Modnation Racers Review – A Creation Sensation

Modnation Racers was punted off as Sony’s 2010 poster child for their Play. Create. Share. brand, which encourages gamers to not only just play games of this sort, but get more creatively involved with their online communities.

It’s a no brainer that kart racing games do well (just ask that other Italian plumber guy) and with games like Little Big Planet showcasing the potential of the Play. Create. Share. brand, it seemed like a really good idea to take those two ideas and build them into one game.

Does it drift to glory, or is the combination nothing more than a recipe for a flat tire? Find out in our full review of Modnation Racers.

So then… Modnation Racers is a kart racer. What does that mean? Well, without beating around the bush, it really just means that it’s a Mario Kart clone. This means that you see your kart from behind, you can drift around corners, you can boost and you can collect picks-ups that range from blasting missiles into opponents to shielding yourself from incoming attacks.

Many of us already have Mario Kart on the Wii though, and it comes with a cool plastic steering wheel, so besides some HD graphics, what makes Modnation Racers any different?

The Play. Create. Share. brand from Sony is seen in full force in Modnation Racers, and what the developers have done, is taken this kart racer, and dumped the worlds amount of customisation abilities onto it.

Pretty much everything you do in Modnation Racers (besides actually racing) is based around the concept of being creative. You can create your own personal characters using tons and tons of textures, stickers, body parts and who knows what else. More can be unlocked as you play the game and the end result can be incredibly entertaining.

^ And they said that Master Chief would never come to the PS3

The very same goes for the vehicles, where you are given nothing but a go-kart frame, and have the ability to whip up crazy personalised vehicles like vans, single seaters, muscles cars, rice rockets and so on. You can add wings, mirrors, stickers and even cool unlockable extras like old-school steam engines that serve no purpose other than to look awesome.

For the cars and characters, the top 3 are actually shown off in a big display in the main lobby area, so getting yours up there means that you have some hot property. I have seen tons of creations that range from Xenomorphs, Spiderman and Iron Man to the A-Team van and F1 lookalikes.

As well as characters and cars, one of the biggest features is the ability to entirely design your very own tracks. Being a petrol-head, I just couldn’t resist picking Kyalami, my favourite local circuit, as my own personal project.

Within less than an hour, I was able to whip up an awesome version of Kyalami (complete with the castle and all). While it obviously wasn’t going to be a realistic representation, the process was fairly simple and quite enjoyable. After completing the circuit I was able to jump straight into a quick race and have a go at it myself.

^ Kyalami never looked so pretty, and hilly… and… hey where the hell did that mountain come from?

None of this would make too much sense though if you couldn’t properly share any of your creations with anyone else, so a share centre allows you to upload all of your creations for the rest of the world to enjoy.

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Last Updated: July 5, 2010