
One issue with the customization options linked to the kart and the driver is that their impact is very, very limited. It's nice to be able to create a racer that looks like Prince and a car based on his famous customized guitars but there's no actual impact on the racing performance coming from all the modifications. Basically, apart from moving two sliders left or right, emphasizing acceleration over speed or drifting abilities over cornering, the player has the same racing machine as all others on the track. Inserting a limited layer (no need for the same level of tweaking as in Gran Turismo) of accessories and parts that can influence performance would have added a tactical element to the customization and might have drawn in more competitive players. Its absence is not a huge problem to an already overcrowded experience but it might be something for the developers to think about for the inevitable sequel.
One problem with ModNation Racers is its long lead times. Even after an update and a hard drive install, which itself takes quite some time, the game needs quite a bit of time just to go from and to the main hub area, which leads to races and the customization options.
Graphics and audio
ModNation Racers looks very good, in motion, when racing around the track and when swapping in and out bits and pieces to create a character, kart or track. There are no slowdowns, even when a full complement of racers is on screen and sonic booms are going on around the player while shields are frantically being deployed. The effects are also appropriate if a little bit violent for some people’s taste. There are also pretty cinematics linked to the Career progression, some of them incredibly funny (I especially liked the one about the bland car that shields the buyer from threat of carjacking).
The voices could have used a little work. All the actors seem to be very aware that the story sections and the pre-race talk is just filling and that quite a lot of the audience might hit X as quickly as possible once they start in order to skip them. The music and the actual racing noises are quite well done, even though some of the tracks are catchy enough at first to actually take me out of the race and lead to a restart when I failed to complete my objective.
Multiplayer ModNation Racers is uniquely suited to cater to the people who cannot stand to race against AI opponents and need a real human to shout at when they win or lose. The game automatically tries to log into the PlayStation Network when it starts and it's very simple to get online, choose a course, the players to race against and then launch the competition. The options when choosing which type of races to take part in aren't always clearly spelled out and there are some issues with players dropping out of games at the most inopportune times but as a community coalesces around the game, this will probably be solved.
It's also easy to set up a split screen race for those who are willing to share a console and live with the slightly reduced field of view that comes with it. It might lead to some strong words being exchanged but playing with other real people, over the net or in the same room, is the best way to enjoy the actual racing element of ModNation Racers. Just make sure your PlayStation 3 console is up to date firmware-wise and you have a free PlayStation Network account.
Conclusion This can be the definitive racing title on the Sony home console for all those who were enthralled by the creation and sharing possibilities opened up by Media Molecule with Little Big Planet. Sony seems really interested in the concept of “Create, Play, Share” and ModNation Racers is just the thing to push it forward. The task of making small changes to karts, drivers and even tracks appears much less daunting to the player than putting together a whole platforming level. And the aesthetic is similar enough to draw in the Little Big Planet crowd.
It's a competent racer when compared to Mario Kart Wii and has a wider customer base than something like Blur. Get it, race a little, make your own driver (I suggest taking your favorite novel character and attempting a recreation rather than infringing on the copyright of movie and comic book makers) and wait for the soon-to-come “Create, Play, Share” third person shooter.
