Play, Create and Share seems to be the latest initiative Sony is trying to push to their audience with the release of LittleBigPlanet in 2008 and now ModNation Racers, a kart racing game brings customisation options and allows you to share your creations with the world. Are Sony and developers United Front Games just trying to cash in on this interesting new initiative or have they provided us with a deep toolset and a fantastic kart racing game to boot?

The Mod in the games title is an abbreviation for modify, and that is certainly what you can do in ModNation Racers. Starting from a blank canvas, you have a ton of customise options to create a racer or kart to your particular liking. When creating a racer, you firstly choose 1 of 47 skins as a base and then proceed to add further detail such as eyes, noses, hair, facial hair, clothes, stickers, props and even choose what voice your racer will have. As you can imagine, there is a wide variety of options in each of these categories. For example, in the clothes category you can choose from 40 different bottoms from your character ranging from different styled trousers, shorts and race trousers, and then you have the option to further alter the colour of the clothing you’ve selected. After you’ve eventually chosen what lower garments you want, you can then mess around with choosing masks, eyewear, handwear, headgear and shoes. For the extremely creative among you, there are hundreds of stickers you can apply to your racer, and you can of course modify the sticker t your hearts content, whether that be altering the size, shape or colour of the sticker to find the look you’re aiming for.

The same applies for when creating a kart. You start with a blank design and can choose from 49 different bodies for a base layer, and then continue to paint your kart, add parts such as different engines, seats, suspension and steering wheels and then add random accessories which range from bizarre objects such as apples, magnets, and even ninja throwing stars if you wish. You can literally waste hours designing different racers and karts due to the deep customisation options United Front Games have provided. The menus are extremely easy to navigate and each category is clearly labelled and this makes creating in ModNation Racers a breeze and a surprisingly fun alternative to the actual game.

I found creating a level in LittleBigPlanet a chore rather than an enjoyment due to the complicated controls, but thankfully United Front Games have made creating your own track childs play.  Laying the track couldn’t be easier; you simply drive a bulldozer and the track automatically lays for you. You can switch to a birds-eye view which allows you to easily design some dangerous drift corners and link the track back up to the finish line without worrying abut running out of space, and you can change the elevation of the track at any point and therefore you can include some treacherous hill-climbs and tons of jumps if you wish. After you’ve linked up to the start of the track and finished your design, you are asked if you want the game to auto populate the track which will add all the necessary details such as trees, buildings, direction indicators, boost pads and item pick-ups. This is incredibly handy if you’re short of time, can’t be bothered or lack the creative prowess to add such details. You can always edit the track further yourself, adding the finishing touches by deleting any props you don’t like and adding any you desire.

United Front Games have done a fantastic job of making the creative tools accessible to everyone, whether you want to just play around and see what you can come up with or want to try and create a famous gaming/real life character or dedicate hours of your life to creating a fun course to race around. You can take your creations online and share them with the world, and other gamers can comment on your creations and give them a 5-star rating. Getting feedback on your hard work can be very rewarding and also useful so you know what can be improved. The fact you can upload your work for everyone else to download means the game is constantly being updated with user-generated content and therefore ModNation Racers has infinite replayability value. Some brilliant designs have already been uploaded aswell such as The Stig from the television programme Top Gear, classic characters Mario, Luigi and Sonic and even Iron Man. On the kart side of things, the classic A-team van is available to download along with a Ferrari Formula 1 car and the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo! The Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix track has been expertly re-created by some clever-gamer along with hundreds of other fun and challenging tracks to download and play with friends or take online.

Moving away from the creation side of things, ModNation Racers is a brilliant kart racing game in its own right and brings some interesting new ideas to the genre. The tracks are littered with Item Pods which when picked up give you access to weapons and items to give you an advantage in the race. The innovative idea here is the levelling up system with the item pods. If you are patient enough, you are rewarded with more powerful weapons and items. The first pod you pick up will be a level 1 item, with the second being level 2 and third pod upgrading to a level 3 item. An example of this is the missiles. Level 1 and the first pod is a basic straight forward shot, with the level 2 and the second pod providing you with homing missiles and finally level 3 allowing you to take out multiple opponents at the same time. This levelling up system adds strategic play to the game and encourages you to think about your weapons/items instead of using them as soon as you pick them up.

Drifting is a huge part of ModNation Racers and has been implemented with perfection due to a simplistic control system. Tapping the X button will make your kart start drifting and all you have to do is control the direction of the kart with the left stick. I’ve never been a fan of drifting in racing games before but United Front Games have managed to make it fun, and this is fortunate due to some of the tracks requiring you to drift around tons of tight, tricky bends. Like most other kart racing games these days, drifting and drafting behind other cars fills up a boost meter which you can use for a burst of extra speed when needed. ModNation Racers has gone one further by allowing you to shield yourself by pressing the Circle button when an incoming attack is about to hit you. Using the shield drains a substantial amount of your boost meter but can come in very useful. This feature adds further tactics to the game and makes you think if you should boost when out in front to gain distance on the field or save your boost meter for a shield incase you get attacked. I found instances where I still got hit and span out even when I used the shield and this can become infuriating, but fortunately the shield works the majority of the time.

The Career mode in ModNation Racers has you making a name for yourself and trying to win the ModNation Racers Championship; hardly an original idea there then. You’re guided throughout by an ex-racer who teaches you the ropes and tries to stop rival companies from gaining your signature. The story is told between races in a cut-scene television format, presented by the comical characters Biff Tradwell and Gary Reasons who are constantly having a go at each other. This is done extremely well and provides many laugh out loud moments throughout the career mode; I actually found myself wanting to play more of the Career, just so I could see what the next insult Biff Tradwell would use! The Career mode is made up 5 different Tours you must win, with the first 3 tours consisting of 5 races with the final 2 tours consisting of 8 races each. There is a good variety of tracks throughout the career mode which keeps the game from becoming sour, and the difficulty of the tracks certainly increases, with more bends and tougher competition being present as you progress towards the latter stages.

Each race in the Career mode has 3 objects you can complete to unlock new customisation options to use on your racers, karts and tracks. Every race has the objective of finishing 3^rd or better in order to advance and rewards you with 3 new customisation options, with the two other objectives differing each time. The 2^nd objective is generally a skill based objective such as finish 1^st and achieve 100,000 drift points or 15,000 spin points, with the 3^rd objective focusing on taking down a certain opponent in the race; one who normally mocks you in the races opening cut-scene, and therefore revenge will be sweet. Objectives are a great addition to the game as they give you something to think about and aim for throughout the race and provide an incentive to re-try the race at a later date to unlock more customisation options if you failed to do so the first time. There is also 3 tokens hidden throughout each track which you can use to unlock new random customisation options from the shop.

Quick Play mode is available where you can play any of the pre-made tracks along with the tracks you have created yourself or downloaded from other users. 4 player split-screen is available for those lucky enough to have huge displays and real-life friends to play with! Unfortunately there is a slight frame-rate drop when the action gets intense in split-screen mode but not enough to put you off playing with your friends. Online play is of course available and is a highlight of the game with up to 12 player races providing some frantic and exciting gameplay. If you’re in a chilled out mood and want some stressful gameplay, you can join or host a casual race, whereas XP races and series will be the choice for more competitive gamers who want to rank up their racer and unlock customisable options along the way. The lure of 12 player races in multiplayer sound fantastic but I found that the reality was the host starting the race as soon as the required 4 players had joined. While still fun, the races were no-way near as intense as 12 races which have the ability to provide some epic moment and loads of great memories.

The HUB and starting point of the game is called the ModSpot and this is where you can access all of the games features, aswell as meet and chat to other gamers who are driving around. The area is a good idea and presented well, allowing you a short drive to each of the features such as Career and Online modes, aswell as showing big statues of the highest rated Mods created. There is also a section which will allow you to test drive future download content United Front Games releases, and this is a brilliant feature more games should implement. Whilst the ModSpot is a great idea, it seriously suffers from frame-rate drops when there is other users driving about at the same time and this will often make you take a shortcut by pressing the start button which brings up a wheel, allowing you to quickly skip to your desired location instead of driving there and interacting with other gamers.

The frame-rate drops in split-screen mode and the ModSpot aren’t the issues with ModNation Racers however. The game suffers badly from painful loading times which can often take up to 2 or 3 minutes at a time. This is a real shame when you’ve just watched a fantastic cut-scene which puts you in the mood to burn some rubber and destroy your competitors, only to have to sit there and stare at the screen for 2 minutes and lose all motivation you once had. Strangely enough, you have to wait a few minutes at a loading screen before you even have the honour of seeing the starting menu, which then makes you wait while you connect to the online portion of the game, and therefore it takes approximately 5 minutes before you can even start driving around what appears to be a laggy ModSpot. Apart from the horribly long loading times which might put a few people off the game, my other issue with the game is how brutal the A.I suddenly appear in the latter stages of the Career mode. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad about tough competition and challenging races, but when you’re in 1^st place and get hit by 3 consecutive missiles and haven’t got enough shield to see off all 3 attacks, falling back to a pitiful 9^th place on the final lap and having to restart the race can become extremely tedious; especially after your 15^th attempt.

ModNation Racers isn’t full of incredible textures or jaw-dropping lighting effects but the game makes up for this with colourful graphics and fun personality. You’ll rarely look at the screen and be amazed at the graphics, nor will you think to yourself “what a terrible looking game”; well, apart from when your racers hair sticks out through their headgear which is a strange glitch I find hard to believe United Front Games missed. There are 48 Trophies to unlock throughout your time with ModNation Racers. You will easily earn bronze Trophies for carrying out simple tasks such as winning races, playing online, creating a mod/kart/track and there are plenty of Trophies which will keep you playing the game for a lengthy period of time, and these include earning at least 5,000 XP in online races, achieving rank 30 and completing all of the Career challenges/objectives.

ModNation Racers is a brilliant kart racing game in its own right, bundled with a fantastic and extremely deep customisation system which lets amateurs and pros alike build their own racers, karts and tracks, however detailed you want them to be. Unfortunately the game suffers with long and tedious loading times, brutal A.I in the latter stages of the Career mode and the odd frame-rate drop in split-screen racing and the ModSpot, but these issues still shouldn’t be enough to keep you from playing what is a extremely fun and addictive kart racing game.