Game review: ModNation Racers - Sony PSP

The outstanding PS3 version of the game gives the little Italian plumber and his pals plenty of food for thought in the battle for console superiority.

In the portable karting genre, the PSP version of ModNation also gives Mario on DS a good run for its money.

The king of karting could be about to get dethroned.

ModNation Racers on PSP shares several characteristics with LittleBigPlanet – for a start it’s essentially the same game as its PS3 namesake but scaled back, and it’s a very creative game driven by user-generated content.

As happened when LittleBigPlanet was converted for the PSP, the handheld version of ModNation is missing some of the personality of its bigger brother and the creative features have lost some of their depth.

However, as with Sackboy’s transition to PSP, ModNation in miniature form still works very well and contains a lot of fun.

When you first drive out on to the track in ModNation PSP you won’t see much you haven’t seen before.

Up to six karts set off from the start with the objective of getting around the vibrantly decorated twisty-turny courses as fast as possible. Along the way there are power-ups to pick up which allow you to fire missiles, electric bolts and other evil objects at your fellow racers.

ModNation has a couple of neat tricks in a boost meter and shield but the racing side of it will feel very familiar if you’ve played any Mario Kart games before.

The racing runs at a decent speed and is chaotic enough for this type of game.

Kart handling is good and I’ve generally felt in full control of my vehicle, although flying through the air has got me disorientated a few times.

Graphics are about as polished as you could hope for on PSP and draw distances are decent, although on some courses I’ve had minor issues seeing the correct way to go or telling the track and obstacles apart.

Controls are uncomplicated and easy to use, making use of the shoulder buttons for accelerate/brake and the face buttons for launching weapons, drifting, shield and speed burst. The only fiddly part comes when trying to use the d-pad buttons for special moves such as slamming into a nearby kart.

There are three modes of play.

Career feature a series of events and a loose story revolving around competing in the ModNation Racing Championship.

Single-player offer one-off races on chosen tracks with or without power-ups, and there is also a Last Kart Standing elimination event.

Finally, there are online multiplayer races, but these weren’t working for me while I played the game ahead of its release.

ModNation is a very solid and enjoyable racing game on the track but it really shines brightest off the track.

It does this by letting players go crazy with creation.

Within the community racers, karts and tracks can all be shared and modified, or players can design their own things from scratch.

Using a series of simple menus it’s easy to make a wacky looking new mod (racer) character or a sporty new kart in seconds, choosing from dozens of customisation options.

The different elements are purely cosmetic and don’t influence the driver or kart’s performance on the track but it’s fantastic to have so much choice on how things in the game look.

The best thing about the design side of the game is being able to build new tracks.

Within just a few minutes you can have a completely new track designed and ready to race on, with the road bending and banking how you want it to with trees, signs and loads of other props where you want them to be.

If you find that you like the game then being able to build new courses whenever you feel like it is a real bonus.

There is a play-create-share ethos to ModNation so you can also download other people’s inventions as well as publish your own.

One complaint about the design features is that they are not identified on the menus so it’s sometimes hard to tell what things are.

Another issue is that too many of them unlocked at the beginning of the game. It’s a shame that players are forced to play through much of the career mode and complete challenges in order to get access to customisations which I think should be unlocked in the first place.

Once you do start opening up the full raft of options then designing mods, karts and courses is huge fun.

Creation tools like these have never been seen in this type of game before, and the artistic free will allowed in ModNation adds massively to the kart racing experience.

Kart games in the future which don’t include this amount of invention just won’t seem as good, no matter how refined their racing might be.

While the limitations of the PSP mean several elements of the PS3 version have had to be left out (the drive-around Modspot game hub is missing, for example), the portable edition holds up very well against its console counterpart.

ModNation Racers is a very accessible and likeable game. It isn’t quite perfect and it isn’t quite as dazzling as LittleBigPlanet on PSP, but its blend of racing and designing works very well and leads to a game unlike anything else before it.

It’s a new era for kart racing games and Mario will have to put his foot down to keep up.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 – It’s doesn’t wow as much as the PS3 version but the PSP edition of ModNation Racers is still a fine racing game with a wealth of design possibilities.