POSTED 7/3/12


MODNATION RACERS: ROAD TRIP

Sony
Vita

Once had a race, thought it was a gas. Soon turned out, had a kart of glass...

You’re nothing if you don’t have a kart game featuring you. Fuck, that means we’re nothing! Still, with its extensive moddingness, ModNation Racers is the closest you’ll get until you’re a famous cartoon or game character.

If that’s the sort of shit you be digging then you’ll be more cock-a-hoop here than Foghorn Leghorn in Space Jam. Or something. You can turn blank little white beings into most any character you want, make most any track you want, and concoct most any type of vehicle that you want then share them. So, it’s basically any kart game married with LittleBigPlanet’s mondo-creationalistic vibe, and is easier to get inventy with than pre-warmed plasticine, especially with Vita’s touchy-feely controls.

If you like tight, slick and super-fun kart racing, however, then you’ll find MR:RT decidedly less hoopy to be cocky about. Or something, again. The usual karting fare’s here – drive fast around bizarre-o circuits with irritating impediments, turn, drift, pick up power-ups, destroy foes with them, do somersaults in mid-air and such, but it feels sloppier than a toddler in a vat of custard.

That’s not just the racing – where one touch from another kart will send you careening uncontrollably into a wall just once too often every race - but also laggy menus and, worst of all, the fact that it takes a variation on forever to load each track. The Vita only has four hours of battery life, spending a third of it staring at load screens isn’t our idea of a fungasm.

There’s also bullshit AI, no online multiplayer and no coherent story. It’s like they chucked just the bare essentials for a racing game into the Family Truckster before hitting the holiday road – in the wrong direction.

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