Modnation Racers - a review of sorts

No-one of sane mind is ever going to claim that Modnation Racers (MNR) is the best game ever made. I don't even know if it's the best kart game ever made, having not played them all myself. Certainly plenty of other reviews have mentioned the rubbish attempt to add a story into the career game, the difficult career passage as the AI becomes mentally aggressive and above all the long loading times.

But it's a good game, there's no denying that, and to me, it's a great game. Those other reviews will tell you the cartoon graphics are great, sounds fine, menus workable and will then almost always turn to the modding tools, which are excellent.

That they miss out on the aspect that makes the game great is no surprise. The lot of the professional or semi-professional game reviewer is not always a happy one. There's not always time to spend dissecting the game as much as they could, as much as the games player does by the natural dint of his playing, for example.

So, I'm 517 on-line games in and have just won the trophy for winning 100 games (silver, btw) and would like to report in. What makes this game great is how balanced the on-line racing is. Seemingly every race ends with a tight finish, good players will always fight one another and you're never left miles behind simply going round an empty track. And this all seems a perfectly natural part of the game, not leveraged by any deus ex machina but just something that happens.

So if you have a PS3 (or PSP) and fancy a blast, get a copy of MNR and join me on-line.