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In my eyes, racing games are one of the hardest genres to do well; unlike most games that can score well in terms of storyline and characters, a racer generally has to have solid gameplay to do well. Aside from the various “racing simulators” out there, when it comes to the more fun, kart style racers there is only one title that comes to everyone’s mind: Mario Kart. Why is this? Because it has a solid engine and a decent selection of tracks. That’s pretty much all there is to it; even non-Mario fans like myself can agree that it’s a good, fair title that’s easy to pick up and play.

Since Mario Kart is limited to the Wii, it leaves a huge gap in the market for a similar title on the Xbox 360 and PS3. A few months ago, we saw the release of Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, which proved to be a good competitor for the kart genre, and probably one of the best seen on the more powerful consoles.

However, not being a total racing junkie like some, I’ve since stopped playing that, too. Unless you really love racers (or play regularly with friends), there’s only so many times you can come first in each track after having unlocked everything and played every course numerous times. Sure, S&SASR had the potential for DLC characters and tracks, but so far it’s been far too slow to keep it fresh; one new track was hardly enough to keep me interested for more than a week.

That’s where the Playstation 3 steps in with its own take on the genre – ModNation Racers. As with all kart racers, it’s a wacky, fun multiplayer racer, with drifting, boost pads and weaponry. But there’s a difference – under the “Play, Create, Share” brand shared with LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers offers something new that neither Mario Kart or S&SASR have done – content creation.

Before you even begin racing, it’s possible to fully customise your own “Mod” character in a similar style to that of LittleBigPlanet. Starting with a plain character canvas, you can choose skin colour (including different textures and abstract patterns), facial features (such as eyes, noses, mouths, ears and facial hair), as well as clothing and various other add-ons. However, it’s perhaps even more detailed than LBP, allowing you to intricately alter the colour and positioning of all different parts, and even including LBP-esque stickers to customise and personalise even further. I could easily spend a good hour playing with this, to create a unique Mod that’s specific to me.

An example of the sheer customisation that's possible with Mods

A similar system also applies to karts – starting with a basic frame you may add various bodies, alter parts and change the general look of the vehicle to your own design. There are plenty of different parts to choose from, allowing you to create many different styles of car – karts, sports cars, vintage vehicles or silly karts such as a cardboard body with a toilet seat. There really is a huge emphasis on personalization, and as with LittleBigPlanet it’s done well.

However, this is purely aesthetic and doesn’t actually affect your driving – if it’s not your kind of thing you can always select from some default Mods that are offered if you don’t fancy making your own. Sadly for sake of fairness all cars are identical in terms of speed and weight – unlike other kart racers that offer different stats for the various racers. It would have been nice to see a point-distribution system though, which could have kept balance by forcing you to choose between speed, acceleration, weight and steering – but perhaps something like this could be added in time.

That’s not to say that the gameplay is basic, though. There’s solid racing in there, and it has plenty of different features to mix it up and keep it interesting. As well as regular abilities such as drifting, there are various weapons such as sonic rings to knock opponents, missiles, and lightning strikes. There’s a twist, though – you can either fire them straight away, or hold onto them and pick up special orbs to upgrade them to level 2 or 3. The higher the level, the bigger the attack will be, increasing the power and amount of targets the weapon will hit. However, you have to be careful – hold on to a weapon too long and you could lose it if you get hit by an opponent’s attack.

Impressively, that’s not the only special thing available. You can flick the right analogue stick to ram opponents at close range, and there’s also a special thermometer style gauge that fills up as you race – this can then be expended to generate a shield to block attacks, or power up your nitros for a temporary boost in speed. All together, this adds up to some fun mayhem that’s definitely good fun.

Still – maybe you’re thinking ‘Sound’s alright, but it’s nothing that new…” but this is where one of ModNation’s biggest selling points comes in, a fully fledged track creation mode. To be honest it looks a bit daunting at first, since it has so much to offer – but it’s easy to build a complete track in a few minutes and work your way up from there.

You start off with a clean sheet, chosen from a variety of different backdrop styles – such as the beach or jungle to give an overall theme to the level. From there, you can modify the shape of the landscape to create mountains and such, and once you are happy with your environment you can create the track itself. Controlling a sort of “track roller” device, you can use the accelerate button to roll across the landscape laying track. You can change elevation to create ramps and such, and it also has the ability to “auto complete”; which means you can hold X to have the game do the tricky task of finishing off the track and lining up the end of the course with the start point. As you get more confident, you can then work on adding various features such as jumps and boosts that are common in these types of games. It’s really simple to make something that works, and it’s just a matter of working up from there. Like LBP, this means that it will be easy to share tracks with your friends, and also playing tracks shared online by other users.

Yep – that fixes the one flaw most Kart racers have – there’s no longer a limited supply of tracks to eventually get bored of – you can always find something new. You’ll need to play the campaign mode to unlock everything, if you want the full selection, so it should definitely have a decent amount of play time on there. If you’ve got a few good friends to play with there’s potentially an almost endless supply of kart fun – so perhaps we’ve found a Mario Kart beater at last.

ModNation racers is like the brainchild of Mario Kart and LittleBigPlanet, and it’s looking fantastic. The game was released on Playstation 3 last friday – so go buy it! The demo is also available on the Playstation Store.

-Leon