As far as the actual racing goes, Modnation Racers is, at its core, an online racer due to the heavy online community focus. You have no main menu as such, but are placed in an online area that lets you and other drivers on the server actually drive around and physically go to different exits for things like quick races, hot laps, online races and so on. While the lobby area is a nice touch, you can still bring up a quick radial menu that lets you get to pretty much anywhere very quickly.

Now that I have covered what I like about Modnation Racers I unfortunately have to say this it isn’t without its faults.

Visuals in Modnation Racers aren’t bad and together with the cartoony style they do keep the game looking fun and colourful. They aren’t overly complex though, which left me scratching my head a little when the framerate proved to be very inconsistent. The game does run decently for the most part, but the lower framerates can hurt the experience at times.

My major (and I mean, major) issue with Modnation Racers is the loading time. It’s almost bad enough for me to call it a deal-breaker. The first time I loaded up Modnation Racers (and this is a true story) I honestly sat through the first loading screen under the full impression that the game was installing something from the Blu-ray disc, only to find out that it was just a normal loading screen, and that it does that every time.

This might not sound so bad, but from the time I hit play in the XMB to actually being in the menu took just over two and a half minutes. Two and half minutes means something completely different when you are sitting on your couch staring at your screen when most other games are up and running in less than twenty seconds.

While certain tracks take longer than others to load, it wasn’t uncommon to have to sit and wait over a minute for a race to begin. Put those two together and from XMB to actually playing the game could take just under five minutes. Knowing that the game takes so long to start up actually deterred me from playing it, and in the end it could very well result in a gamer opting to play something else instead.

You may want to think that I am nitpicking, but really, once you have sat down to play it really gets on your nerves to know that for every short race you play, you have a nice long loading time to accompany it.

For bandwidth starved gamers, the games online/community focus may prove to be a bit of an issue, so I do recommend that the game is played offline wherever possible.

Conclusion:

Major loading time issue aside, Modnation Racers is a fun Kart racer that plays well and includes a ton of other stuff to do to get your creative juices flowing. With the online and community aspects included, there really is a lot of play time to be had. Pity about the loading times, though.

For fans of: Mario Kart, Little Big Planet, Lego

Scoring (not an average)

Gameplay: 8.9

Plays like most Kart racers, creative tools add a lot to the experience.

Presentation: 8.5

Not the greatest looking game yet still has framerate issues at times.

Sound: 8.5

Nothing really worth mentioning here, average but not bad.

Value: 9.0

Plenty of activities to keep you busy, from a single player career to online racing, split screen and tons of other ways to keep you busy for hours on end.

Overall: 8.8

Modnation Racers is a good attempt at creating a solid kart racer for the PS3, especially when combined with all of the creative and community tools. It is, however, let down by very bad loading times and a few technical problems that I hope will get resolved should there be a sequel in future.

[Reviewed on Playstation 3]