ModNation Racers

by Sony

Product Features

• Enjoy PlayStation Network support including matchmaking, detailed stats and leaderboards, friends list management, communication tools, PlayStation trophies, etc.
• Classic kart racing action featuring exceptional kart handling and physics technology, including drifting, jumps and boosting, as well as classic weapons and some crazy new ones.
• Extreme customization option allowing you to create your own track, character and kart that are only limited by the amount of time you want to spend on them.
• A built-in online community in which players can race and rate other peoples creations, as well as enjoy endless user generated content.
• Along with a fun single player campaign, ModNation Racers contains deep multiplayer support including 4-player local versus play, 2-player online split-screen and 2-12 player online support.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002BRZ7JE
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches ; 0.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: May 25, 2010
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #882 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #8 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > Racing

Product Description

Platform: PLAYSTATION 3

Amazon.com Product Description

ModNation Racers is a PlayStation 3 exclusive Kart Racing game featuring all the track-based driving and comic combat players cherish in the genre, blended with extreme customization and user generated content expected of a modern online multiplayer title. In it players can expect exceptional kart handling and physics technology, including drifting, jumps and boosting and easy to master customization options covering in-game racers, their karts and the tracks that are raced on. A Creative Twist on Classic Kart Racing Get behind the wheel of PlayStation's latest creative gaming title, ModNation Racers. A PlayStation 3 exclusive, it is a thoroughly fresh take on classic and ever-popular kart racing that empowers the player both in single player and multiplayer to personalize their entire game. Like all kart racers, the comic action is all about what happens on the tracks. Enjoy endless karting fun, where winning the race is only half of the fun. Players looking for the full experience can use combat-like racing strategies to attack other karts with an array of dramatic weapons, while those interested in focusing solely on racing, can stick to racing in Pure Race mode. The choice is your in ModNation Racers. Creative kart racing. View larger. The Ultimate Kart Racer Customization ModNation Racers features extreme customization, and as such allows each player to create their own unique racing experience with the same tools used by the development team. Begin by expressing yourself through the creation of your own Mod character and quirky kart. Starting with more or less a blank slate, players are free to change a variety of their racer's features. These range from head features and skin color, to wearable gear and attire. Customization of karts is equally deep, allowing for alteration of everything from suspension and interior, to body, wheels, decals. Finally, ModNation Racers gives players everything that they need to build the tracks of their dreams. With this functionality, known as Track Studio, players can invest minimal time and enjoy basic creating, or they can invest more time and make sure every lake, mountain, banked turn and power-up is placed perfectly. Either way the result is quick, contagious fun that can be shared through online races of up to 12 players, which can even be rated by the online community. Key Game Features Accessible and Fun – For racers, newcomers to video games or an aspiring game developer. Classic Kart Racing Action – Exceptional kart handling and physics technology, including drifting, jumps and boosting. Fun Weapons – Classic weapons and some crazy new ones. Create Your Own Track, Character and Kart – Spend minutes creating or hours perfecting everything in the game. Story Mode – Rise up to become an elite racer in the humorous campaign. Online Community – Race and rate other peoples creations and enjoy endless user generated content. Multiplayer Support – ModNation Racers contains deep multiplayer support including 2-player local versus play, and 2-12 player online support. PlayStation Network Support – Features include matchmaking, detailed stats and leaderboards, friends list management, communication tools, PlayStation trophies, etc. Additional Screenshots: Racer and kart customization. View larger. Over-the-top kart weapons. View larger. Easy to master track design. View larger. Online and offline multiplayer. View larger.

Product Description

Grab the keys to the latest “PLAY, CREATE, & SHARE” title available on the PlayStation 3! ModNation Racers is a next generation kart racer that empowers the player to personalize their entire game. Shoot, boost & drift your way to the finish line both offline and online, then create your own racing experiences with the same tools used by the development team. Express yourself by creating your own Mod character. Build your own quirky kart or design an imaginative track with deep, yet easy to use creative tools. Once you are finished, share it with the rest of the world or access unlimited amounts of user generated ModNation content on the PlayStation Network. There is no end to the karting fun!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, A Kart Formula that Works, May 26, 2010

By 

Nemesis296 - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ModNation Racers (Video Game)

ModNation Racers seeks to do what no other kart racer has done; allow unlimited customization and involve a community to be creative and share their ideas. While it's similar to LittleBigPlanet because of the "Race, Create, Share" tag that Sony and United Front Games have put onto this title, I feel that it expands on this idea even further than Media Molecule's hit. The controls and interface a simple to navigate and the developer went to great lengths to personalize the experience with ModNation Racers.

Everything you do within the game occurs in the ModSpot. A central hub where about 5 other players (when you're online) will congregate and you can see them drive around. There are all kinds of things to do in the ModSpot. Here you have access to the races, including Online, Online Split-Screen (up to 2 players split-screen), Offline Split-Screen (up to 4 players split-screen) and the Career Mode.

The Online racing experience is pretty smooth. Players can join a random match, or they can host matches with their friends, or just for other players to join. You can choose to race with "XP Mode" where your online profile will gain XP to rank up among other players. The competition is pretty intense though, so make sure you're familiar with how to handle the karts before heading to this mode. If you're not in the "XP" mood, you can just race casually for fun. All of your stats from races are tracked to your profile, and you can see the stats for each track that you've raced on as well.

Driving karts is a breeze. I equate this something slightly more complicated than Mario Kart 64. You accelerate and brake, fire weapons after picking up the powerups, and you *absolutely* must learn how to drift. Pressing and holding the 'X' button allows you to perform a drift around corners which fills a boost meter on the side of the screen. The boost meter is used for sideswiping opponents, boosting your speed, or using the shield equipped to your kart. It will take a lot of practice to get the timing down on your shield as it only lasts a few seconds with a full meter of boost, but it can make the difference between placing 1st and getting blown away at the last second of the final lap. Weapons come in 3 different styles: Missiles, Lightning and Sonic attacks. Each powerup can be upgraded up to 3 times. Stage 1 attacks are pretty light and can only hit 1 car (the Sonic level 1 weapon has a pulse discharged from around the car so it could potentially hit multiple enemies), Stage 2 attacks will hit 2 to 3 racers in front of you, and level 3 attacks can knock everyone out (think 'Blue Shell' from Mario Kart) if you manage to fire it from last place. It can be difficult to do this though, as if you are hit with a weapon, you will lose your current weapon and have to pick up a new powerup. Weapons appear to be random too, just like other kart racers.

So far, it sounds like a pretty good game right? Well, it is; the only catch is that with each thing that you do in this game, you might as well take a bathroom break or go fix a sandwich, because you will literally be waiting over a minute for some of the tracks to load. Not that this is a game-breaking deal for me though, the developer has stated that they will be patching the game to reduce load times which will be a well-liked feature when it is finally released.

The Career mode pits you the player against 25 different courses with challenges and shortcuts littered throughout the courses. It will probably take you a few tries to beat each track, especially since there are "achievements" within each track to unlock new items used in the Creation Studios. You will likely want to collect all of these, as the creation tools expand exponentially every time you add a new item to your creative pallet. Some of these challenges are "Grudge Matches", where after defeating an opponent on the track AND finishing 1st place, that opponent will challenge you 1-on-1 for the right to use their mod in the game. These matches are TOUGH, and you will need to be an expert at the course and handling your kart if you even are going to stand a fighting chance at beating these. Also littered on each course are tokens that can be used to purchase new items in the Shop, which is located in the ModSpot and the Creation Studio.

Now for the cream of the crop: the Creation Studio. Everyone has likely been comparing this game to Little Big Planet because of the customization you can do. In my opinion, this allows way more customization of your character than LittleBigPlanet. Through the use of unlocked accessories, hair pieces, clothing, shoes, gloves, hats, eyes, ears, noses, mouths, etc. you have the option to make your character as strange or awesome as you see fit! After putting the body together, you can change the color of anything you place on your mod, including different styles (which can be tweaked with a full color wheel) that can be unlocked. The color system is something that I tremendously applaud for this game. Anytime you place an object on your mod, or use something of a certain color, that color is added to either of the "Mod Colors", or "Kart Colors", so you can easily match colors and set things up just the way you want quickly and easily. It's so easy I was able to create look-alike characters from TV shows and movies within just a few minutes. There also is an aspect of stickers for the creation studios where you can layer and tweak each and every sticker that you want to put on your mod. From shapes, letters, numbers and other decals like flames, etc. you can dream up your imagination and put it on your mod or kart. Then you can resize, rotate, skew, cut, copy, layer and repaste your sticker designs on other parts of your mod or kart and even save them as sticker sets to use again later.

Each portion of the Creation Studio is divided into sub-menus which are not too complicated, but you will need more than just the game's instruction manual to become a master. UFG really did an excellent job with the creators, allowing simple creation, or really advanced creation. Each part you put on your mod or kart can be left as is when it first goes on, or you can dive into the deep customization abilities to create something so genuine that only you could create it. The L2 and R2 buttons are used to move to the next "area" of that specific menu, and the L1 button is usually reserved for advanced / basic edit toggling. The triangle button is typically the color option, whereby a color wheel can be viewed by pressing triangle again. Once you get the system under your belt you'll be amazed at the creations that you can come up with in ModNation Racers.

To top it off, you can then select your mods and karts that you have created, OR downloaded to race with friends and online/offline. That's right. Upload your creations to the PlayStation Network, and let other people download them. You can also allow players to "remix" your creation, where they will edit your creation and then re-upload it to the PSN. You still get the "creator" credit, and they get the remix credit. This system is absolutely solid, and it works extremely well. The Share spot of ModNation Racers is really easy to use and the developers took care to make sure that the karts, mods and tracks people create would be easy to find and download. There's an area for "Most Downloaded", "Most Raced", "Newest", or you can search by keywords which are used to describe your creation when you publish it.

The Track Studio is the only creator I haven't talked about. It's massive, and incredibly deep. Choose from 1 of 4 themes for your track and you drive a steam-roller to pave your track. You can create a simple loop, or you can go back and add monster jumps, bridges, tunnels, bank the road, make it narrow, add road hazards like construction barrels, crates, even rotating platforms. I could literally write a whole review on just this editor. It is that deep. You can change the elements and the direction that the sun shines, level of the water, and the type of road you will drive on. You can also create shortcuts, forks in the road, and add boost pads and weapons. Just like in LittleBigPlanet, all of the tracks in the career mode were made using the Track Studio. It's just incredible.

I played this game for literally 7 hours straight and I could not stop playing. It is FUN to play, and the community's imagination will blow you away. I saw downright amazing mods that looked like Mario, Iron Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even the Master Chief from Halo. Over the coming months players will upload unlimited content to choose from, and race from. If you don't like what other players do, create your own! It's that easy. Oh, and if you're worried about creating a super-looking track that people would actually want to play, you can just Auto-Populate your track in the editor which automatically adds scenery and gameplay items to the track so it looks like it took hours to make, when in reality it was only mere minutes.

I've waited a long time for a game like this to surface. Finally we have something on the PS3 which rivals the greatest kart racers of all time. Long load times will be fixed down the road, but the next generation of kart racing is here. If you're skeptical about your purchase, download the demo off the PSN. Trust me though when I say, if you buy this game, you will NOT be disappointed.

40 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New and Improved Kart Racing, May 25, 2010

By 

Keith Hernandez - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: ModNation Racers (Video Game)

Modnation Racers is the newest Kart Racing game in the Genre, and in my opinion, it is way ahead of the competition. Of course, this game is being compared to Mario Kart. Having never played the newest Mario Kart for Wii, I can't really compare the two much. I have, although played the older Mario Kart, and if the Wii version is nearly the same, I believe Modnation Racers tops it.

The Good: Modnation Racers is the kind of game that anybody can enjoy. The Track, Mod, and Kart creator are super simple and it has loads of different hairstyles, clothes, shoes, stickers, accessories, etc. I can easily see this having a huge library of user created content just like LittleBigPlanet. When you start the game, you automatically are entered into the MRC Qualifiers race and after a brief introduction you are taken to the ModSpot. Here is where everything happens on Modnation Racers, such as entering Online races, Split Screen, and Career races. There is also an area where Top Mods and Karts are displayed. I've seen mods of Mario, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Joker, and many more. With this many mods in just a few days, I'm positive there will be a TON of amazing mods in weeks. Other players connected to the PSN are also in the same ModSpot as you and can just ride around drifting or just simply enter one of the areas in the ModSpot.
The controls are also great. Drifting is easy and insanely addicting. When racing an Action Race, collect pods and you receive weapons. If you're tired of getting blown up, select Pure Race. Before you enter a race in the Career Mode, there is a little cinematic, sometimes with these two Hosts, or with you and your mechanic. These cinematics are filled with humor to give you a laugh or two before a race.

The Bad: The load and install times on this game can get ridiculously long. Though it's not something to keep you away from the game, sometimes you'll just want to jump into a race but have to wait almost an entire minute to begin. Mic support is a good feature, but I wish there wasn't so many people cursing and talking crap through their headsets, but there isn't really a way to fix that. Other than those two things listed, there really isn't much I've run into that is degrading to the game. *One more bad I ran into recently is that it takes forever to start up an XP race, which is what gives you the chance to progress on the Multiplayer side of Modnation. I'm not sure if people just don't know their way around the menus, or they all want to just race casually. Although it's a little disappointing as of now, I'm positive that in a short amount of time there will be much more people on the XP races*

Overall, in just a few days that people have had the game, there has been some really neat creations coming from the community. Hopefully in the future, there will be an update to help the load times.
All PS3 owners, GET THIS... or at least try it. :)

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun...but lacking, June 4, 2010

By 

James W. Kiley Jr. "or Kelly Kiley" (FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: ModNation Racers (Video Game)

To start off with, the game play of this title is Fun with a capital F. Think Mario Kart on steroids. The user created content that you can download is unbelievable. I am amazed by the artistic ability of people. But by now, you've read the other reviews about the game play , etc etc, so I will not go into the details just to beat a dead horse.

For me, as much fun and original as this game is, I find myself thinking about returning it to Game Stop or simply selling it on eBay.

One of the features that was in Mario Kart which I absolutely loved and would be game-breaking without, was the different "cup" series. Each MK cup series had its own difficulties based on tracks and opponents. MNR does not have a single player version. There is a multi player mini-series (if can really call it that), where you can play 5 tracks in succession. That's fine and dandy except I don't think I've finished a singles series. Maybe got through two or three races before the other players dropped.

The career mode was very hard and I'm not knocking it at all, but I would have liked it a lot better had they included a true championship mode (even if you need to unlock it somehow) where you can race some/all the tracks in a series against the elite CPU drivers that you faced in the career mode storyline; a series that would tally points for you and the computer, based on your finishing position of each race and let you race all the tracks and give a 'Champion' at the end. What you are given instead, is a career mode angled toward the user created content. Most of your unlocks during the play through are for cosmetic tools and graphics for your track/mod/kart creations down the line. Also, once you go through the career mode and go back and run a previous race in it...it still splashes the same cut scenes you already encountered at the same points. In fact, if you re-race a track in career mode, you actually unlock the same items you've already unlocked. I'm not sure why they even called it a "Career Mode", it should have been titled "Story Mode". Even though they do include some rudimentary stats for your 'offline' play, there really is no offline career to be had. All career-"centric" play time is centered on the online-multi player scene.

And currently the online multiplayer piece of this game is lacking. Most of the time, you enter an online race and you are the first one in the lobby. It could easily take 5-10 minutes to get enough players (4) to start a race. If you are lucky, those players will stick around for another race afterwards. If not, it starts from square one, with you waiting for other players to join.

I am sure, without a doubt, that the load times for the races and the multi player aspect of the game will be fixed with future patches and I don't have a problem waiting for it; my main beef is not having the single player option to run a series as it completely ruins the re-playability of MNR for me. So all in all, if you are into creativity and multi-player racing is your thing, then this game is for you. As I said, with the glaring problems the game has in the online world, I have no doubt they are working on a fix and you should definitely go out and buy this title.

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